Borrowed Time

Borrowed Time
Hugh Miller

Alistair MacLean

When a tip-off is received that militant religious extremists are taking over the peaceful Vale of Kashmir, dealing in drugs and guns to fund their war, two top agents are sent in to investigate. When the mission looks impossible, who do you call? UNACO.The Vale of Kashmir in India, precariously caught between Afghanistan, Pakistan and China, is one of the most serenely beautiful places on earth… and one of the most deadly. When Malcolm Philpott, head of UNACO, the United Nations’ Anti-Crime Organization, receives a tip-off from a local priest that the peace of the valley is being threatened by militant religious extremists and the suspicion of a highly organized drug-trafficking ring, he sends in two of his top agents, Mike Graham and Sabrina Carver, to investigate and question the priest further.But the priest is brutally murdered before they can arrive, and an ex-CIA-trained assassin, turned native, is the principal suspect. Suddenly Mike and Sabrina must undertake the lethal mission of infiltrating the murderous drug convoys and bringing the extremists under control before the volatile situation ignites and fans into an international blood bath.

HUGH MILLER

Alistair MacLean’s UNACO Borrowed Time

HARPER

To Nettie, and to both generations of her kids

Table of Contents

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#litres_trial_promo)

ALISTAIR MACLEAN’S BORROWED TIME (#litres_trial_promo)

By Alistair MacLean (#litres_trial_promo)

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Malcolm Philpott’s attention was fixed on the television screen. He stared, unblinking, as the CNN camera panned across a pocket of hand-to-hand fighting and showed a mercenary sticking a knife in the chest of a Bosnian rebel. Over by the door behind Philpott, Secretary Crane gasped.

‘Brainless carnage,’ he hissed.

They were in the semi-dark of Philpott’s office, watching a video Philpott had switched on a moment before Crane entered. He had come in soundlessly, without knocking. He was known throughout the Secretariat building as Creeper Crane.

‘The footage is sixteen hours old,’ Philpott said. ‘An orchestrated local outburst we’d been expecting.’

‘Where?’

‘South of Banja Luka. The men in grey battle-dress are our people, Task Force Four.’