Global Strike

by Chris Ryan

  Chris Ryan was born near Newcastle in 1961. He joined the SAS in 1984. During his ten years there he was involved in overt and covert operations and was also sniper team commander of the anti-terrorist team. During the Gulf War, Chris Ryan was the only member of an eight-man unit to escape from Iraq, where three colleagues were killed and four captured. It was the longest escape and evasion in the history of the SAS. For this he was awarded the Military Medal. For his last two years he selected and trained potential recruits for the SAS.

  He wrote about his experiences in the bestseller The One That Got Away, which was adapted for the screen, and since then has written three other works of non-fiction, fifteen bestselling novels and a series of children’s books. He has also created a number one bestselling series of ebooks, Chris Ryan Extreme. He lectures in business motivation and security, and is a consultant for a security organisation.

  Also by Chris Ryan

  Non-fiction

  The One That Got Away

  Chris Ryan’s SAS Fitness Book

  Chris Ryan’s Ultimate Survival Guide

  Fight to Win

  Safe

  Fiction

  Stand By, Stand By

  Zero Option

  The Kremlin Device

  Tenth Man Down

  Hit List

  The Watchman

  Land of Fire

  Greed

  The Increment

  Blackout

  Ultimate Weapon

  Strike Back

  Firefight

  Who Dares Wins

  The Kill Zone

  Killing for the Company

  Osama

  In the Danny Black Series

  Masters of War

  Hunter Killer

  Hellfire

  Bad Soldier

  Warlord

  In the Strikeback Series

  Deathlist

  Shadow Kill

  Chris Ryan Extreme

  Hard Target

  Night Strike

  Most Wanted

  Silent Kill

  Global Strike

  Chris Ryan

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Coronet

  An imprint of Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © Chris Ryan 2018

  The right of Chris Ryan to be identified as the Author of the

  Work has been asserted by him in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any

  means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be

  otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that

  in which it is published and without a similar condition being

  imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance

  to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 444 78380 3

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.hodder.co.uk

  Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  ONE

  ‘I need your help.’

  Terence Cooper sat bolt upright in his office on the third floor of the British embassy in Washington DC and gripped the phone hard. He recognised the voice on the other end of the line instantly. They’d spent more than twenty years working together at MI6, often operating on the same teams in the same dark, hostile corners of the earth.

  A long time ago now, Cooper thought.

  ‘Charles?’ he almost-whispered. ‘Is that you? What the—’

  ‘There’s no time,’ Charles Street interrupted. ‘Listen, I think I’ve found something. Something big.’

  Cooper hesitated. A hundred questions pinballed around inside his head. He wondered what Street had been doing for the past six years. Where he lived now. If he’d ever remarried. Then he detected the note of anxiety in his friend’s voice and decided the small talk could wait.

  ‘How big, exactly?’ he asked.

  ‘On a scale of one to ten? Nuclear.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be calling you if I wasn’t.’ Street paused for a beat. ‘I need your help, Terry.’

  ‘Are you in trouble?’

  ‘No,’ Street replied. ‘Not yet. But this thing is too big to keep to myself. I need another pair of eyes on it, and I don’t know who else to turn to. You’re still in the loop at Vauxhall. I need your advice.’

  Cooper shifted his considerable weight in his executive leather chair. ‘And I presume that whatever it is you’ve discovered, you don’t wish to discuss it over the phone.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then we should meet. When are you next in town, old boy?’

  ‘I’m here now,’ Street said. ‘My flight got in last night.’

  ‘You should have told me.’

  ‘I am. What are you up to now?’

  ‘Nothing that can’t be shifted. Not for an old friend.’

  ‘I’ll be there in thirty minutes,’ Street said.

  Twenty-eight minutes later, Charles Street stepped out of the rented Toyota Corolla into the oppressive heat of DC in July. He snatched up the brown A4 envelope lying on the passenger seat, hit the lock button on the key fob and made his way up Observatory Circle. A hundred metres away stood the main security gatehouse, situated on the eastern side of the grounds of the British embassy. The air was so hot and heavy he felt like he was wading through a swamp. DC in the summer, thought Street.

  The damn weather.

  A one-lane driveway led down past the gatehouse into the embassy parking lot. The driveway was reinforced with a red-and-white arm barrier and a flashing traffic light and a load of stop signs. Beyond it there was an automatic road blocker mounted on a hydraulic platform, designed to stop vehicles dead in their tracks. Street approached the sentry hut and handed over his passport to the duty officer inside. The guy gave him an inquiring look and made a big show of studying his ID, as if he’d just received special intelligence that Isis had gone on a recruitment drive with greying, fifty-something white men wearing cheap suits. He checked Street’s name against something on his computer screen. A list of approved visitors, Street guessed. Then the guard handed back his pas
sport and waved him through with a grunt.

