Chris Ryan
Strike Back
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To my agent Barbar Levy, editor Mark Booth, Charlotte Haycock, Charlotte Bush and all the rest of the team at Century.
PROLOGUE
John Porter folded the telegram into the inside breast pocket of his olive-green combat uniform. He permitted himself a brief smile, then walked swiftly up the grey gunmetal stairs that led up to the deck of HMS Dorset. A stiff breeze was blowing up from the Lebanese coastline, and he could feel it catching his jet-black hair, thrusting it down into the bones of his face.
‘Baby Girl. Born 23.11, 11.9.89. 7lb. Sandy. Love Diana,’ the telegram had read. The words were already stencilled into his mind. My first kid, he thought to himself. Sandy. I can hardly wait to see the smile on her face when she lays eyes on her dad.
All I need to do is try not to bugger things up by getting myself shot in the next few hours.
He walked purposefully towards the rest of the unit. The Dorset had been anchored off the Lebanese coast for three days now, waiting for the spooks to assemble enough info for the mission to kick-off. A British businessman, from one of the arms manufacturers that racked up billions in vital exports every year, had been held in one of the brutal basements of Beirut for the last four months. There was no way the government was willing to negotiate with his captors: they were already armed to the teeth without handing over the sophisticated missile systems they were demanding for Kenneth Bratton’s release. So the government had done what it always did when the going got tough: called on the Regiment to sort out the mess. Their mission was to go in, and bring Bratton out. Preferably, though not necessarily, alive.
‘Congratulations.’
Porter’s eyes swivelled round. Major Chris Pemberton was standing only a couple of feet away. A tall man, with more lines chiselled into his face than was normal for a man in his late forties, he was smiling, but there were still traces of ice in his steely, grey eyes. He had a rich Yorkshire accent, and a scar sliced down the side of his right cheek.
Porter nodded. ‘Thanks, sir,’ he replied.
‘A girl?’
‘Called Sandy.’
‘Just as well,’ said Pemberton. ‘Girls love their dads. Always. Doesn’t matter what a useless old bugger you are.’
‘Is that …’
Porter could have finished the sentence, but he could tell the Major had already lost interest. He wasn’t here to swap tips on brands of nappies. A harsh wind was blowing in from the coastline, and a few miles across the horizon some blacklooking clouds were starting to swirl out across the sea. If they were going to fly in tonight, there wasn’t much time left. It looked as if a storm was brewing.
‘We can stand you down if you want to,’ said Pemberton. ‘We have backup.’
Porter paused. Stand down? Why the hell would he want to stand down? He had spent eight years in the Irish Guards, and seen plenty of contacts across the water, then, a year ago, he’d made his third request for a transfer to the SAS. When he’d been accepted into the Regiment, it was the best moment of his career. Now he was about to go on the first mission where real blood was at stake. He’d sooner toss himself over the side of this ship than stand down. This is what it had all been about.
‘Appreciate it, sir,’ he said tersely. ‘But I’ll be fine.’
Pemberton examined him closely, the grey eyes flickering across his face, scrutinising him for any sign of weakness. ‘We don’t like to send men out when they’ve got other things on their mind, and this is an important mission. We can’t afford any fuck-ups. You’re entitled to forty-eight hours leave when you have a kid, and if you want to take it, no one will think any the less of you.’
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘You’ve already proved yourself, Porter. You don’t need to prove yourself again.’
‘I said, I’ll be fine …’
Pemberton patted him on the shoulder. ‘Good man,’ he muttered.
Together they joined the rest of the unit. Steve, Mike, Dan and Keith were all far more experienced than Porter. Mike had only been in the Regiment two years, but the other three had clocked up fifteen years between them. They should know what they are doing, Porter reflected. And if they don’t, then God help us.
‘The mission is set for 2000 hours,’ snapped Pemberton. ‘There will be a full briefing in fifteen minutes.’
Porter could feel the adrenalin surging within him. It was only forty-eight hours since they’d been assembled in Hereford, and put on a plane to Cyprus. From there they were flown out here on the same Puma chopper that was going to take them straight into enemy territory in the next couple of hours.
‘Well done on the kid, mate,’ said Steve.
He grinned. A Welshman with a neat line in patter, Steve was the only other man on the unit with a wife and kids at home. He joked all the time about how he’d rather be back in the Falklands than pushing prams around Newport.
‘We can organise a nice little flesh wound, if you like,’ said Keith. ‘Get you a few months in hospital chatting up the nurses, and by the time you get back, you’ll have missed all the nappies.’
A Londoner with an easy charm, Keith was the joker of the pack, and always the first of them to organise a night out. Porter laughed. But there was no time left to mess around. The five-man unit trooped below deck to the Dorset’s ops room. Pemberton was standing in front of a white screen, tapping the palm of his right hand with a well-chewed pencil. At his side, Porter noticed a guy of maybe twenty-seven, twenty-eight, with dark blond hair, the colour of biscuits, and a nonchalant cocksure manner that Porter didn’t much care for. ‘This is Peregrine Collinson,’ said Pemberton. ‘Irish Guards. He’s going to be observing us today.’
‘Call me Perry,’ Collinson interrupted. His voice rang out around the tiny room, at least a couple of decibels too loud. We’re just having a chat, mate, Porter thought. You’re not addressing a battle-ready battalion.
‘I’ll call you Gloria,’ muttered Steve.
Porter was already laughing when he heard Pemberton snap: ‘What was that?’
‘Glorious, sir, glorious,’ said Steve.
Pemberton ignored him. ‘I know we don’t usually include men from any other regiments on our briefings, but Perry is a fine soldier, and I’m sure he’ll be able to help out.’
There was no time for any of the men to worry about him: they had just a few minutes to memorise their instructions. After weeks of patient detective work, the Firm had identified the address where Bratton was being held. Hostages were moved every eighteen to twenty-four hours to reduce the chances of their location being revealed, usually using Hezbollah operatives posing as taxi drivers. Agents inside Beirut had managed to turn one of them: the man was desperate for money, and grateful for the fifty thousand dollars handed over in crisp, clean notes. In return, he’d been given a Coke tin with a satellite tracking device hidden inside it. When he had a fix on the hostage’s location, he crushed the tin to activate the tracker and dropped it in the gutter outside the house. He’d left it there two hours ago, and ever since then the Firm had known precisely where Bratton was. But they had to go in tonight. By morning, he could have been switched to another location.
Intelligence reckoned there were twelve Hezbollah guards, on two rotating shifts of six men. There was backup not far away, so they would have to move fast. Thirty minutes was the maximum window from touchdown to evacuation. Any longer than that and they would be overrun by the enemy. The plan was what they’d trained for over the years. Standard hostage-evacuation procedure. A Puma chopper would take them in, and drop them onto the roof of the building. They would go in hard, kill everything that wasn’t nailed down to the floor, then get the hell out. If anything went wrong there was a backup unit waiting on the ship. They had all done it at the killing house back in Hereford a dozen times. There was no need to change the formula now. Just make it work.