Head Hunters Read online

  Chris Ryan was born near Newcastle in 1961. He joined the SAS in 1984. During his ten years there he was involved in overt and covert operations and was also sniper team commander of the anti-terrorist team. During the Gulf War, Chris Ryan was the only member of an eight-man unit to escape from Iraq, where three colleagues were killed and four captured. It was the longest escape and evasion in the history of the SAS. For this he was awarded the Military Medal. For his last two years he selected and trained potential recruits for the SAS.

  He wrote about his experiences in the bestseller The One That Got Away, which was adapted for the screen, and since then has written three other works of non-fiction, fifteen bestselling novels and a series of children’s books. He has also created a number one bestselling series of ebooks, Chris Ryan Extreme. He lectures in business motivation and security, and is a consultant for a security organisation.

  Also by Chris Ryan

  Non-fiction

  The One That Got Away

  Chris Ryan’s SAS Fitness Book

  Chris Ryan’s Ultimate Survival Guide

  Fight to Win

  Safe

  Fiction

  Stand By, Stand By

  Zero Option

  The Kremlin Device

  Tenth Man Down

  Hit List

  The Watchman

  Land of Fire

  Greed

  The Increment

  Blackout

  Ultimate Weapon

  Strike Back

  Firefight

  Who Dares Wins

  The Kill Zone

  Killing for the Company

  Osama

  In the Danny Black Series

  Masters of War

  Hunter Killer

  Hellfire

  Bad Soldier

  Warlord

  In the Strikeback Series

  Deathlist

  Shadow Kill

  Global Strike

  Chris Ryan Extreme

  Hard Target

  Night Strike

  Most Wanted

  Silent Kill

  Head Hunters

  Chris Ryan

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Coronet

  imprint of Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © Chris Ryan 2018

  The right of Chris Ryan to be identified as the Author of the

  Work has been asserted by him in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any

  means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be

  otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that

  in which it is published and without a similar condition being

  imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance

  to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9781473668003

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.hodder.co.uk

  CONTENTS

  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

  Epilogue

  Author’s note

  CHAPTER 1

  In the secret world there are secret briefings.

  They take place in unremarkable conference rooms that have been swept for listening devices. Or in secure Portakabins in cordoned-off sections of military bases. Windows are covered up. Military personnel guard the entrances. Clerical staff understand that something is being discussed, not for their ears.

  They are, in other words, not secret at all.

  And then there are briefings like this.

  Secret briefings.

  Nobody knows they are happening, apart from the people involved. They take place in safe houses, or public parks, or in the back of vehicles.

  Or in rough pubs, where rough men can discuss rough business. Pubs like this one, the George and Crown, standing alone on a deserted roadside in a remote part of Cornwall, where a bored barman watches Arsenal vs Spurs on the overhead TV. An alcoholic stares into an almost empty pint glass at a table by the door. A group of five lads take turns at the pool table on the far side of the bar. Three of them are vaping. Nobody complains.

  Danny Black had instinctively clocked each of his fellow drinkers as he entered the pub half an hour previously, leaving his BMW parked under the solitary street light outside. None of them had returned the favour and he liked it that way.

  The message had come through five hours ago on his encrypted work phone. A set of GPS coordinates and an RV time: 20.00 hours BST. He’d arrived at 19.30, thirsty from the four-hour drive from Hereford but in a heightened state of awareness as he took a few minutes to check out the pub and its surroundings. Entry and exit points. Potential surveillance. Incidental weapons. He was hard-wired to do it.

  He’d soon established that the only threat to his personal safety came from the out-of-date, curled-up sandwiches on the bar. And he’d put away a couple of pints of Fosters before his ops officer Major Ray Hammond walked into the pub, nodded at him and automatically walked to the bar to buy two fresh pints, before sitting opposite Danny.

  Ray Hammond was the kind of soldier who only ever seemed at ease in camouflage gear. He looked uncomfortable in the civvies he was wearing – a pair of chinos and an open-necked shirt. Danny couldn’t imagine what he did with his time when he was off duty, which he never seemed to be. Hammond commanded respect in the Regiment. He was a no-nonsense type, unwilling to take any shit from his men but always prepared to go the extra mile to look after them. Hammond would never admit that his men’s well-being was always at the forefront of his mind, but it plainly was. He could be a grumpy old bastard, though. He had a hangdog expression and perpetual dark rings around his eyes. The darker the rings, the shorter his temper. Everyone in the Regiment knew that. Tonight they weren’t so bad. Danny felt he could be reasonably at ease with the ops officer.

  ‘We couldn’t have done this in Hereford?’ Danny said.

  ‘If we could have done it in Hereford,’ Hammond replied, ‘we’d be in Hereford.’ He looked at the two empty pint glasses on the table. ‘And you’d have broken the two-pint rule.’

  Danny took a deep swig from his third pint.

