by Chris Ryan
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
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
Masters of War
Hunter Killer
Hellfire
Chris Ryan Extreme
Hard Target
Night Strike
Most Wanted
Silent Kill
In the Alpha Force Series
Survival
Rat-Catcher
Desert Pursuit
Hostage
Red Centre
Hunted
Blood Money
Fault Line
Black Gold
Untouchable
In the Code Red Series
Flash Flood
Wildfire
Outbreak
Vortex
Twister
Battleground
In the Agent 21 Series
Agent 21
Reloaded
Codebreaker
The Wire
Deadfall
Under Cover
Deathlist
Chris Ryan
www.hodder.co.uk
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Coronet
An imprint of Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © Chris Ryan 2016
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 78355 1
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
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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
CHRIS RYAN
ONE
Brecon Beacons, Wales.
Friday 8 January, 1999.
0620 hours
The two ramblers hurried towards the peak.
The Brit was the bigger of the two guys. He was six-three and tanned, and built like a Russian tank. The other guy was tall and thin, with a long, narrow face and a bushy goatee. Like a pencil tip turned upside down. Both guys were decked out in matching blue-and-green Gore-Tex jackets and Craghoppers waterproof trousers and Brasher leather hiking boots, and both carried brightly-coloured Berghaus daysacks. If anyone saw them tabbing up the side of the mountain, they would simply assume the two men were hitting the slopes early to beat the crowd. No one would suspect them of a thing.
Not until it was too late.
The ramblers moved at a decent pace. Neither of them spoke. They were blowing hard under their layers, their lungs burning and their leg muscles aching from the steep climb. They had been going at a furious pace when they’d set off fifty-five minutes ago and now they were starting to flag. But they didn’t stop to rest. They were getting close now. Two hundred and fifty metres away stood their target: the top of Pen y Fan.
From a distance the peak resembled a giant anvil. It rose out of the granite landscape like a clenched fist, dark and grim and foreboding. The peak was so flat it could have doubled as a bowling green. Cobwebbed mist clung to the tufts of grass and shattered rock, and there was a light dusting of snow across the peak like icing sugar sprinkled on a birthday cake.
The bigger of the two men blinked sweat out of his eyes and glanced around the steep and rugged slopes. It was another dark and nasty morning in south Wales. A bitingly cold wind was lashing across the Fan, and the air was so dank you practically had to drink the stuff. The rambler smiled. Nobody in sight. They had the mountain to themselves.
Perfect.
He turned and continued up the sandstone trail leading to the peak, moving ahead of his companion. His heart was beating wildly inside his chest, the blood pounding in his veins. There was a spring in his step now. He forgot all about the deep burn in his muscles and the painful stitch running down his side. His skin tingled with anticipation. They were almost there. Just a little further to go now.
Two hundred metres to go.
A hundred and fifty.
A hundred.
TWO
0621 hours.
‘Just our fucking luck, Vic.’
Victor Vowden glanced up from the Clansman PRC-320 radio set he was working on and looked at his mucker. Gary Skimm sat next to the tent, his features worked into a mean scowl as he looked out across the top of Pen y Fan. The wind tugged at the two soldiers’ army smocks, stabbing them in the face. Vowden could hardly hear his mate. The wind was howling like a room full of mad women, twisting round the gullies and hitting the grass, echoing across the peak. It was an eerie noise, and Vowden could understand why some people got a bit superstitious up on the Fan.
‘What’s that, mate?’ Vowden said, pretending to give a shit.
‘This, Vic.’ Skimm waved an arm across the desolate peak. ‘RV duty. Fucking typical. Six hours of freezing our bollocks off while the other lads have all the fun.’ He shook his head angrily and spat on the ground. ‘It doesn’t get much more shit than this.’
Vowden gritted his teeth and looked away. The two SAS operators were attached to the Regiment Training Wing, a unit of veteran Blades who ran Selection. SAS Selection was the world’s toughest Special Forces recruitment programme. It ran twice a year and lasted for several months, pushing every soldier to the absolute limits of his physical and mental endurance. Of the two hundred or so students who applied to join the Regiment, only a handful would earn the right to wear the famous winged dagger. It was the job of the men on the Training
Wing to identify and train up those few special warriors.
