ALSO BY ALAN MCDERMOTT
Tom Gray Novels
Gray Justice
Gray Resurrection
Gray Redemption
Gray Retribution
Gray Vengeance
Gray Salvation
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organisations, places, events and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2017 Alan McDermott
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503942127
ISBN-10: 1503942120
Cover design by © blacksheep-uk.com
On January 16th 2016, it snowed in Leigh, Lancashire.
God painted his canvas as only He can, and He gave us something beautiful.
In return, it was time for Him to take something beautiful from my life.
I miss you, Mum.
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
EPILOGUE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
FOREWORD
This is a work of fiction. At the time of writing, it was set twelve months in the future, and so I took certain liberties with elements of the story, such as the refugee reception centre in Lampedusa, Italy. No-one can accurately predict how the migrant crisis will develop over the coming year, nor how countries will adapt to deal with it. The current facilities might change dramatically over the coming months, as might the way the registration process is handled. The rest of the story should be seen to take place in a sort of ‘parallel universe’ version of the UK. I had no idea what changes there might be to government personnel, or what real-life events might take place during the book’s timeline.
I call it a migrant ‘crisis’ because, while the vast majority are genuine refugees fleeing war zones, there are a few who are heading to Europe for other reasons. Some of them are economic migrants, while the attacks in Paris in November 2015 show that a few have come simply to wage war.
There are those who will read this story and come to the conclusion that I must have something against Muslims, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I dine with my Muslim friends, and I only chose to write about this topic because it is one of those ‘could happen’ situations that can make fiction feel compelling and relevant.
CHAPTER 1
Monday, 3 July 2017
A lone cloud in the azure sky provided escort to the motorcade thundering along the desert road, its white tendrils seeming to point the way. An opportunistic vulture took to the sky as the trucks rumbled past, abandoning the remains of the lizard it had found minutes earlier.
The lead vehicle was a ten-year-old Nissan Titan with pockmarked paintwork. Behind it, another four trucks fought their way through the cloud of dust thrown up by rubber churning the desert floor.
In the front passenger seat of the middle truck, Abu Hussain stared at the mountains that rose away to his left, then checked his handheld GPS and saw that they were less than a kilometre from their target, a small village in eastern Syria that was home to no more than a dozen families. Intelligence suggested the inhabitants were Shia Muslims, which didn’t sit well with the leaders of Saif al-Islam.
The group’s name in Arabic translated to Sword of Islam – also the name given to the late Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s son. Like the Gaddafis, the men in the trucks were Sunnis, and their task for the day was to convert the villagers, one way or another. Those who chose the Sunni way would be press-ganged into service, while a more permanent fate awaited those who resisted.
Hussain knew that the ‘intelligence’ was probably founded on nothing more than rumours, as was usually the case, but he didn’t care. He had a job to do, plain and simple, and the fact that it meant taking lives was irrelevant. Scores had already died by his hand, and he felt neither thrill nor remorse when dispatching someone with his sword or rifle.
That those he ‘converted’ were sent to other parts of the country wasn’t his concern. It would have been nice to have them fill the gaps in his own thinning ranks, caused by the recent allied strikes against the unit, but he was merely a foot soldier. He left the bigger picture to those who knew best.
The thought made him glance up at the sky, but he saw no grey jets preparing to unleash their deadly payloads.
Hussain radioed ahead and told the lead car to enter the hamlet and sweep right, with the second to take a position to the left. His own vehicle drove into the centre of what turned out to be a few single-storey, mud-covered dwellings haphazardly staggered around a well. Goats wandered between the buildings and a pair of young children argued over a wooden doll as Hussain climbed out of his vehicle.
‘Bring me the elder,’ Hussain called out as the other three occupants of his truck decamped.
One of the children pointed towards a house with laundry hanging on a clothes line outside. Hussain’s subordinate marched to it, kicked in the door and emerged thirty seconds later, dragging a man in his seventies behind him.
People began to stream out of their houses, drawn by the noise of the arriving vehicles and the shouts of their occupants.
‘We are Saif al-Islam,’ Hussain bellowed, ‘and your village is now part of the glorious caliphate.’
The rest of his men moved from house to house, rousting the villagers. Young women over the age of thirteen were herded off to one side, while men of fighting age were similarly segregated.
Hussain addressed the elder. ‘Tell me which hadith you people adhere to.’
‘We read from the four books,’ the old man said defiantly, referring to the narratives purporting to quote the prophet Muhammad. The Shia branch of Islam differed from the Sunni branch, whose collection ran to six tomes.
