MasterShot by Craig Miles_2013

MasterShot

By

Craig Andrew Miles

Overview:

The family of the incoming EU President is wiped out in the space of a few days, leaving only a single daughter who's disappeared somewhere in Europe.

Troy Masters is the LAPD Detective assigned to the murder of the most recent victim in California. His search for the killers takes him across Europe and into the former Eastern bloc, to resolve the plot and cut down the terrorist organisation behind it. Troy soon discovers he not only has to rescue the EU President but also avert the largest economic tragedy since 1929.

MasterShot is the first in a series of novels that chart the career of Troy Masters.

About the Author:

Craig Miles is a former World Cup Crossbow Shooting Champion, and Commonwealth Championship Gold Medal winner. He has worked in the IT industry for the past 15 yearsand has been a trusted Technical Advisor to the Boards of over a dozen Fortune500 companies globally. Craig is 38 years old, a UK citizen, and currently lives in Prague.

[email protected] +420 720 527 218

1MasterShot © Craig Miles November 2013

mailto:[email protected]

ONE

The rope was tight around her wrists, and her arms ached from having them pinned behind

her; she’d been like that for a while. She began a mental checklist of the rest of her body: the

pain in her arms was nothing compared to the feeling in her forehead, a familiar morning-

after-the-night before pain, but somehow different. Not alcohol this time, it was more intense

and focused in a particular area in the centre of her forehead and about an inch above her

eyebrows. She moved her hands to touch her head and was instantly reminded of the pain in

her arms from the restraints. Where the hell am I? She abandoned the mental checklist of the

rest of her body, and opened her eyes.

It was daytime, and at least she could see where she was. It looked like a normal

room, part of a house, and not some scary dungeon from the movies. She was lying on a

single camp bed with a cheap mattress and metal springs visible on the side. She could see

the sky through the window. It was blue and clear. The sun was hitting her eyes and

exacerbating the thrust of the needle in her forehead. She looked to the door, and as she did

the handle turned and a man walked in. Slowly at first, checking her out.

‘She’s awake,’ he called over his shoulder, and moved into the room. A second man

followed behind, both of them wearing navy blue tailored suits, dark hair and the day-old

shadow of stubble. They were big guys, she thought, but she didn’t recognise them. She’d

gotten herself into some scrapes in her time, but this took the biscuit. She was always being

warned of potential kidnapping, especially with her daddy being who he was, but she never

listened. She quickly remembered all the times she had been in the local clubs and hotel bars,

being approached by the latest hotshot trying to get into her pants. She’d always let one of

them take her home at the end of the night, so long as he had a nice car and wasn’t too drunk

to perform. Her father often used to hear of it, calling her and shouting at her on the phone


that she was going to ‘ruin his reputation’ or demanding to know ‘what the hell do you think

you’re doing to yourself and your mother’s memory?’ She knew her father was right of

course, but it was such fun to antagonise him and she knew he would bail her out if there was

any real trouble.

By now, she could smell the breath of the larger of the two guys leaning over her,

repulsive, like he hadn’t brushed his teeth in a week. He dragged her up by the wrists from

behind her back, and urged her forcibly towards the door. She complied.

She wasn’t too worried, not yet. She figured it must be a ransom effort that her daddy

would sort out and she’d be home for lunch. They were probably dragging her off for some

live video stream performance to send to her daddy so he’d cut them a cheque; she’d be

dumped on some street corner, picked up and taken home. Daddy would then send some

goons round to sort these guys out and they’d never be heard from again. After all, he was too

high profile for them to mistreat her too much.

She returned to the mental checklist. She could walk; a good sign. No significant pain

elsewhere and she was still wearing her short black Gucci dress. Her matching lingerie was

intact, so no one had been messing with her. These guys were only after the cash, she’d be

home for lunch for sure - OK, maybe dinner. She complied.

They walked her out of the room, and down some old wooden steps. This place is a

dump, she thought, I’m not coming back here in a hurry, and why are these guys in such a

rush? The floors were giving her feet splinters, and she wondered where her Vuitton shoes

had disappeared to, she’d only worn them twice. If Daddy didn’t kill these guys after all this

was finished, she certainly would.