Vowden and Skimm had been sent up to the top of the Fan ahead of the day’s selection course. A little over an hour from now, the remaining green army students would be tackling the Fan Dance, a gruelling twenty-four kilometre tab up and down the mountains. It was four hours of sheer hell, with each student having to carry a forty-five pound Bergen and a belt kit, and a blank-firing L1A1 SLR rifle. Every course up to this point had been fairly easy, but today was when the hard work really began. By the end of the day, perhaps half the students would find themselves RTU’d, broken and blistered and physically shattered beyond belief.
Two guys from the Training Wing were required to man an RV at the midway point on the course, on top of Pen y Fan. Vowden and Skimm had arrived fifteen minutes earlier to set up the RV. It was fairly basic. There was a tent and a couple of sleeping bags for keeping warm, and extra supplies of water and a first-aid kit in case any of the students got floppy during the exercise. Once they had the comms link set up, Vowden and Skimm would radio down to the other instructors at the starting point at the bottom of the Fan and confirm that the RV was set up and ready to go. Then one of the instructors would get on the blower to Hereford and inform the Regiment HQ that they were about to release the students. Then the Fan Dance would begin.
‘Anything’s got to be better than this crap, Vic,’ Skimm went on. ‘Tell you what. I’d rather pull range duty than freeze my arse off up here.’
You’d rather be down the boozer getting pissed on the Stella, thought Vowden. He glared at his mucker. ‘How about you get a brew on the go? It’s colder than an eskimo’s tits up here today.’
Skimm nodded and fired up the portable hexi stove, muttering under his breath. Vowden turned away, clenching his jaws in anger. Skimm had a well-earned reputation in the Regiment as a bluffing twat. The guy was constantly faking injuries to avoid taking the students on the big runs. He’d claim to have pulled a hammy or done his ankle in, saying that he couldn’t perform and the CO would have no choice but to let him sit on an RV while the rest of the lads worked up a sweat.
Now I’m stuck up here for the next six hours with this moaning prick, thought Vowden. He wondered how this day could get any worse.
Then he looked up and saw the ramblers dissolving from the mist.
Vowden saw them approach from the edge of the peak, fifty metres away. He counted two of them. They were wearing head-to-toe Gore-Tex, and the pair of them had more layers than an onion. One of the guys was huge. He was maybe the biggest guy Vowden had ever seen. His neck was wide as a lampshade. His legs were like a pair of marble columns and his fingers were the size of Coke cans. A moment later, the second rambler swept into view. He was tall and thin with a goatee, and he was gasping for breath as he staggered the last few paces to the peak. The ramblers both celebrated as they hit the top of the Fan, punching their fists in the air as if they were doing their best Rocky Balboa impressions. Skimm shook his head and laughed.
‘Look at these fucking jokers, Vic. Anyone would think they’ve just climbed Mount Everest.’
Vowden frowned at the ramblers. ‘As long as Hilary and his Sherpa leave us alone,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t give a toss what they think.’
Lampshade and Goatee caught their breath then trudged over to the cairn in the north-east corner of the peak. There was a small man-made pile of rocks with a National Trust marker struck on top denoting the height, 886m above sea level. The highest point in southern Britain. Vowden watched the ramblers out of the corner of his eye. Figured they were going to do what everybody did when they climbed the Fan. Pose for photographs next to the marker with the view behind them, maybe have a brew. On a clear summer’s day you could see as far as the Bristol Channel to the south and Carmarthen Bay to the west. But on a foggy morning like today, the view was crap. Grey cloud and mist in every bloody direction. The ramblers had picked a bad day for a tab up the Fan.
Then Lampshade stopped in his tracks and glanced slowly around the peak, as if checking that the coast was clear. He noticed the two instructors and marched over to them, grinning.
‘Morning, fellas,’ Lampshade said in a gravelly accent. Cockney, thought Vowden. Or maybe Essex. ‘Nice day for a stroll on the Fan, eh?’
Vowden gritted his teeth. Here we fucking go, he thought. There were always one or two civvies who tried chatting to the instructors and students on Selection. That was one of the problems with training in the Brecons. It was public land. Anyone could use the trails. Another problem was the firearms. Or lack of them. None of the instructors carried a weapon on Selection, and the students were only equipped with blank-firing rifles. Too much hassle, the top brass had said. Vowden disagreed. It’d only take one nutter looking to make a name for himself and the whole Regiment could be in trouble. He looked away from the rambler and fiddled with the Clansman, pretending not to have heard him.
‘What’s going on here, then?’ Lampshade asked, stepping closer to the instructors. ‘Some sort of secret SAS training, is it?’
