Trial Under Fire

by Zoe Sharp

  The last thing Charlie Fox expected, when she headed out on routine patrol that day, was to end up riding into a firefight, on horseback, with the Spice Girls...

  Charlie Fox is one of the toughest cookies you could ever hope to meet. A word of advice—don’t try to get her to talk about her time in the military. Let’s just say it didn’t end well.

  But before her fall from grace, Charlie was considered a rising star. She made it through one of the toughest challenges any soldier would have to face—Selection for Special Forces. The nightmare that came next is a story I’ve explored in scenes and flashbacks throughout the series.

  But what happened before that? Back when Charlie was a young soldier in the regular army, on patrol in Afghanistan, being kept away from the front line fighting as stipulated by the regulations concerning female personnel. What did she do back then to prove her worth as a specialised soldier, under life-and-death conditions? How did she earn her chance?

  That is a story I’ve never told.

  Until now.

  TRIAL UNDER FIRE

  prequel to the Charlie Fox series

  Zoë Sharp

  Also by Zoë Sharp

  the Charlie Fox series

  KILLER INSTINCT: #1

  RIOT ACT: #2

  HARD KNOCKS: #3

  CHARLIE FOX: THE EARLY YEARS (eBooks 1,2,3)

  FIRST DROP: #4

  ROAD KILL: #5

  SECOND SHOT: #6

  CHARLIE FOX: BODYGUARD (eBooks 4,5,6)

  THIRD STRIKE: #7

  FOURTH DAY: #8

  FIFTH VICTIM: #9

  DIE EASY: #10

  ABSENCE OF LIGHT: #11

  FOX HUNTER: #12

  BAD TURN: #13

  TRIAL UNDER FIRE: prequel

  FOX FIVE RELOADED: short story collection

  the CSI Grace McColl & Detective Nick Weston

  Lakes thriller trilogy

  DANCING ON THE GRAVE: #1

  BONES IN THE RIVER: #2

  standalone crime thrillers

  THE BLOOD WHISPERER

  AN ITALIAN JOB (with John Lawton)

  NEW: the Blake & Byron crime series

  THE LAST TIME SHE DIED (Oct 2021)

  * * *

  https://www.zoesharp.com/vip-mailing-list/

  “If you don't like Zoë Sharp there's something wrong with you. Go and live in a cave and get the hell out of my gene pool! There are few writers who go right to the top of my TBR pile—Zoë Sharp is one of them.”—Stuart MacBride, bestselling author of the Logan McRae series

  “Male and female crime fiction readers alike will find Sharp’s writing style addictively readable.”—Paul Goat Allen, Chicago Tribune

  “Scarily good.”—bestselling author, Lee Child

  “Whenever I turn the first page on a Charlie Fox novel, I know that her creator is going to serve up a complex, fast-paced military-grade action romp than can hold its head high in the male-dominated thriller world.”—Linda Wilson, Crime Review UK

  “Zoë Sharp is one of the sharpest, coolest, and most intriguing writers I know. She delivers dramatic, action-packed novels with characters we really care about.”—bestselling author, Harlan Coben

  “This is hard-edged fiction at its best.”—Michele Leber, Booklist starred review for FIFTH VICTIM

  “Superb.”—Ken Bruen, bestselling author of the Jack Taylor series, THE GUARDS, BLITZ

  “Every book in this suspenseful series opens with a scene that grabs the reader by the throat and doesn’t let go until the final page… Sharp creates some of the best action sequences in fiction… Don’t miss out on one of the best thriller writers around.”—Ted Hertel Jr, Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine

  “The bloody bar fights are bloody brilliant, and Charlie’s skills are formidable and for real.”—Marilyn Stasio, New York Times, on KILLER INSTINCT

  “I highly recommend this series!”—bestselling author, Ian Rankin

  “What I love about this series is the fact that Zoë Sharp pulls the reader into every scenario—creates a world where you are part of the action and then leaves you gasping for breath as the final conclusion comes around. It’s a total experience and one I look forward to each and every time!”—Noelle Holten, Crime Book Junkie

  “Zoë Sharp and Charlie Fox both kick ass.” bestselling author, Mark Billingham

  Author’s Note

  As an author, I hugely appreciate all the feedback, reviews, and ratings my books receive from my readers. It helps others make an informed decision before they buy. If you enjoy this book, please consider leaving a brief review or a rating on goodreads or on the retailer site where you made your purchase.

