#Excerpt from BIRTH OF AN ASSASSIN by @Stone_Rik #Suspense #Crime #Thriller

Adrik waited in the guard’s room a couple of corridors along from Kornfeld’s cell. There was only one way out, so the Jew had to pass this room. He spun a Makarov on his finger, aimed at imaginary targets and thrilled at the thought of using it. The gun was standard issue, but he would’ve chosen it anyway. Totally reliable, pull the trigger and out pop the bullets. The blowback design expels the spent case to the right and loads the next cartridge into the chamber – easy. And fully armed with eight rounds, he would use them all.

This wouldn’t be his first killing and sure as hell wouldn’t be his last. Kornfeld was a pain, and it was Otto who mattered. He would do anything for him. Why should he care about some Jew who got in the way?

But time dragged, and Kornfeld hadn’t yet made a show. For one horrible minute he thought there might be another way out – but no, that isn’t even possible. Calm down, be patient… Try as he might, he couldn’t, and the idea ran around his head, irritating him beyond measure.

He left the guardroom and paced the corridor outside. At first a short distance and then a bit further into the next passageway. No good – he had to find out what had happened. With gun in hand and footsteps stealthy he reached the cell door – it was slightly open. Oh shit, did that mean there was another way out? Or maybe Kornfeld had gone deeper into the prison block. Or maybe he was in the cell hoping the element of surprise would be with him.

Possibilities ganged up. Kornfeld knew Lubyanka well. What if there was another way out and that little bastard knew it? If so, Otto would kill him, never mind the Jew. He kicked the door fully open, slammed it against the cell wall, stood back and then moved in, pointing the gun around to make sure Kornfeld wasn’t hidden on either side of the opening. The cell was dimly lit and he found it difficult to see. He would stay put until his eyes got accustomed to the light. A body, he saw a body. It was covered with a greatcoat, on the bunk facing the wall.

He was clearly supposed to think it was Kornfeld. In that case he’d be under the bunk waiting… But then that’s obvious too, so he might be on top with the guard pushed underneath. That made more sense – it would be easier for him to make an attack from on top – but, shit, wouldn’t that be what he wanted him to think?

To be sure of the kill, Adrik wanted to shoot above and below – but he couldn’t. How would he explain the soldier’s death? Oh, Otto, if only Otto was there to tell him what to do. But he wasn’t, he had to make up his own mind. The Jew was on top – yes, definitely on top.

Cautiously, he edged forward, pointed the pistol to the back of the person’s head and pulled the body towards him with gun steady and ready to fire. As quickly as his huge form allowed, he pulled the greatcoat away.

Fuck! The guard! No time to react. A leg came from under the bunk with incredible speed and wrapped around the back of his. At the same time, the Jew’s other foot came against his knees and pushed. Adrik had brought his legs together when he tore the coat away and Kornfeld used the imbalance to his advantage. Adrik’s arms went out. He hovered awkwardly, then almost regained control, but Kornfeld pushed harder and Adrik went flying backwards with his legs in the air. A sense of suspension ended and he fell heavily, striking the hard stone floor. His head bounced, shudders chased through his brain and he found himself staring at the ceiling, wavering between conscious and unconscious.

The pain pierced his skull and he noticed his head had rested in a pool of warm liquid. He hadn’t seen that when he came in. Numbness consumed his body; he couldn’t move. But then his blurred vision saw the bleary outline of the Jew. Awareness came that his body was being rolled over. He was paralyzed, but it didn’t stop the surge of fear that ran through every fibre of his being.

Set against the backdrop of Soviet, post-war Russia, Birth of an Assassin follows the transformation of Jez Kornfeld from wide-eyed recruit to avenging outlaw. Amidst a murky underworld of flesh-trafficking, prostitution and institutionalized corruption, the elite Jewish soldier is thrown into a world where nothing is what it seems, nobody can be trusted, and everything can be violently torn from him.