She was marched down into a basement, where the lights were pretty low and she had

to squint to see anything, unsure if it was the effect of the drugs or the weird mix of light on

only one half of the room. The two men walked her over to what seemed like an old disused

stage, up three stairs to a flimsy wooden chair. There was a blackboard obscuring the other

half of the stage. What the hell? She thought, this is the oddest ransom video she’d ever heard

of. She was both pushed and helped up onto the chair. The smaller of the men cracked the

silence with a ripping of black rubber tape and wrapped it roughly round her mouth. She let

them do it, she might as well make the video footage interesting as it would make Daddy pay

faster and give her something to talk about with Sascha later.

The two guys moved behind her and left her to stand alone. She felt cool air whistle

past her bare knees and ankles, and all she could hear was the creaking of the rotten wooden

panels of the show stage under the footsteps of the men as they moved around behind her.

She squinted into the darkness beyond the stage, making out a number of figures. There was a

large rotund figure in the middle with three silhouettes standing close by, then a fourth

leaning on the wall to the side. Someone was smoking, a Havana cigar by the smell of it,

reminding her of the Intercontinental hotel bar on the Waterfront. She couldn’t make out a

video recorder anywhere in the darkness.

She heard something drop behind her: heavy, like an old ship’s rope. It was followed

by a similar noise but this time above her. She moved to look but her head was pushed down

into a noose of heavy rope, which was pulled tight against her neck. She heard the rattle of a

pulley and her head was held high, stretching her rigidly from the chair. She had no choice

now but to comply.

The blackboard barrier was pulled away and she saw Sascha. She didn’t look good,

standing on a chair with a noose around her neck, her rope hoisted high into the darkness


above. Sascha was terrified, mascara had dried all down her cheeks from crying, and there

were welts all over her face. The young woman was sobbing, and her body was shaking from

the effort to stay on the chair and not hang herself. As she looked down Sascha’s body, to

below the hem of last night’s dress, her friend’s chair was kicked away by one of the blue

suited men.

Sascha screamed, the sound hollow and muffled through the tape around her mouth.

Her arm muscles tightened as she struggled against the restraints, and her neck muscles

bulged against the noose. Sascha was swinging, like a toy jester on the end of a laughing

cord. She was petite, and weighed only forty-nine kilograms, the friends had celebrated

breaking the fifty-kilo milestone only two nights previously.

Sascha didn’t last long. After sixty seconds the bucking, writhing and kicking had

stopped, and she just swayed, grotesquely limp, the creak of the rope providing a terrifying

rhythmic accompaniment.

She didn’t want to comply any more, finally realising she was in big trouble. Sascha

didn’t come from money, and there was no video recorder. These guys didn’t want cash, at

least not quick cash. Where the hell was she? She’d woken up just five minutes ago - God

knows where; God knows what happened last night - and just seen her best friend hanged,

and she was facing the same gruesome end.

Her body started to shake as adrenalin flooded her system. Her eyes widened as her

senses were heightened from the extreme situation. Desperate for fight or flight, she had been

deprived of both options. She looked out into the darkness beyond the stage; her eyesight was

becoming clearer now as the adrenalin shook off the drowsiness of the Rohypnol in her

bloodstream. Her search moved towards the central figure with surrounding silhouettes.


The form seemed familiar to her. Standing with one foot slightly in front of the other,

the natural sag of the shoulders reminded her of better times. She frantically searched her

memory, and then it came to her as clarity returned. It couldn’t be...the double chin was

hanging loosely from the face of...Daddy.

She tried to scream, but the tape contained it. She closed her eyes to clear the vision,

and heard the splitting of wood as the chair was kicked from underneath her. The final slack

of the rope was exhausted and she felt the overwhelming force in her throat. She panicked,

and opened her eyes in terror. She wanted to see her daddy, but she was robbed of the chance.

The world had become black and her vision had gone, along with her oxygen supply as she

dropped into oblivion.

Ota Hazdra was cold; he’d been lying in the same hollow in the frozen Paktika province hills

of South Eastern Afghanistan for the past eight hours. Ota was a special operations sniper for

the NATO forces in the country, and he was good, real good. He was a strong marksman;

he’d represented the Czech Republic at the Olympic Games and was just as good a soldier.

He was the only sniper authorised to go out without a spotter, and he always completed his

missions successfully and within reasonable time. He was the celebration of the Czech army;

one of 458 Czech soldiers in the NATO forces of Afghanistan and the only one with any

confirmed kills of Al-Qaeda operatives: six in total before today.

