The Five
By
A P Bateman
Text © Anthony Paul Bateman
2017
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, printing or otherwise, without written permission of the author.
This book is a work of fiction and any character resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Some locations may have been changed, others are fictitious.
Author contact: [email protected]
Facebook: @authorapbateman
Website: apbateman.com
Also by A P Bateman
The Alex King Series
The Contract Man
Lies and Retribution
Shadows of Good Friday
The Five
Reaper
Stormbound
Breakout
From the Shadows
The Rob Stone Series
The Ares Virus
The Town
The Island
Standalone Novel
Hell’s Mouth
Short Stories
A Single Nail
Atonement
(an Alex King short story)
For the four family, always
1
Two-thousand metres. Not far to travel in a car, more than noticeable on foot. A long way to fall. It depended on the perspective. Alex King knew that a shot of two-thousand metres was an incredible achievement. To send a .338 of an inch, sixteen-gram bullet, two-thousand metres over a valley with cross-winds, and of varying air temperature and thermal lift, to allow not only for this, but for the movement of the target, was a master-class in both marksmanship and ballistics.
Not an expert on bodies, although he had created a few over the years, he left the forensics team alone while he studied the terrain across the valley. There were more than a few potential firing positions, places he would have chosen. Some he could rule out. Trees or telegraph poles within the line of sight, or places that provided little more than a lack of cover.
He whittled the possibilities down to three. Three places a sniper could have laid up, would have settled in for the shot. And they would have to have settled in. The shot had been taken in broad daylight. One-pm. Dawn was around six-am. The shooter would have been in place long before this. Settled, ready. The concentration, the field craft and the knowledge needed to successfully complete a shot like this led King to believe the shooter was ex-military. Civilian shooters went home when it rained. They didn’t have the discipline for a wait like this, for a one-shot-one-hit deal. He knew some civilian shooters were amongst the finest marksmen in the world, but they couldn’t do this. Not even close. For a start, British Home Office approved ranges generally topped out at six-hundred metres. There were a few longer facilities, a three-thousand metre range in Wales, he recalled, but these facilities were rare. And to make a head shot at more than two-thousand metres after lying up for at least seven-hours, well that would take a lot of range time and experience. Conditioning in both mind and body. More likely years of armed service time with tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of ammunition at their disposal, curtsey of the tax payer.
The .338 Lapua Magnum. It was quite a specific calibre, but having travelled two-thousand metres, through and through the man’s skull, it had slowed up and dropped to the ground across the patio. Just past the pool, just short of the glass doors. It was a find. The biggest to date. Insignificant damage to its composition. Positively identified and weighed. That gave King the range. Or at least, where he would have taken the shot. The range should have been four-hundred metres shorter, but the valley negated this, as did the upwards trajectory. The ideal firing position lay at what King estimated to be two-thousand-five-hundred metres distant from the target, but he had dismissed this as soon as he had worked out the distance. Settled on the next best place, still a long shot for this piece of weaponry.
Standard doorways were six-feet-six inches high and two-foot-six inches wide. The house above the valley had three of them. King best guessed using the doors as six-six, came up with the calculation of two-thousand-five-hundred metres. Not a chance. Not from a .338, and the lead forensic scientist was adamant that the bullet she had found on the patio, just short of the glass doors was a .338 Lapua Magnum and consistent with the entry hole in the head of the fifth-richest man on the planet, the fourth man, of comparable wealth, to have died in the past two-weeks.
2
Four weeks earlier
Social media announcement
Anarchy to Recreate $ociety
The world’s five richest people (currently all white males) are worth as much as the collective wealth of the poorest 65% of the planet’s population. A net worth between them of three-hundred and eleven billion US dollars. Enough to build ten-thousand-three-hundred and seventy-hospitals. Enough to build three-hundred and eleven thousand schools. Enough money to feed three meals a day to every person on the planet for six-months. And how have they managed to accumulate this wealth? Because of us. Because of the consumer. Because of unfair pricing, low wages, inferior quality materials, tax avoidance and outright tax evasion.
We have built these billionaires, we have fuelled their appetites, thrown coals onto the fires of their ambition and continued to make them wealthier and more powerful than any human can possibly deserve. Every second, people die of starvation, poor water supply, illnesses that can be easily halted, even cured by drugs worth a few dollars or even cents. Instead, the pharmaceutical industry keeps the cost of these drugs unobtainable to the poor. Some people will say that this keeps the spread of the herd down. But who are they to decide? Who are the billion-dollar companies and individuals to decide what is best? Why are