Vowden snapped. He turned back to Lampshade and looked him hard in the eye. ‘Look, mate. This is an army training exercise. So mind your own fucking business. Got it?’
Lampshade flashed his palms. ‘Easy, fella. We don’t want any trouble. We’re just here to have a celebratory brew. We’ll be on our way soon enough.’ He turned to Goatee and winked at him. ‘Isn’t that right?’
Goatee grinned and nodded. He took off his beanie hat and wiped his forehead. The sweat was steaming off the guy’s head. Literally.
‘Now,’ said Lampshade. ‘How about that brew?’ Goatee smiled back. Said nothing. Replaced his beanie hat. As he took his hand away Vowden noticed that the guy had a tattoo inked on the side of his neck. A distinctive red cross with some letters written beneath it in a language Vowden didn’t understand. He wondered about that tattoo as Lampshade and Goatee both dropped to their knees and started rooting around in their daysacks. Then Lampshade shot to his feet and turned towards the instructors, and Vowden didn’t wonder any more.
Lampshade was gripping a semi-automatic in his right hand.
The pistol was a Glock 17. Every Regiment operator was trained in a wide variety of weapons, and Vowden instantly recognised the Glock from its short barrel and polymer design. He’d used the same model dozens of times on ops and down the ranges. And now he was staring at the business end of one.
Vowden froze. So did Skimm. Goatee had also whipped out a Glock. The guy was training it at Skimm’s head at point blank range. The colour drained from the instructor’s face. He looked like the inside of a potato.
‘What the—’
Goatee fired before Skimm could finish the sentence. The pistol barked once and jerked up in his hand. A tongue of flame licked out of the snout and a round slammed into Skimm, punching a hole between his eyes big enough to drop a coin into. Skimm’s head snapped back. Blood sprayed furiously out of the exit wound, flinging shattered bone and grey matter all over the place. Skimm went limp. His eyes rolled into the back of his head. Then he fell away. He was dead before he even hit the ground.
Vowden reacted in an instant. He tried to dive out of the way of the pistol. He was fast. But not fast enough to dodge a bullet. Lampshade depressed the trigger twice. In the next moment, Vowden felt something hot explode inside his chest. Like being hit by a two-ton truck. The second round smashed into his right shoulder, pulverising bone and muscle. Vowden fell back and slumped to the cold, wet ground. He tasted something warm and salty in his mouth. Blood, he realised dimly. A kind of green slime closed in around the edges of his vision. Like a camera lens closing. He could feel the blood oozing steadily out of his chest and spilling across the rocks.
Then the camera lens closed.
The bigger of the two ramblers stood over the two dead Blades for a moment and admired his handiwork. So that was what it felt like to kill an SAS operator, Bill Deeds thought. It was a good feeling, he had to admit. Right up there with
the pump from a good session on the bench press, or deadlifting a new one-rep max. Better, even. Deeds smiled as he turned away from the dead men and nodded at the guy with the goatee. Markovic.
‘Best do something about that,’ he said, nodding at the Clansman.
Markovic nodded back. He didn’t say much. None of the Serbs did. They weren’t really big on conversation. Markovic quickly went to work, trashing the Clansman and ripping out the aerial. At the same time Deeds stuffed the pistols back into their daysacks and scooped up the spent bullet casings. When they were finished he took a final look around the Fan, making sure they hadn’t been seen. Then he turned back to Markovic and nodded.
‘Right,’ said Deeds. ‘Let’s get a fucking move on.’
Five years, Deeds was thinking as he hurried towards the edge of the peak. Five years he’d waited to get revenge over these fuckers. The SAS had ruined his life once. Now they were going to pay. He smiled as he thought of all the proud young British soldiers who were going to die today. He imagined the bomb exploding, ripping them limb from limb, sucking their bodies inside out. He thought of all the heroes of the SAS lying in pools of blood, screaming for their mothers, and he laughed. In less than an hour the Regiment was going to find itself under attack. Deeds and the Serbs had a plan that was going to blow everybody’s mind. And Bill Deeds would finally have his revenge.
He glanced at his watch as he scrabbled back down the side of the mountain.
Fifty-seven minutes to go.
Fifty-six.
Fifty-five.
THREE
0625 hours.
It was the blisters that were going to do for him, Joe Kinsella decided.
I can take the backbreaking tabs through the mountains carrying heavy kit. I can deal with the cold and the hunger, and the constant exhaustion and anxiety. But if I fail Selection, it’s going to be because of these bloody blisters.