  Links can be found at www.ZoeSharp.com.

  THANK YOU!

  1

  The pair of helos came in low and dark over the ravine. One minute they were a faint whump-whump in the distance, the next they were right on top of us. Two sudden, snarling silhouettes, each big as a truck, blotting out the stars. The downdraft from the rotors thrashed the dusty scrub around us. I dropped flat onto the rock with lips and eyelids clamped shut, rolling my rifle under me to the keep the worst of the grit out of the moving parts.

  As it settled, Tate cautiously lifted his head, spat out a mouthful of sand.

  “What the fuck was that?” he demanded. “D’you think Ana’s mum knows she’s out this late, giving us a look-see up her skirts?”

  “That wasn’t Ana,” I said, and we both knew I was talking about the ANA—the Afghan National Army. “Not unless they’ve scrapped those old Russian Mils. That was a pair of Lynx. Ours.”

  “You sure?” After a moment he snorted at his own question. “Yeah. ’Course you are.”

  I ignored him, went up the nearest slope in a fast crawl and peered over the rim. The helicopters were halfway down the valley by then, still hugging the terrain as they crested the next rise and dropped from view.

  “Think we ought to call it in?”

  I threw him a dirty look he failed to catch. “They’re not showing lights and if they were any lower they’d be driving not flying. The last thing those lads want is us blabbing their position.” Or ours, come to that.

  I didn’t mention the fact that, although I was the unit’s signaller, in charge of comms, according to the letter of the rules I wasn’t supposed to be out in a possible combat zone on a night patrol, routine or not.

  The Powers That Be were funny about putting us ‘lumpy jumpers’—one of the more acceptable nicknames by which female personnel were known—in the firing line. I’d handled enough radio traffic for incoming wounded back at Camp Bastion to be partly grateful for that.

  And partly frustrated as hell.

  What was the point in being a soldier if I was never asked to fight?

  “Even so,” Tate said, “maybe we need to—”

  Whatever he’d been about to say was cut off by the initial crack and streaking whine of an RPG fired way forward of our position, somewhere to the northeast. We both ducked, flinching. Tate swore.

  By the time I looked up, the rocket motor had already ignited after launch. The slight wobble corrected as the fins deployed—the smaller front set inducing a stabilising rotational spin. It appeared for all the world like a rogue firework as it arced over the horizon on an intercept course with the helos.

  Compared to the rapid spit of tracer fire, the RPG’s slow muzzle velocity, less than three hundred metres a second, made it seem to fly almost lazily, trailing a short comet flare behind it.

  I grabbed for the mic pressel on the Bowman Command Net Radio and yelled, “RPG incoming!” in the hope that the helo pilots were monitoring the standard frequencies as well as mission-specific.

  There was a breathless pause. Long enough for me to think that m
aybe—just maybe—they had time for evasive manoeuvres.

  But not long enough for that to actually happen.

  The night sky erupted with an intense ball of white-hot flame, turning a dirty orange with burning smoke. A second or so later the thunder-crack of the explosion rolled over us.

  “Holy crap,” Tate muttered. “Poor bastards.”

  Movement farther back in the ravine had both of us squirming round, weapons readied.

  “Easy, lads.” Our patrol leader, Captain MacLeod, dropped onto his elbows between us. He, at least, was gender-blind when it came to addressing his troops. We were all “lads” to him. “Let’s have a sit-rep.”