Ota knew that this mission was different. Ever since the Nangar Khel incident in 2007

where a crazy Polish soldier had shelled the wedding celebrations killing a pregnant woman

and a baby, the Paktika province had been a horrible place to be a soldier. He knew that if he

was captured, he’d be better off jumping from the mountain than getting skinned alive and


forced to watch his intestines being stretched around his neck. There had only been one

prisoner of war in this province, a US Army operative taken in 2009, and Ota knew for sure

there had been plenty of others that were not so fortunate.

So today he was extra vigilant. Every falling stone, every movement in the pass below

was a cause for concern; and tension wasn’t good: it made his muscles tremor, his heartbeat

rise and ultimately affected his aim. He constantly reminded himself of his training from the

Olympic camps; relaxation helped him reduce his heartbeat and he knew at this distance he

would need to reduce it fast. The target, when it came, would be moving quickly on

horseback, and to be accurate from two hundred metres, he had to squeeze the trigger at the

half-way point of each heartbeat. This avoided the pump of the heart impacting the barrel and

sending the round a few inches away from his target area, turning a sure fatal wound into a

minor injury. In this part of the world there was always gangrene to provide compensation,

but then his kill would never be confirmed, and Ota was an ambitious guy.

He heard the target party before he saw it, their thundering hooves audible at least a

minute before the dust cloud became visible further up the pass. He settled into the prone

position, ensuring his sling was supporting the weight of the rifle without any of his left arm

muscles interfering with the rifle’s stability. His custom-made Czech Steyr rifle poked

through a gap between two rocks, and he had to make sure he had a horizontal allowance for

movement between the rocks of at least a metre, ensuring he could move with the target and

pull the trigger before his barrel would touch the rock on his left-hand side. If any of his

barrel or stock glanced the solid ground either side of his aiming arc, his stability would be

compromised.

He had a brief look over his right shoulder and checked his alarm line was secure. If

anyone should approach from behind he would be forewarned, and have the few valuable


seconds he required to make an effective escape. The line was secure, and his well-mapped

exit path was readily accessible. He turned back and gently pressed his face down onto the

leather-covered cheek-piece, the removable unit made over twenty years ago by his father

when he was just eleven years old. The leather was battered and worn, and had lost its animal

smell well over a decade previously. But it gave him a familiar sense of safety, the thirty-one-

year-old soldier’s comfort blanket.

He closed his eyes and breathed slowly. He concentrated on relaxing his shoulders,

his back and all the way down to his feet, a deep breath escaping for every major muscle

group being loosened. Then he imagined his body moulding into the earth. The whole process

took around thirty seconds. So engrained to his technique was his pre-shot routine that he

knew when he opened his eyes to look down his sights he would already be aiming directly at

his target; he could execute this shot blindfolded.

The leading horse came into his sightline and he searched for the markings of his

target: the large red holdall that would be draped over the saddle of one of the six horses. He

was looking for Uzuri Ali Jalali, leader of the Social Tribal Council for the province and

Chief of Operations for Al-Qaeda for the provincial capital of Sharan. It was the third horse

on the right, he noted, and he had a clear sightline; today was his lucky day.

Ota breathed a final time, holding his breath subconsciously at the end of his

exhalation. He was ready. Thirty more seconds and he would be out of there, mission

accomplished. A quick trek twelve kilometres north and he would be picked up bang on time

by the evacuation chopper scheduled for twenty-two hundred hours. His right index finger

quickly took up the first stage of the trigger, and began to gently apply pressure to the shot

release point. The barrel was steady; he was at one with the rifle.


A light reflected a few millimetres above his rear sight from the opposing side of the

hill, but he didn’t notice, so completely engulfed was he in the moment and consumed with

making the shot. A muzzle flashed just fifty metres away; it was impossible to miss a static

target at such short range, and Ota’s rear sight shattered. The bullet crashed through the

lightweight aluminium aperture, through the fragile mass of his eyeball, and into the cavity

beyond. The exhalation of twenty seconds before did indeed turn out to be his last.

Seven thousand miles away in Southern California, the ’67 Impala raced down Sepulveda. It

cut up a Chrysler 300 in the nearside lane and the occupants, an elderly married couple,

shook their heads and commented to each other on the youth of today always being in a rush

to go nowhere at all.