‘That is all about to change,’ Hussain told him. ‘From this day on, you will all observe the true Quran.’
‘This entire valley has been Shia for generations,’ the elder told him.
‘And I am here to end the blasphemy,’ Hussain shot back before turning to address the villagers. ‘Who here refuses to denounce their false beliefs?’
He stared at the faces, almost disappointed that no-one stepped forward or raised a hand. It seemed his sword would stay sheathed today.
Until the elder spoke.
‘There are no apostates here,’ he said. ‘We’ve heard about your rampage through our lands, using your faith as an excuse to rape and murder, but your actions are abhorrent to any true Muslim. We will never bend to your will.’
A humourless smile broke out on Hussain’s face. He
called two of his men over and gave them instructions, scratching his long, black beard as one readied a digital camera and the other bound the old man’s hands behind his back and pushed him to his knees.
Hussain slowly drew his sword from the sheath on his back, the long blade glinting in the sunlight. He took a position to the elder’s left, then addressed the villagers once more as he waited for the go-ahead from the cameraman.
‘We come to you with a simple choice,’ he shouted. ‘Those who choose to follow the true Quran will be spared. Those who do not will meet with the same fate as this foolish man.’
The soldier with the camera indicated that he was ready to start filming, and Hussain began a speech he’d prepared for precisely this moment.
He managed two words before a .50-calibre bullet removed the top of his head, and he collapsed like a sack of rocks. A second later, the sound of the round leaving the rifle echoed off the nearby mountains.
The moment the sound of the shot reached him, the SAS sergeant issued his order.
‘Light ’em up!’
He rose from his position on the roof of the elder’s house and picked off two Saif al-Islam soldiers who were staring at their dead leader; his rifle was soon seeking the next target. He found it in the form of a man guarding the young women of the village. Two bullets left his weapon and scored head-shots.
His fellow troopers were also making light work of the opposition. The sniper and his spotter, hidden in the mountains almost a kilometre away, had counted twenty-five enemy soldiers in the trucks. Updates had continued to come in about their locations, and within ten seconds of the leader’s takedown, another twenty-two of his men followed him to the grave.
Two remained, however, and had enough wits about them to take cover among the villagers. One rose with his arm tightly wound around a young girl’s neck, his pistol jabbed into the side of her head, and he began shouting. The other was cowering among the elderly, raising his head now and again to take a potshot at the men on the roofs.
The sergeant, chosen for the mission because of his fluent Arabic, understood the terrorist’s order: drop your weapons or the girl dies. It wasn’t an instruction he was about to obey.
‘You got the tall one with the girl in your sights?’ he asked into the radio.
‘Just say the word,’ the sniper responded.
‘He’s all yours,’ the sergeant said, never taking his eyes off the target. Within two seconds, half of the terrorist’s face disappeared in a crimson cloud, leaving just one X-ray to deal with.
The sergeant knew the sniper couldn’t get a bead on the enemy, as a hut lay in his line of fire. It was up to him to end it. Unfortunately, this fighter had learned from his friend’s demise and forced three women to stand in front of him, making it impossible to shoot him without striking them first.
The target had his back to a wall. On the roof above him, one of the sergeant’s men knelt near the edge.
‘Jones, he’s right below you,’ the NCO said. ‘Stand up and move one foot to your right, then get ready to fire.’
‘You have nowhere to go,’ the sergeant called out. ‘Lay down your weapon and put your hands in the air.’
He waited until the terrorist began his response, then whispered into his throat mic: ‘Take him.’
Jones leaned over the side of the building, pointed his weapon straight down, and sent three rounds through the target’s skull, ending the stand-off.
The sergeant climbed down from his perch and told the sniper to keep an eye out in case any of the enemy had managed to call in reinforcements, then ordered the troops to gather the bodies and photograph them before loading them onto the backs of the trucks. Once the task was complete, he ordered his men to climb into the cabs and went to have a word with the elder.
‘We were never here,’ he said in Arabic, then pointed to the trucks. ‘And neither were they. Hide any bullet holes and throw away our shell casings, just in case they send someone looking for them.’
The old man looked at him, still in shock.
Sergeant Mitchell walked to the lead vehicle and got in the passenger seat, then ordered the driver to take them to the pre-arranged point. The dead would be staged to make it look as if they’d been in the vehicles all along, and an aircraft would be called in to destroy the trucks with air-to-ground missiles. It would look as if the terrorists had fallen to an air strike. Mitchell had originally questioned the order, wondering why they needed to go through the subterfuge when they could simply have the jets take out the convoy en route. The response was that the head shed had a desire to put names to corpses, which was good enough for him.