  I tuned out Tate’s explanation, too busy trying to patch together a better picture of the situation from the fractured voices on the net.

  Captain MacLeod flicked his eyes to me. He wasn’t a big guy, but he was solid and fast on his feet, fair-haired, with pale skin that went pink in the fierce Afghan sun without ever tanning, despite copious applications of sunblock. His family background—one of the better parts of Edinburgh—was evident in his voice, even though his accent had been further rounded off by public school, where I heard he’d terrorised opposing teams on the rugby pitch.

  “How bad?”

  “One helo down for certain,” I said. “They’ve got serious casualties and are taking incoming fire.”

  “Damn. See if you can get their position. Contact brigade HQ for an immediate casevac. Advise that we’ll move up to provide tactical support, and secure an HLZ. But don’t mention—”

  “—the second helo unless they do it first,” I finished for him. “Yes, sir.”

  He grinned. “All right, Charlie. Not everyone loves a smart-arse, eh?”

  “No, sir.”

  He slapped me on the shoulder hard enough to sting and scrambled backwards down into the ravine.

  Tate stayed alongside, scanning the terrain through his night-vision goggles. I got on the net to our brigade headquarters, mentally working up an approximate grid reference for the crash site as I did so. In the near-distance, we could hear automatic weapons fire and see the occasional spit of tracers against the absolute black.

  Even as I carried out my orders, I had a feeling I’d be one of those waiting on the stretch of ground we cleared as a Helicopter Landing Zone, rather than getting into the thick of a skirmish with local Taliban. I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed by that.

  A moment later, Captain MacLeod was back with our medic, a lanky corporal called Brookes.

  “Both helos are down,” I told them. “The RPG took out the first bird, and they think shrapnel from the explosion may have forced the second to make an emergency landing.”

  “MERT on its way?” MacLeod asked.

  “Yes, sir. Brigade’s sending a Chinook from Bastion.”

  Brookes was frowning. “What do we know about casualties?”

  “In the first Lynx there are two dead, one Cat-A wounded, and two Cat-Bs.” I said. “I haven’t been able to make contact with the second Lynx.”

  The British Army designates wounded by three categories from A—in need of immediate surgery—to C—safe to patch up in the field. The only thing we could do with Cat-Bs was stabilise them long enough to get them back to the main hospital at Camp Bastion where they would be worked on by some of the best trauma surgeons in the business.

  Brookes gave one of his deceptively cheery smiles. “Sounds like we’d best get over there a bit sharpish then, hadn’t we?”

  My eyes flicked to MacLeod. He looked up from checking my grid references, frowning, as if he didn’t know why I hesitated.

  “You heard Corporal Brookes. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover and I need decent comms when we get there. So get your arse into gear, soldier!”

  2

  My parents did not take it well when I announced I was joining up. Maybe if I’d been the son my father always wanted, things might have been different.

  Maybe a lot of things would have been different.

  I can still remember breaking the news to them at home in Cheshire, over one of the excruciatingly formal Sunday lunches of which my mother was so fond. For a few moments after my bald statement of intent, the only sound in the room was the mournful tick of the long-case clock in the corner.

  Then my mother let her soup spoon drop into her bowl with something approaching a clatter.

  “Oh, Charlotte,” she murmured. “But it’s so…so unsuitable, darling.”

  “Why?” I demanded, feeling my temper start to rise even though I’d promised myself it wouldn’t—that this was precisely the reaction I’d expected. “Anybody would think I’d told you I was going into prostitution.”

  “There’s no need to be vulgar, Charlotte,” she said primly. “Surely you can understand our…reservations about such a career choice.”

  I noted her collective term and glanced at my father. He, too, had stopped spooning his soup at my announcement. Silently, he began to eat again, with the same mechanical precision he applied to his surgical work. The spoon angled just so, the amount of soup in each mouthful exactly equal to the last mil. I could imagine you’d spot his professional handiwork at first glance by the symmetry of the stitches.