Inside the Impala, the pretty blonde in the passenger seat was bouncing her head

wildly to the heavy rhythm of Motley Crue’s Dr. Feelgood. The driver slapped the palms of

his hands against the wheel with each drumbeat, and sang along in a mock falsetto. For both

of the occupants the cocaine lines taken off the dashboard in the 7-Eleven parking lot were

beginning to take over from the mollifying effects of the bourbon bottle clinking around the

back seat floor well.

It was two o’clock in the afternoon, so the road past LAX was still relatively empty

and gave the driver a clear run south to Coronado for the weekend. The blonde had

mentioned something to Tomas the night before about worshipping Marilyn Monroe, so he’d

figured taking her to see the Some Like it Hot tree would help him seal the deal. Not that he

needed to follow through with it, just expressing his knowledge of the film had contributed

pretty well to the fact that today he needed the cocaine lines to stay awake for the trip. He


liked this one, he admitted to himself, she was a true Californian girl, and not so stuck up that

she cared whether he was making six figures or not. He hadn’t mentioned he had a small

fortune sitting in his family fund.

The girl had started to move her hand up his thigh towards his crotch. He could see a

few fun weeks ahead of him; maybe he could be her JFK he thought, and he laughed aloud.

She asked, ‘You like it, honey?’

‘Hell yeah, but I’m looking forward to the main course.’

She moved her upper body across and down past the steering wheel, and he stared at

the curve of her lower back. He felt a stirring as her T-shirt rode up and the gap between her

jeans and her body exposed the angel tattoo, and the top of her G-string. She unbuttoned his

jean fly and he closed his eyes, he really loved some of these American girls.

Just fifty metres behind, the elderly couple in the Chrysler were watching the

increasingly erratic behaviour of the classic car with alarm. It was clear the driver had not

seen the pickup powering behind them, the same one that had nearly driven them off the road

just a few seconds earlier.

‘Something’s going to happen here,’ said the man, apprehensively.

‘Slow down, dear, I don’t want us involved in this.’

‘I need to warn them, honey,’ her husband said, putting his foot down and pressing

the horn.

‘Please don’t.’ She put her hand on his forearm to calm him down.


They watched as the Impala continued its wayward journey. The pickup appeared to

target the classic car and took a beeline across the lanes to close right in behind. The larger

vehicle accelerated hard and smashed into the rear left side of the Impala. The result was

catastrophic. The car began to fishtail wildly and when the rear left tyre exploded, the driver

panicked and hit the brakes, hoping to correct the trajectory that forced the car into a ninety-

degree right turn. The Impala slammed head-on into the solid concrete wall protecting the

side of the road with hardly any reduction in speed. The momentum took the car off the

ground, tripping the whole machine over the four-foot wall so it landed flat on its roof,

crushing the occupants stone dead, and leaving the classic car in ruins.

The elderly woman in the Chrysler took her hand from her husband’s arm and slowly,

deliberately covered her eyes.


TWO

When Lieutenant Troy Masters arrived at the scene, there was already a significant gathering

of governmental departments. Traffic cops were closing down the road, Forensics had begun

studying the impact zone, fire attendants were cutting apart the remains of the Impala, while a

pair of ambulances with the staff waited patiently for their turn, and a small group of

witnesses rubbernecked contentedly. A significant tailback had delayed Troy’s arrival, but

the nature of the incident seemed to be keeping tempers at bay, even in the SoCal heat.

Troy walked straight over to his Chief, Frank Johnson, and from the look on the

Chief’s face, he wasn’t too happy to see him.

‘So what’s going on, Chief?’ said Troy.

‘Seems like a pair of hoodlums high on coke and juice decided to play Dean and Sam. They

just chose the wrong goddamn county, and the wrong goddamn day to do it on. Hell, it’s

going to take ages to get this road open again, and to do that to such a beautiful car.’

‘Dean and Sam, sir?’

‘Yeah, Supernatural, you know, the TV show? Wife loves it, they fight demons and

use a black ’67 Impala just like this one. The car is the star of the show really, except Dean

and Sam are the heroes so they know how to darn well drive it, and if demons can’t get them

then road kill sure ain’t gonna.’

Troy shook his head; he’d quite like the spare time to be able to watch a regular TV

show. ‘Can’t say I’ve seen it, Chief.’


‘Anyway, do me a favour and record those oldies’ statements, will you? They’re

pretty shook up, saying it wasn’t an accident.’ He nodded to the shoulder of the road and an

elderly couple talking to an ambulance crew.

