Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Part One
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
Part Two
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
Part Three
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
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by Andy McNab
Copyright
ABOUT THE BOOK
Ex-deniable operator Nick Stone has spent a lifetime in harm’s way – but when someone he cares for very deeply is murdered in cold blood, he can no longer just take the pain.
A high-level internecine conflict at the dark heart of the resurgent Russian Empire and an assassin’s bullet on an isolated Alpine pass propel him from an apparently run-of-the-mill close-protection task into his most brutal and challenging mission yet.
As the body count increases, Stone becomes one of Europe’s Most Wanted. He must evade the élite police forces of three nations in his pursuit of faceless men who trade in human misery, and a lone-wolf terrorist who threatens to unleash the western world’s worst nightmare.
Vengeance of the most explosive kind is top of Stone’s agenda. The fuse has been ignited – but who really holds the detonator?
PART ONE
1
‘Nick …’
Voices.
‘Nick …’
Women’s voices. One of them sounds … Russian …
‘You stupid little—’
Not that one. That’s my mate Gaz’s mum. I’d know her anywhere. She’d caught us throwing condoms full of tomato sauce off the roof of his block of flats …
Fuck, my head hurts.
Gunfire.
I can hear gunfire.
And screaming.
Not human screams. The scream of twisted, tortured metal.
I’m hiding in a storm drain. Darker than a shit pit down here. And colder than the grave. I’ve tabbed across the desert for ever, under fire. If I curl up tight, maybe they won’t find me.
The steel plates above me creak and groan.
‘I need your help, Nick …’ A man’s voice, now. ‘I need your help …’
I hear breaking glass.
I’m moving. Shards of gleaming light. Blindingly bright.
I’m being dragged into the sun.
Wait a minute …
Glass breaking in a storm drain?
Where the fuck am I?
My eyelids flicker.
I’m right about the daylight, at least. But I can’t see a thing.
I try to open them wide. The left one seems to work. The other’s been glued shut. I wipe it with the back of my hand, smearing my knuckles with crimson.
My stomach clenches. Bile floods through my chest. I can feel it burning its way up to the back of my throat. I can’t stop myself gagging. Whatever I had for breakfast fills my mouth. I try to control it. And fail.
Breakfast …?
Lunch …?
Dinner …?
Whatever … It’s all over the fucking place now.
I blink. Twice, I think. Maybe more.
A face looks back at me through the haze. A man’s face. Fucked up. Blood leaking from a gash on his forehead. Spiky hair. Vomit clinging to the stubble around his lips.
I open my mouth to speak.
So does he.
A strand of yellowy green mucus stretches between his top and bottom teeth, like a bar on a cage.
I’m staring into a mirror. A rear-view mirror.
I glance down.
There’s a wheel in front of me. A steering-wheel. At its centre, a silver badge.
Letters.
A word.
Nissan.
I’m pretty sure I don’t drive a Nissan.
More creaks and groans. I lurch forward. A strap bites into my left shoulder.
Left shoulder …
What the fuck am I doing on this side of the wagon?
I grip the wheel hard. Both hands. Try to focus on the road ahead. But the windscreen is a starburst, a glass mosaic, impossible to see through.
I ram my foot down on the pedal. The middle one. The brake. It seems to make things worse, not better.
A digital display glows on a console to the right of the dashboard. An arrow at the bottom edge of a patch of green. Along the top, a thin orange line. Nothing else. Nothing to tell me where in the world I am. I scrabble at the knob on the right of the screen. Start to zoom out, maybe get some sense of my surroundings.
A crack. Then another. And another.
Not gunshots. Snapping wood.
Grinding. From below me, and each side.
I freeze.
Straighten my back, so slowly I can’t even see myself move.
Then silence. Except for the whisper of a fan.
I reach for the air-con button, a millimetre at a time, and switch it off. Air-con. Somewhere hot? Desert? Maybe just summer.
I turn towards the passenger seat, where I guess the first of the voices must have come from.
The seat starts to spin.
No. Not the seat. My head. It’s my head spinning.
I close my eyes. More vomit rushes up to invade my mouth. This time I manage to swallow it back.
When I open my eyes again I see there is no one there.
Which is fucking good news, because a very shiny black-and-white-striped steel rod has rammed itself through the windscreen and into the backrest.
Beneath it, where my passenger’s arse would have been, lies a cigarette pack. I pick it up. Examine it closely. Marlboro. With a picture of a pair of charred, weeping lungs, and some kind of warning I can’t read. Cyrillic, maybe. Whatever, the message is clear. These things aren’t good for you.
I run my tongue around the inside of my mouth, blow into my hand. I smell like a sewer. I can’t tell if I’m a smoker. I examine the index and middle fingers of my right hand. No nicotine stains. I don’t think the cigarettes belong to me. So whose are they?
I slide the pack into the left-hand pocket of my bomber jacket. There’s something in there already. Cold. Compact. A loaded mag for a pistol. Brass casing. Ten rounds. No. Thirteen?
Who cares?
Me. I should. You can’t just spray these things around without knowing how many you’ve fired. How many you’ve got left.
How do I know that?
What was the brand again?
I can’t fucking remember.
My hand retraces its journey into my pocket. It seems to know more than I do. Closes around a cardboard box. Brings it out.