  ‘Get it down you,’ Hammond said. ‘It’ll be a dry old party where you’re headed tomorrow.’

  ‘Only place I’m headed tomorrow is the range.’ But Danny already knew that this was unlikely to be true. His go-bag was in the back of the vehicle. He’d already made the call to the mother of his daughter that he was likely to be out of comms, maybe for days, maybe weeks.

  ‘You thought I’d drag you down to this shithole because I like your company?’ Hammond sniffed. ‘You’re deploying this evening. Afghanistan. After we’ve
finished up here, we’re going to head to a secret military operations base about ten miles away where you’ll be briefed on a covert, deniable operation, codename Spearpoint. I just wanted to have a quiet word before you get the official line.’

  Danny tried not to look surprised. ‘I thought we weren’t in Afghanistan, boss,’ Danny said.

  ‘We’re not. Officially.’

  ‘So why—’

  ‘You’re aware of the situation in Helmand Province?’

  ‘Fucked up beyond all recognition?’

  Hammond nodded. ‘Pretty much. Since the NATO withdrawal, practically every square inch of the damn Province has reverted back into the hands of the Taliban.’ Hammond looked around. Not that he needed to. The barman was still watching the football. The old drunk was still staring into his pint. Nobody was paying them any attention. And that, Danny realised, was exactly why they were here. ‘It’s hardly a surprise. There’s nothing out there to stop the Taliban becoming dominant. We have a few hundred green army guys in the country, mostly providing security around the Kabul area. The Yanks have recently deployed several thousand. But the lion’s share of security is down to the Afghan National Army. And frankly, I would trust those muppets to handle the security in this place.’ He waved an arm to indicate the deserted pub. ‘The top brass of the ANA are bent as three bob notes. Few months back, they had to put a general in prison for flogging fuel and supplies on the black market that were intended to get his men through the winter.’

  ‘They should have let his men deal with him.’

  Hammond shrugged. ‘Half of those kids don’t even know which end of a rifle goes bang. Not that it’s really their fault. Afghanistan’s still a war zone no matter what anybody says. Seven thousand ANA killed in the past twelve months alone. Trying to train kids up in the middle of that? It’s like trying to build an airplane when it’s in flight.’

  ‘And the Taliban have taken their chance?’

  ‘Not the only thing they’ve taken. Helmand Province is the biggest net exporter of heroin in the world. Just like it was before we went in. The Taliban control ninety per cent of the poppy fields.’ Hammond drank from his pint. ‘Put it this way: it’s not a situation the Foreign Office is comfortable with.’

  Danny said nothing. He’d been in enough briefings to know that Hammond was getting to the point.

  ‘Operation Spearpoint has had a team embedded in Helmand for the last nine months. Two teams, in fact. For obvious reasons, their presence needs to be kept under the radar and separate from the Regiment. If the press find out about it . . .’

  ‘What are they doing?’

  Hammond took a moment to gather his thoughts. ‘We’ve always had the same problem with the Taliban,’ he said. ‘One minute they’re firing a rifle or digging in an IED, the next minute they’re carrying no weapons, looking and acting like ordinary Afghan citizens. Our rules of engagement state that we can only engage a target if they’re firing at us . . .’

  ‘Thanks, boss, I seem to remember somebody telling me that.’

  Hammond ignored his comment and carried on. ‘It makes the Taliban difficult to identify, and even if we do identify them, there’s not a whole lot a regular military unit can do about it. Killing an unarmed citizen is a war crime.’

  ‘Good job we never do it, then.’

  ‘Yeah, well . . .’ Hammond tilted his head as if stretching out a tightness in his neck. ‘Like I said, we have two teams out there. One of them is a reconnaissance unit embedded in an Afghan village. It’s in the green zone just to the south of Sangin.’

  Danny nodded. Anyone with a working knowledge of NATO operations in Afghanistan knew about Sangin. It had been the scene of some of the bloodiest fighting throughout the Herrick deployments, and countless International Security Assistance Force troops had lost their lives there. Holding Sangin had been a major military objective. To the British Army, its name was synonymous with hardship, warfare and death.

  ‘Sangin reverted to Taliban control soon after the NATO withdrawal,’ Hammond continued. ‘It’s crawling with them. But there are pockets of territory in the vicinity where the ANA have established forward operating bases to hold them back for now. Our team is running a hearts and minds mission in one of these areas, a large village called Panjika. Healthcare for the women, education for the kids, usual drill.’

  ‘Very moving,’ Danny said.

  ‘In return, they’re compiling information. Names and locations of active Taliban militants. It’s mostly the women who supply the intel. The reconnaissance team pass it on to an ops centre in Cornwall, the one near here. They do what they can to confirm the sources, then they put together target packs for our second team.’

  ‘The kill team.’