‘And get it filed by the end of the day. I want this one closed off and quick, I need to

get that road open or I’ll have the Governor kicking us for ruining his weekend as no one will

be spending money when the busiest road in the county is closed.’

The Chief slapped him on the shoulder as if to clear himself of any responsibility, and

walked off to his car; within two minutes of Troy’s arrival, he’d left the scene.

Troy stood for a moment and frowned, it was the first weekend in six that he’d had

free, and he could see his plans to have his daughter Sarah for the weekend falling rapidly

apart. He’d even booked a hotel at Beverley Hills for the weekend for far too much money,

but prepaid to get the best rate. He didn’t want his nine-year-old girl, who lived in Manhattan

Beach with Mommy, coming and staying in his crappy digs round El Segundo. Those two

miles between the exclusive beach houses of Tiger Woods and co and the concrete mass

around LAX made a hell of a difference. Not that Troy cared about materialistic stuff, but he

didn’t want Sarah to think he was the sort of loser that Jane had probably implied in the

indoctrination lectures she’d surely been giving since the separation six weeks ago.

He always thought Manhattan Beach was a stretch, but that’s where he’d lived until

the split; not on his cop salary but Jane was now an architect, and doing pretty well designing

hotels for the Starwood group. It had been a good life, a happy life, but he was also too good

at his job, being a detective for the LAPD, and being good at his job meant long hours, and

Jane had finally decided to teach him a lesson. A $500-a-month concrete bedsit overlooking


LAX was the lesson he was currently learning, and losing this weekend would surely

demonstrate to Jane that he was a remedial student.

At least the sun was shining, he thought. He tightened his tie from below the second

button and started across to the elderly couple. Troy understood the empathy he needed in

these situations. Without any formal training, he seemed capable of talking on a level with

people from most walks of life, but he did have a cynical streak if people riled him. The

couple were engaged in a heated conversation with the ambulance crew, at least the woman

was. The man was standing back a little, while his wife remonstrated with the crew.

Troy put on a gentle smile, lifted his eyebrows a little, and walked between the

ambulance crew and the woman, with his hands open. He caught the eye of the medic with a

quick glance as if to say ‘I’ve got this.’

‘Good afternoon, I’m Lieutenant Troy Masters with the LAPD. I’m sorry you had to

witness such a tragedy. How are you holding up?’

The woman was clearly irritated, and jumped straight in. ‘It wasn’t an accident, that

truck just ran them off the road.’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs...?’

‘Joseph. It was murder. They were driving all over the place, and were probably

drunk, but it was sure as day intentional.’ The woman’s hands were air clapping in front of

Troy’s face.

Mr Joseph backed up his wife. ‘Lieutenant Masters, we may be old, but we saw what

we saw. That pickup was absolutely determined to do mischief to that car; it changed lanes


deliberately to force the car off the road. It had to be like that because the truck had to change

its line repeatedly to be able to hit it. No question.’

Troy hadn’t expected this; his thoughts of the weekend were clearly pushed away

now, as his attention was diverted.

‘OK, Mr and Mrs Joseph, we’ll make sure that the forensics are collected properly to

ensure we investigate this fully. Did you happen to get the license plate of the pickup?’

The husband took over proudly. ‘Yes, I did, more difficult not to get it when it was

coming past us at such a rate of knots and so big. It blocked out my vision while I was trying

to stay on the road.’ He gave Troy the plate number.

‘Thanks, I think we can get you guys out of here.’

Troy called for one of the junior officers to join them. ‘Can you take the Josephs out

of here please, give them an escort home, and arrange a time with them for a full statement in

the next twenty-four hours; they don’t need to come into the precinct.’ With that, he shook

their hands and moved over to the shattered Impala.

The car itself was now surrounded by a temporary canvas tent to keep the ugly scene

away from the crowd that had gathered from the tailback behind the cordon. Troy stepped

inside and the car had been turned back over, with the whole topside having been cut off by

the fire crew. The bodies were lying on stretchers next to the car ready to be bagged up.

Troy took a look; it wasn’t pretty. The male’s body had the jeans pulled down to the

knees and the lower half of the legs were broken off and hung limp inside. The female was at

least intact but the severe trauma she’d suffered didn’t make her too recognisable, with one

side of her face still lingering on the steering wheel that had been placed next to the bodies.


‘Jesus...’ Troy breathed. He looked across to one of his colleagues. ‘Do we know who

they are?’

