by Chris Ryan
‘He wouldn’t lie to us.’
‘Are you sure about that?’ Gregory parted his lips into a cruel smile. ‘I hear David Lang took a nasty fall from his apartment yesterday. That was John’s doing, I imagine. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d planned to kill Lang all along.’
‘No.’
But even as he shook his head, a voice of doubt crept up on Bowman. He remembered the briefing back at the Shed. Mallet’s last-minute decision to go with the team. We need boots on the ground, he had said. But maybe he had a more sinister reason for tagging along with the team to Monte Carlo. Maybe Mallet had orders of his own from the Voice. Make sure Lang doesn’t come back alive.
‘You should be careful, Josh,’ Gregory went on. ‘John’s a great soldier, but he’s slippery. None of the guys in the Regiment ever trusted him . . . and neither should you.’
Bowman stayed quiet for a beat. He was beginning to see the dark side of the Cell. The extreme lengths they would go to in order to defend British interests at home and abroad. Poisonings, executions. Covertly funding the torture of foreign nationals. Bowman thought he had joined the Cell to fight mobsters. But he was beginning to realise that the truth was far more complicated than that.
Gregory offered him the cattle prod.
‘Here,’ he said. He grinned manically. ‘Give it a try. A bump to the bollocks is always good fun, I find.’
Bowman looked at his old boss and shivered. He thought: Mike actually enjoys this shit. He’s getting a kick out of torturing people.
‘Hit him, man. Make him scream. Go on.’
Bowman said nothing. He just stared at Gregory. The man was unrecognisable from the charismatic officer Bowman had once fought alongside in B Squadron. The years of working for Ken Seguma, doing his bidding, had warped his mind. He might have been a first-class officer in the past, Bowman thought. But he’s just a deranged psychopath now.
‘You’ve lost your fucking mind,’ he said.
‘Don’t give me that nonsense.’ Gregory pointed to the chained rebel leader. ‘The general and his men killed your mate. Christ, they almost wiped us all out. Don’t you want to get your revenge?’
Bowman looked down at General Kakuba and felt a pang of nausea. The leader of the KUF whimpered hysterically through his gag and looked up at Bowman with wide pleading eyes. His face was swollen with bruising, his lips were bleeding heavily. At some point during the torture session, the man had voided his bowels. The air reeked of shit, piss and sweat.
He grabbed the electric prod.
Gregory beamed with delight. ‘That’s better! Now crack on with it,’ he said, rubbing his hands expectantly. ‘Let’s get started. Don’t hold back.’
Bowman held up the prod. The general gave out a muffled scream. His eyes were so wide they looked as if they might pop out of their sockets.
‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ Gregory said.
Then Bowman hit his old boss with the shock end.
Gregory let out a grunt as the current shot through his system. His body jerked wildly and his legs buckled before he dropped to the concrete flood with a thud. Bowman bent down before he could recover and bumped him again. Gregory groaned through his tightly clenched jaw as another wave of pain ripped through his body. The voltage wasn’t powerful enough to kill or knock someone out, but it would still hurt like fuck. He hit Gregory repeatedly, delivering shocks to his legs, his stomach.
He gave Gregory a final bump to the groin. Then he tossed the prod aside and stood up.
Gregory lay in a shrivelled ball at his feet, moaning softly. Bowman watched him for several seconds with a look of cold contempt. He gave his back to Gregory. Nodded at Casey and Webb.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said.
‘Good idea,’ Casey said. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen enough shit for one day.’
Bowman started towards the cell door.
‘Look out!’ Webb cried.
He spun round.
He saw Gregory gripping a pistol. The gun he’d seen on the bench. The GSh-18 semi-automatic. Colonel Lubowa’s weapon. Gregory had snatched it up and swept it across his front in a flash.
The barrel pointed directly at Bowman’s chest.
Bowman had no time to react. It would take him a couple of seconds to thrust a hand down to his holster and bring up the Glock. By which time Gregory could have pulled the trigger. At a distance of four metres, there was no way he could miss.
Bowman waited to die.
Two cracks echoed violently inside the cell.
In the corner of his eye, he saw Webb standing with his Glock already drawn. The barrel flamed as he fired twice at Gregory. The bullets double-tapped him in the forehead and punched out of the back of his skull, splattering the wall with blood and brain matter. The pistol clattered against the concrete. Gregory’s arms and legs sagged, and then he dropped to the ground, as if someone had cut his strings.
Webb lowered his Glock.
Bowman nodded at him. ‘Thanks, mate.’
‘No need,’ Webb said as he stuffed his weapon back into his holster. ‘That animal had it coming.’
‘I thought you said he was a really great guy,’ Casey said.
‘He was,’ Bowman said. ‘Once. A long time ago.’