  ‘Exactly. It’s a four-man unit and it’s been taking out Taliban operatives in Helmand for the past nine months.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Thirty-five, forty.’

  ‘That’s a lot of hits.’

  ‘There’s a lot of Taliban. If we don’t keep on top of them, it’ll be back to the bad old days. We lost nearly five hundred men in Afghanistan. If the Taliban take over again, people will start to wonder what for.’

  ‘Do the Taliban know it’s us?’

  Hammond inclined his head again. ‘They’ve probably put two and two together, but they’re keeping quiet about it. Having their top guys taken out on a regular basis does their PR no good at all.’ Hammond took a swig of his beer. ‘Of course, it’s not quite as simple as that. We’ve got the Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Military Police keeping an eye on the legality of the whole thing. They don’t like it, but as long as we keep within certain parameters there’s fuck all they can do. Each time we green light a target we have to present them with a document containing all the evidence. We have to show that we know that they’re armed with pistols or Kalashnikovs, or they’re in possession of bomb-making equipment. Trouble is, they aren’t – not always. Too cute for that. So we sugarcoat it. Doctor the evidence. Plant weapons on the targets when we hit them and show those pictures to the police and the lawyers. It’s all shit. Our intel is good, we know who these bastards are whether they’re armed or not. We just want you to go out there, kill them and do it properly.’

  ‘Why me? I thought you already had a team in-country.’

  Hammond gave another precautionary glance around the room. ‘You’re right,’ he said, his voice a little lower. ‘Forty hits is a big deal. It can mess with a guy’s head. Even one of us. The men we put on the kill team were specially selected. We were looking for guys who could keep up psychologically with that kind of hit rate.’ He let the sentence trail off. ‘You know Jimmy Murphy?’

  ‘A Squadron?’

  ‘Right. He flew back into the UK last night. He tried to OD on diazepam. The shrinks are dealing with him now. I’d be surprised if we see him back at Hereford any time soon. For now, we need to replace him.’

  Hammond picked up his pint and gave Danny a ‘that’s where you come in’ look as he took a swig.

  ‘What makes you think I’m your guy?’ Danny asked quietly.

  ‘Syria, Yemen, Africa, Mexico, the Gulf. Your file speaks for itself. This isn’t a job for a rookie. The Director Special Forces picked you out by name. To be blunt, I tried to talk him out of it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Spud.’

  Danny forced himself not to show any sign of emotion. Spud was his best mate, and he hadn’t made it back from their last mission. When guys back at base had tried to offer him their condolences, he would blank them. Some things he just didn’t want to think about.

  ‘In my opinion,’ Hammond said, ‘you need time to get over your last op. We know the kind of mental stress this sort of outing puts on people. I don’t think you’re up to it yet. The DSF disagrees. That’s why you’re on tonight’s flight out of Northolt. You’ll hit the ground running, Black, and you’ll need to keep your head.’

  ‘Who else is on the team?’ Dan
ny asked.

  An uncomfortable flicker crossed Hammond’s face. ‘I need a slash,’ he said. He stood up and walked across the room to the gents.

  Danny lifted his pint. He saw that his hand was shaking. He steadied it with a gulp of his beer and tried not to think about Spud. Easier said than done. His mind was still a welter of flames, rounds and screaming when Hammond sat down again.

  ‘Who’s on the team, Ray?’

  ‘Some old friends of yours,’ Hammond said. ‘Most of the intel that we use to make up the target packs comes from the women’s network. So we needed a female operative to be embedded with the reconnaissance unit. Caitlin Wallace has been out there since the start of the op.’

  Danny nodded, once again forcing himself to stop any trace of emotion. Caitlin was an Aussie, seconded to the Regiment, who’d worked alongside Danny on a couple of jobs. She was an impressive operator, but last time he’d seen her she’d been in a bad way. If Danny hadn’t made certain decisions, Caitlin would be a corpse rotting somewhere in the badlands of Iraq. That she was still operating at all was a miracle.

  ‘Does the kill team have any direct contact with the recon unit?’ he asked.

  Hammond shook his head.

  ‘You said “old friends”,’ Danny said. ‘Who else?’

  ‘That’s another reason I wanted to meet you here first,’ Hammond said. ‘You know the kill team leader.’ He fixed Danny with a direct gaze. ‘It’s Tony.’

  Tony Wiseman. Put it this way: he and Danny had history.

  If there was one Regiment guy who was known to everybody else in 22, it was Tony. He was a good soldier. A great soldier. Even Danny would have to admit that. But there were two sides to the coin that was Tony Wiseman. It was an open secret among the lads that he had links to organised crime in Hereford and beyond. Danny had seen him in action and knew it to be true. For some of the lads, it lent Tony an air of dangerous glamour, which he was very happy to take advantage of. Lots of the guys looked up to him. They’d do anything for a word of acknowledgement from Tony Wiseman. He was one of the cool kids.