The young officer, clearly shaken, his face pale, said, ‘Yes, sir, ID on both bodies.

She’s Ellie Hatwood, twenty-three and DL says she lives in Laguna. He’s Tomas Hazdra,

twenty-eight and carrying his passport. It’s Czech with a green card. Address isn’t listed in

the passport. He’s also got a letter on him; but it’s in foreign, I can’t make anything out.’ The

young cop was obviously struggling; the words needed a few gulps to get out.

‘OK son, you look like you need some air. Get down to the station and run this license

plate for me, will you? Call me as soon as you get anything,’ Troy passed him a note with the

license plate of the pickup and gave him a placating nod, then called over to the Forensic

team. ‘Anything?’

‘They were hit all right,’ said a young female forensic investigator. ‘There are paint

marks from the pickup, and plenty of glass in the impact zone. The fender of the Impala went

through the bull grille and must have smashed up the front of the truck. This happened at

pace, Lieutenant, and the early signs show that the truck could only have been accelerating.’

Troy frowned for the third time today, collected the IDs and the letter, and headed

back to the station.

Troy ran the names through his database. Ellie came from a regular family down near Laguna

Beach; no convictions, just a couple of warnings for picking up soft drugs at bars. He’d need

to put a call in to the parents, not a pleasant thing to do, but he’d done it before. Tomas

Hazdra was a Czech national, he had been in the US for six years, and had a drunk and

disorderly conviction but nothing else of note. There were no next of kin listed in the USA


but a note on his green card record that his father was a politician in the Czech Government.

He’d either have to call the Czech embassy over here, or get a message to the US Embassy

over there. He wasn’t sure how these things worked.

He leaned back from the computer and put his hands on his head. Troy was thirty-

eight years old and pretty healthy from using the precinct’s gym every morning before work.

He’d been in Law Enforcement for the past ten years, since the incident in the Gulf. He was

the most successful detective in the department, but because of his history and his abhorrence

of butt-kissing, he was never going to get on the fast track. Up until now it hadn’t bothered

him; the move to LA had given him the chance for a family life, one that hadn’t been possible

in the early days. Shame really, he thought; Jane was much better at climbing the career

ladder than him, maybe he should have listened more when she had tried to give him advice.

He enjoyed the work though, different challenges every day, and he got immense satisfaction

when he saw a case through to the end.

He toyed with the letter; it was a handwritten note on what felt like good quality

paper. He looked to see who it was from, but it was just signed ‘P.’ Could be anything, he

thought, and as he dropped it onto his keyboard his cell phone rang.

‘This is Troy,’ he answered with an upward inflection.

‘This is Officer Barnes, you asked me to run the license plate for you.’

‘Go on,’ said Troy.

‘Well, it’s a rental, sir, from a low-key Vietnamese-run shop down next to the Westin

Hotel at LAX. I’ve spoken to the owner and he says it was rented by two foreign guys, maybe

Russian or something. The license provided stated the name Kafka.’


‘Kafka. You’re joking, right?’

‘Er...no, sir.’ The youngster was lost. ‘Anyway, the truck’s been picked up further

down Sepulveda, dumped in a lot outside the Capstone mall; I’ve asked forensics to take a

look.’

‘Good job. Anything else?’

‘No, sir.’

‘OK, thanks, keep me updated on the forensics and stay near the phone, will you,

Barnes? I might need you,’ said Troy.

Troy knew full well who Franz Kafka was, an Austro-Hungarian novelist, but he

didn’t know how popular the name might be in Europe. It could be rare, or there could be

thousands, but it was enough to start the alarm bells ringing in his head. He frowned again,

and remembered the note that the male was a politician’s son, and opened up an internet

browser session.

Within ten minutes he was on the phone to his Chief, concern and excitement forcing

the issue of disturbing the man while he was at a gala reception. Tomas Hazdra was one of

four siblings, children of a Czech Republic Government Minister. Of the remaining siblings,

Otakar Hazdra, thirty-one, was killed in action while serving for NATO forces in Afghanistan

a week earlier. Milena Hazdrova, twenty-one, had been murdered with another female in

Prague seventy-two hours ago. That left Lenka Hazdrova, twenty-five, last seen in London

over a week ago, her present whereabouts unknown. The father; Petr Hazdra, was to be the

new European Union President within a month.

‘Chief,’ he said into the phone, ‘we need to find that sister.’


Documents

MasterShot by Craig Miles_2013