  The chancery building loomed directly in front of Street, a seven-floor rectangular slab of concrete and glass that looked like the regional office of a big accountancy firm. An architectural afterthought. Most passing tourists associated the British embassy with the Ambassador’s Residence, the Georgian pad overlooking Massachusetts Avenue, but Street knew the real action went on deep inside the drab chancery situated to the north-west. Within those walls dozens of embassy staff were hard at work, keeping tabs on assets, monitoring safe houses and feeding int back to the brains trust at MI6. Street knew all this, because he’d once worked in that same building.

  Back when I still had a career to speak of.

  Before everything turned to shit.

  He’d joined Six straight from university and spent his early years in DC as an analyst before being assigned to Moscow. There Street had risen steadily through the ranks, eventually becoming head of the Russia Desk in the mid-1990s. He‘d been the rising star at Vauxhall then, destined to one day become Chief of MI6. Then the roof crashed in on his world.

  Two agents had been found dead in a Moscow backstreet after their cover was blown. An internal investigation was launched and they’d taken a long hard look at Street. He’d been shagging one of his local assets at the time, and although they could never prove anything there were rumours that the asset had been the source of the leak. Rumours that had been strong enough to derail Street’s career. Six months later, he found himself out of a job. He’d spent the years since in the wilderness, doing irregular contract work for private security firms, pulling together reports from his dwindling pool of Russian contacts. Now hardly anyone bothered to return his calls. Charles Street, ex-MI6 high-flier, was yesterday’s man.

  He beat a path towards the entrance, passed a decorative red telephone box and stepped into the cryogenic cool of the reception. The décor inside the embassy was Late-Nineties Call Centre. Everything was bland and functional and corporate. The walls were battleship grey. So was the floor. The furniture was blocky and seemed to come exclusively in shades of beige.

  Street gave the receptionist his name and got a lanyard with a visitor’s tag in return. A skinny guy with a man-bun swiped him through the barrier and they rode the lift to the third floor. Man Bun led him down several identical-looking corridors, all with the same worn carpet and the same anaemic ceiling-panel lights.

  They arrived outside a grey office door with stippled glass panelling to the left and a plain name plate fixed above the chrome handle.

  TERENCE J. COOPER, CULTURAL ATTACHÉ, the plate read.

  Man Bun nodded and left.

  Street stopped outside and made himself presentable. Not easy, when you look like shit. He adjusted his tie, fiddled with his collar and brushed off a speck of dirt from his jacket lapel. Then he rapped his knuckles twice on the door. There was a moment’s silence before a voice called out from the other side.

  ‘Come in.’

  Street took a deep breath and stepped into the office of the friend he hadn’t seen in six years.

  The room was just as drab as the rest of the building. A plain white desk occupied the middle of the floor space, with a metal bookshelf fitted to the wall on the right. Window to the left, offering a view of the leafy grounds of the US Naval Observatory. There was a faded Union Jack flag hanging from a pole next to the window. The office looked like it belonged to a small-town solicitor, rather than the senior agent for MI6 in the US.

  There were the usual framed family pictures on the desk. Street noticed one of Cooper with his wife and two teenage boys, posing in front of the Grand Canyon. Next to the family snap, an old photo caught his eye. A faded shot of Street and Cooper on a fishing trip, twenty years earlier. They were standing beside a lake on a bright summer’s day, Cooper looking on and smiling while Street held up his prize catch. Street was pleasantly surprised, and touched, that his old friend had not only hung on to the photograph, but kept it on display.

  Terry Cooper stood up from his executive chair and spread his arms in a greeting. The smile on his lined face was big and warm and genuine. There was no awkward hesitation between the two of them. No preamble. They just moved towards each other, met in front of the desk and hugged fiercely. Then Cooper took a step back from his friend.

  ‘Charles.’

  ‘Terry.’

  ‘Christ, old boy. How long has it been now?’

  ‘Too long.’

  Cooper nodded. ‘You look well.’

  Which was a lie, Street knew. He hadn’t looked any kind of good in a long time. Not since he’d left the security services, more than a decade ago. His suit was so shiny it looked like it had been stitched together from a bunch of old bin liners. His brown leather brogues were badly scuffed. His thinning brown hair had been worked into the world’s lamest combover. His appearance was that of a guy on the downward slope of his life, trying to maintain what little dignity he had left.