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Genre - Thriller, Crime, Suspense

Rating – R

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Connect with Rik Stone on Facebook & Twitter

Website http://rik-stone.simdif.com

Generation (A Medical #Thriller) by @_William_Knight #BookClub #AmReading #Crime

Out of breath, Dr Sarah Wallace, senior lecturer in forensic entomology, burst into Ridley lecture room exactly thirteen minutes late and stood before her students taking deep gasps with her right palm to her chest. Her shoulder-length brown hair, clipped at the back, swayed on the collar of a beige sleeveless cardigan worn over a white blouse.

She noted the usual set of final year students. “I got held up,” she said, swinging her crumpled corduroy bag from her shoulder onto the floor, then dropping a folder of papers on the table in front of a large white-board. “Thank you for waiting.

“It will be worth it,” she added, to a murmur of laughter. “Watch you don’t catch flies in that mouth, Simon. You never know what’s buzzing around in this lecture room.”

Simon closed his mouth promptly and blushed. He usually sat at the front and always looked surprised when she entered the room. Even though he was fifteen years her junior she recognised he was a good-looking lad. Athletic, with dark brown eyes the colour of mahogany. Not the best student, but competent when he tried – she suspected he spent most of his time playing guitar. She smiled and turned to the bag.

“Anybody care to tell me what these are?” She pulled out a transparent perspex box and held it up. Small brown flies clung to the sides and lid.

She walked around the table and handed the box to Simon. “Pass them round.”

“No takers?” She waited while the box was moved hand-to-hand around the room. “Come on, some of you must have seen these at A level.

“What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is Drosophila,” she said returning to the board, and writing the word across its length with a sweeping hand movement. “More formally known as Drosophila melanogaster, it also goes by the humble name of ‘fruit fly’. But its importance to science is immeasurable. In 1910 Thomas Hunt Morgan first spotted genetic mutants – flies with large white eyes – among his collection at Columbia University, and since then fruit fly research has fuelled a revolution of biological understanding. The most important aspect of which was the discovery that the fundamental genetic mechanisms of growth and development are comparable in all living things.”

She let the words sink in and smiled to herself as Simon made notes. “I repeat. All living things. At a genetic level we are as similar to Drosophila as we are to Gryphea, Arenicola, Mesonychoteuthis the colossal squid, certainly all the other animals, and we have much in common with plants.”

She sat on the front of the desk. “Now we’re not going to go into the depths of the fly’s genome, I’ll leave that to more eminent lecturers, but the reason Drosophila is so good for genetics, and not forgetting forensics, is because it breeds fast. We can study several generations in a week.” She paused and checked the under-grads were paying attention.

“Now if you’ve read your Byrd and Castner, you’ll know that a wide variety of insect species are attracted to human remains and play an active role in the decay process. Yet Diptera and Coleoptera are the most important. Fly larvae are the first insects to colonise decomposing remains. They can thrive in the fluid as the corpse liquefies and are mostly responsible for the dramatic consumption of the tissues. It’s only much later, when the corpse begins to desiccate, that other insect groups, notably beetles, move in for their turn at the feast. So for the rest of the term we are going to be eating and sleeping Drosophila – not literally Simon, I’m sure you understand.

A man emerges from the sodden undergrowth, lost, lonely and starving he is mown down by a speeding car on the edge of a remote forest.

Rumours of ghostly apparitions haunt a rural Northumberland community.

A renowned forensic research establishment is troubled by impossible results and unprecedented interference from an influential drug company.

Hendrix 'Aitch' Harrison is a tech-phobic journalist who must link these events together.

Normally side-lined to investigate UFOs and big-beast myths, but thrust into world of cynical corporate motivations, Hendrix is aided by a determined and ambitious entomologist. Together they delve into a grisly world of clinical trials and a viral treatment beyond imagining.

 

In a chase of escalating dangers, Aitch must battle more than his fear of technology to expose the macabre fate of the drugged victims donated to scientific research.

 

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Genre – Crime, Thriller, Horror

Rating – R-16

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Connect with William Knight on Facebook & Twitter

Website http://www.williamknight.info