  Not that high-ranking consultant orthopaedic surgeons closed their own incisions anymore—they probably had minions for that.

  “Do you have an opinion you’d care to voice?” I couldn’t resist poking him with the pointed stick of challenge, as if hoping that this time I might provoke a reaction. I should have known better.

  “I am not prepared to discuss this over the luncheon table,” he said with calm indifference. “I believe your mother has prepared roast lamb.”

  I flopped back in my chair. “Oh, well, if the cut of the meat is more important than my future, let’s not, by all means.”

  My mother made a flutter of protest, but he silenced both of us with a single barbed glance over his glasses, and carried on with his soup.

  He could be bloody-minded like that, my father.

  Maybe that was where I got it from.

  But after our empty plates were cleared away, and I’d dutifully helped stack the dishwasher, and wiped down the surfaces, I took him coffee in his study and closed the door behind me once I was inside.

  It was an austere room, all dark green leather and beeswaxed oak. He sat behind his desk like a hanging judge and waited for me to state my case. I stuffed my hands in the back pockets of my jeans, nervous, and irritated that he was the cause of it.

  “I think it’s something I might be rather good at,” I said without preamble.

  “How so?”

  “Well, I can shoot.”

  That had been a chance discovery on an outward bound course. The instructors had told me I was a natural—that I had an instinctive feel for a target. In fact, it was only when I tried to analyse what I was doing that my shots began to go wild. If I just relaxed into it, I nailed the bulls-eye every time.

  My father waited for me to elaborate, but I’d been lured into that trap too often to fall this time. I said nothing. I dragged the chair that faced his desk off to one side slightly, turned it at an angle so this felt less like an inquisition, and sat.

  Eventually, he sighed, picked up his coffee and took a measured sip.

  “I have been known to accept the occasional invitation to a day on the grouse moor myself,” he said then. “It’s something one does as a hobby, or for sport. That’s no reason to want to make a career out of it.”

  I didn’t immediately respond to that. How did I admit that it was the first time anything had seemed to come naturally to me?

  I knew without conceit that I was bright, but recognised I lacked true academic engagement. My mother had cajoled me into dance and music lessons, which had bored me rigid. I’d been decent enough in Pony Club competitions, had made my mark in junior hunter trials and three-day events, but wasn’t sure I had the outright passion to take it to any kind of higher level.
I was physically fit, but not in the running for any medals.

  “Well, since you have all the answers, what do you think I ought to do?” I demanded, weariness making my tone more sarcastic than it might otherwise have been. “Take a shorthand typing course and hope to flash my legs at some ambitious young salesman so he puts a ring on my finger, then move to a nice semi in Swindon, and spawn you a couple of grandkids?”

  He paused a moment, as if pointedly making sure I was quite finished, before he put down his cup.

  “Leaving aside your apparent capabilities with a firearm for just one moment,” he said. “What exactly do you hope to get out of signing up for the military?”

  I swallowed. Respect. A sense of belonging, of not being some kind of cuckoo child shoved into the wrong nest, of finally fitting inside my own skin.

  And I knew without a doubt I couldn’t voice any of that to him.

  “I think it’s an opportunity to do something worthwhile,” I said instead.

  He linked his hands together on the desktop. He had short, pristine nails at the tips of fingers that were almost slender, their only adornment a plain gold wedding ring.

  “One of my former colleagues was asked some time ago to consult for the Ministry of Defence on the suitability of women in more active military roles,” he said. “After exhaustive enquiries, his conclusion was that female soldiers possess neither the mental nor physical resilience required to serve alongside their male counterparts on the front line.”

  Never one to sugar the pill either, my father. I could only be thankful he’d never become an oncologist. If he handed out cancer diagnoses with such blunt candour, his patients would have left in droves.

  “I hate to break this to you, but women are no longer regarded as second-class citizens,” I snapped back. “We even have the vote now and everything.”