He stared at Gregory for a long moment. The former hero of B Squadron. One of the best officers in the history of the Regiment. Now he was dead. Slumped on the floor of a torture chamber in the heart of the jungle, his brains slicking down the wall. He didn’t feel a pang of sadness, or pity. He didn’t feel anything at all. He just wanted to get the hell out of Karatandu. And never come back.
They left the chamber, walked back past the cells and up the spiral staircase to the atrium. They stepped outside, into the sweltering midday heat. Mallet spotted the team and beat a quick path over from the guest house. Behind him, the tractor dumped another bucketload of bodies into the agricultural trailer. The trailer was almost full, but the battlefield was still thick with enemy dead. Torn limbs and glistening entrails putrifying beneath the burning sun.
‘Where the fuck have you lot been?’ Mallet snapped. ‘Where’s Mike?’
‘He’s busy,’ Webb said. ‘Tied up in the basement.’
‘Grab your kit. We’ve just been given clearance. We’re leaving on the Herc. We’re out of here now.’
He marched off in the direction of the Land Cruiser. Bowman paused and looked briefly back at the mansion, Gregory’s warning about Mallet ringing in his ears. John’s a great soldier, but he’s slippery.
None of the guys in the Regiment ever trusted him.
He wondered about that. He wondered about the lies Mallet had told him. He wondered what the future held for him in the Cell. He wondered if he could keep his promise to Loader and stay clean.
Casey gently placed a hand on his shoulder.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s go. We’ve got a friend to take home.’
THE END
Hello!
Thank you for picking up Manhunter.
I’ve always wanted to write a thriller set in the murky world of organised crime. Mobsters are everywhere these days: in some places, they’ve become more like professional corporations than traditional gangs. In Russia and elsewhere, the lines between government and the criminal underworld have become completely blurred, leading to the term ‘mafia state’. It seemed to me that the SAS would be perfectly suited to tackling this emerging new threat, working hand-in-glove with the security services and the police. So when I first sat down to think about Manhunter, I knew straight away what kind of story I wanted to tell.
I also knew that my hero would be radically different from anything I’d done before: an elite soldier with a talent for fighting mobsters. He would need a background in law enforcement before joining the army, with an insider’s knowledge of how criminals think. He would have grown up in a rough part of London, a world where violence and gangs are rife and only a lucky few escape – a w
orld he can never quite leave behind. But that wasn’t enough, I knew. The character also needed a powerful personal motivation for wanting to take revenge on the criminal elite, so I gave him a tragic family backstory. This incident would only be revealed slowly, through the prism of the hero’s ongoing struggle with addiction. All that was left was to create a new covert SAS unit to combat this new threat. The Cell was born, and the idea snowballed from there.
Writing Manhunter has been a genuine pleasure. I’ve had great fun spending time with Josh Bowman, John Mallet and the other members of the Cell, and I hope you’ve had as much fun reading about them. Hopefully, this is the first of many adventures to come.
If you would like to hear more about my books, you can visit bit.ly/ChrisRyanClub where you can become part of the Chris Ryan Readers’ Club. It only takes a few moments to sign up, and there are no catches or costs.
Bonnier Books UK will keep your data private and confidential, and it will never be passed on to a third party. We won’t spam you with loads of emails, just get in touch now and again with news about my books, and you can unsubscribe any time you want.
And if you would like to get involved in a wider conversation about my books, please do review Manhunter on Amazon, on Goodreads, on any other e-store, on your own blog and social media accounts, or talk about it with friends, family or reading groups! Sharing your thoughts helps other readers, and I always enjoy hearing about what people experience from my writing.
Thank you again for reading Manhunter.
All the best,
Chris Ryan
About the Author
Chris Ryan was born in Newcastle. In 1984 he joined 22 SAS. After completing the year-long Alpine Guides Course, he was the troop guide for B Squadron Mountain Troop. He completed three tours with the anti-terrorist team, serving as an assaulter, sniper and finally Sniper Team Commander.
Chris was part of the SAS eight-man team chosen for the famous Bravo Two Zero mission during the 1991 Gulf War. He was the only member of the unit to escape from Iraq, where three of his colleagues were killed and four captured, for which he was awarded the Military Medal. Chris wrote about his experiences in his book The One That Got Away, which becamef an immediate bestseller. Since then he has written over fifty books and presented a number of very successful TV programmes.
To hear more about Chris Ryan’s books, sign up to his Readers’ Club at bit.ly/ChrisRyanClub
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First published in the UK in 2021 by
ZAFFRE
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Copyright © Chris Ryan, 2021
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
The right of Chris Ryan to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Hardback ISBN: 978–1–83877–520–9
Trade paperback ISBN: 978–1–83877–521–6
Also available as an ebook and an audiobook
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Zaffre is an imprint of Bonnier Books UK
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