The ruse meant no-one would know about the SAS patrol operating in the region. The sergeant and his men would simply fade back into the desert and await their next target.
CHAPTER 2
Wednesday, 5 July 2017
Another boom echoed across the city as Andrew Harvey steered the car down the ramp to the car park underneath Thames House. After enduring the wettest June on record, London had been blessed with five days of brilliant sunshine, but that had come to an end with the thunderstorm intensifying above the capital.
He parked in his usual spot and checked his appearance in the mirror. His short brown hair could do with a trim, he noticed, but apart from that, he looked okay. His nose was a little bigger than he would have liked, but at least he wasn’t developing the jowls that seemed to curse some of his friends who had also reached forty. He put that down to the regular nocturnal workouts his girlfriend put him through.
He looked over at Sarah Thompson and smiled. How he’d ended up with someone so wonderful was beyond him, but he wasn’t complaining. A well-toned body was only one of her many attributes, but it was her personality that he missed most whenever they were apart for any length of time. Sarah was whip-smart, and funny as well – especially when she got away from the open office that they shared with half a dozen others.
At least, she had been until the incident a few months earlier.
As time wore on, he was seeing more and more of the old Sarah, but there were still moments when he could see her dwelling on her time in Bessonov’s basement . . .
Harvey cast the thoughts aside, fearing that she might read his mind and start recalling those few hours when it had been only her, the Beriya brothers and an assortment of tools.
He smiled at her as they got out of the car. They rode the elevator to their floor, and both swiped their security cards into the slot to give them access to the office. Like most days, they were the first people in.
‘Remind me to get salmon on the way home,’ Sarah said as she kissed him on the cheek. ‘I’ll make your favourite tonight.’
‘Yum. Any particular reason?’
‘I just want you in a good mood tonight,’ she said over her shoulder as she sauntered to her desk.
‘No need to bribe me,’ he laughed. ‘You could feed me roadkill garnished with baked beans and I’d still give you all my loving.’
Harvey walked over to his own station and powered up the computer, then went to make them both a coffee while it went through the start-up process. When he returned, he entered his username and password and delivered Sarah her coffee. As he placed it on the desk next to her, he ran his hand through the back of her long, blonde hair and marvelled again at how lucky he was to have her in his life.
They’d been together for over a year and a half, though he’d never have imagined they would become an item after their first meeting. After several fruitless months searching for a fugitive, Sarah had been seconded from MI6 to work as his superior at MI5, and had rubbed Harvey up the wrong way from the get-go. To make matters worse, Harvey had suspected her of colluding with the man they’d been looking for. As it turned out, both of them had been played.
He seldom thought back to those times, though. When he pictured Sarah Thompson, he always saw the smiling, happy Sarah before him now. The images of her after her encounter with Alexi Bessonov, the Russian
gangster who’d had her tortured, remained locked in the deepest recesses of his mind. Her physical scars remained but, thanks to the counselling sessions they’d taken, emotionally she was the same woman he’d fallen in love with nineteen months earlier.
He kissed her on the top of her head and got a smile in return, then walked back to his desk and opened the internal messaging system to see what had been happening in the world while they’d been sleeping.
‘There’s something here about Hannibal,’ he said.
Sarah walked across to look over his shoulder.
Working under the cover name Abdul al-Aziz, Mohammad Abdulrashid was a field operative she had worked with during her time at MI6. Codenamed Hannibal, he’d been undercover in Syria for the last year, and had been instrumental in feeding both Five and Six vital information on activities in the region. Over the last few months, he’d given them the heads-up on a splinter unit he’d infiltrated: SAI or Saif al-Islam.
The message contained details of a recent engagement between SAI and British Special Forces. Appended were the names of twenty-five SAI members who’d been identified by MI6. Next to each was a succinct legend:
Deceased.
‘Looks like Hannibal made good again,’ Sarah said.
‘It’s a shame we don’t have more like him,’ Harvey agreed, and printed out the report so that he could process the names and see if any of them had ties to the UK. A similar mission three weeks earlier had identified two men who had travelled from Manchester to Syria a year earlier, only to die in an apparent air strike.
The buzzer for the door sounded and Veronica Ellis entered the room wearing her trademark pencil skirt, laptop bag over her shoulder. At fifty-four years of age, she carried off the look very well, but underneath the smart appearance she was a double-edged sword. She was polite and affable for the most part, but gave short shrift to those who crossed her.
‘Morning,’ the Director General said as she headed to her transparent office, known as the glass palace. ‘Anything on the wire I should be worried about?’
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