  This is what happens when Vauxhall decides to get rid of you, Street thought to himself bitterly. Twenty-two years at MI6, and he had nothing to show for it except a crap pension and a rundown flat on the edge of Willesden Green.

  I might as well have a sign around my neck that says ‘Desperate ex-spy’.

  One glance at Cooper told Street that his old colleague had gone in the other direction. Up, not down. His suit looked as if it had been tailor-made on Savile Row. His shoes had been polished to within an inch of their lives. His grey hair was stylishly ruffled and his chiselled jaw was so square you could have cut through timber with it. His eyes had a steely glint about them. Cooper looked like the playboy son of an ageing billionaire, readying himself to take over the family business.

  None of which surprised Street. While he’d been busy wrecking his career by screwing around with Russian assets, Cooper had kept his nose clean. He wasn’t the most talented agent at Vauxhall, but he’d been the perfect fit for the security services’ new sleek, corporate image. Cooper had played it straight, kept his head down and toed the party line. Eighteen months ago, he’d been rewarded with a promotion to Head of MI6 ops in the US, working under diplomatic cover at the embassy. Now there was even talk of him one day taking over as the new Chief.

  That’s why Cooper is wearing a thousand-dollar suit, and you’re dressed like an office junior, thought Street. Because he played by the rules, while you pissed all over them.

  Cooper chucked a stick of nicotine gum into his mouth and gestured to the utilitarian chair facing his desk.

  ‘Please, Charles. Have a seat. Water? Green tea? I’d offer you something stronger, but I’m off the drink these days. One needs to keep a sharp mind in this job,’ he said with an ironic grin.

  Street smiled at the last comment. A private joke. Something their old boss at Vauxhall used to say, inevitably prompting an eye-roll from Cooper or one of the other young officers.

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Street. ‘How’s the family?’

  ‘Good, good,’ Cooper replied busily. ‘Stephen’s starting university next month, would you believe. Durham.’

  ‘They grow up quick.’

  ‘They do. Anna says hello, by the way. You’ll have to come around some time for dinner.’

  ‘I’d like that, very much.’

  Street sat down opposite his old friend. He noticed several framed pictures arranged on the wall behind the desk. Most of them were newspaper clippings that showed Cooper pressing the flesh with various dignitaries: a former US president, the wife of the British prime minister, an ageing Indian tycoon. They told the same story. A guy in the prime of his life, achieving all of his goals. Looking forwards, not back.

  Street made himself comfortable and laid the envelope square across his lap. Cooper glanced at it before looking up at the former agent. There was a look of concern in his eyes, Street noticed. As if he was worried about something.

  Or maybe I just look worse than I thought.

  ‘You should have told me you were
coming to town,’ Cooper said. ‘If I’d known, I would’ve cleared my desk. We could have even found time for a spot of fishing, you know.’

  Street smiled weakly. ‘You’re still sore about that monster catfish I caught, I see.’

  Cooper shook his head. ‘Eighty-nine pounds. How you ever managed to reel that thing in, I’ll never know.’

  ‘I got lucky. That’s all.’

  ‘No such thing. You were better at fishing than me, Charles. Always were.’

  I’m not so lucky now, thought Street.

  ‘I should be done here at around six-ish,’ Cooper went on, checking his smartwatch. ‘We can catch up properly then, old boy. There’s a new rooftop bar near Dupont Circle that serves up a bloody good Old-Fashioned.’

  ‘Sounds great,’ Street said, anxious at the thought of getting in a few rounds of overpriced cocktails.

  ‘But you didn’t come here just to swap old fishing stories, did you?’ Cooper said, pointing with his eyeballs at the envelope resting on Street’s lap.

  Street nodded. ‘I’ll get right to it. I’ve been freelancing for a small firm here in DC, pulling together briefings on our Russian friends. Varangian Risk Assessment.’

  ‘I’ve heard of them. A private security firm over in Alexandria. Small, but respectable.’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  Cooper frowned. ‘When did this happen?’

  ‘A couple of months ago.’

  ‘You mean to say, you’ve been in town all this time?’

  Street shook his head. ‘Just for a couple of briefing sessions. A day or two, here and there. I would’ve called, but it was back-to-back meetings.’

  And I was too ashamed to meet up. To let one of my closest chums see how far I’d fallen.

  ‘I understand.’ Cooper smiled kindly. ‘Well, I’m just glad to hear you’ve found work. After everything that happened.’

  Street merely shrugged. ‘It pays the bills.’

  Barely, he thought.

  ‘What sort of work have they got you doing?’

  ‘Monthly reports on the state of the Russian security services. The FSB, the GRU, the foreign intelligence services. All the usual suspects.’