Outcast

  CONTENTS

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Copyright

  One

  Santiago, Chile

  Warrant Officer Jamie Carter stood at the edge of the training range, the stiff afternoon breeze scraping through his dark hair, and wished to fuck he was somewhere else.

  A few paces away, the last soldiers were piling out of the assault vehicles that had ferried them over from the main compound two kilometres away. There were twenty guys in total. Recruits to the Pumas, the newest addition to Chile’s Special Forces brigade.

  The cream of the crop, Carter had to remind himself. The country’s finest warriors. Though some of them didn’t act much like it.

  Every day for the last month, Carter had been reporting to the camp shortly after dawn to oversee a training package for the soldiers. Under his guidance, the lads had spent hours on the ranges and in the lecture rooms, practising shooting drills, doing range work, studying navigation techniques and fieldcraft, intermingled with gruelling fitness sessions.

  Now they were about to undertake their latest exercise.

  They had gathered at the edge of a wide parcel of land the approximate size of a football field. A hundred metres away, in the middle of the field, piles of car tyres had been arranged in two-metre-high stacks, filled with sand and laid out in the shape of a hedge maze, with doors hanging from wooden frames denoting the various entry points.

  Tyre Village was part of a wider military training area. Beyond the maze there were separate zones for shooting ranges, grenade and mortar practice, fields for conducting physical drills and digging hides and murder holes. Everything the soldiers needed to know to transform them into a decent SF outfit.

  The camp was set on the floor of an arid valley, surrounded by a patchwork of scrubland, bare hills and irrigated fields. Shreds of tissue-like cloud clung to the peaks of the distant mountains. They were eight kilometres from the nearest small town, fifty kilometres north of Santiago.

  More like the bloody arse end of the world.

  He had arrived several weeks ago, on a two-year posting. Continuation training, they called it in the Regiment. Overseas instruction for friendly SF units.

  Carter had another name for it: purgatory. Send over a Blade to spend a couple of years in-country, overseeing a programme for a bunch of sub-level operators. Train one section of soldiers for six months, get them up to scratch, pass them out, then move on to the next intake.

  Rinse and repeat.

  No one liked continuation jobs. Fact. The work was lonely and dull, and it was hard to stay motivated when you knew that most of the students would let their standards drop as soon as you left. But it was big business for the British government, Carter knew. Foreign countries were willing to pay a small fortune for the privilege of having their troops schooled by a Regiment man. More importantly, the programmes had the Whitehall seal of approval: the prestige of the SAS was a useful tool for currying favour with tinpot dictators and foreign rulers.

  No one seemed to give a shit that the guys you were educating might end up facing you on the battlefield one day.

  Some years ago, a bright spark had changed the rules so that the money from these contracts went straight back to the Hereford coffers instead of the government. Now roughly fifty per cent of the work done by the lads involved training packages for foreign armies.

  But it was still a crap assignment.

  Carter knew he was in Chile for purely political reasons. The British government leased a base in the south of the country, which was critical for mounting airborne operations around the Falklands if things ever kicked off there again. In return for the lease, Whitehall had agreed that 22 SAS would help to train up a new covert SF unit, drawn from the ranks of the Chilean armed forces.

  Another twenty-three months of this shite, Carter reminded himself.

  And all because I pissed off the wrong people.

  Carter shoved aside his anger as he marched over to the soldiers.

  They were decked out in their standard-issue camo uniforms – no one wore black kit to conduct house assaults these days, not even the lads back home in Hereford. Fifteen of the Pumas had M4 assault rifles slung over their shoulders. The others carried PGM 338 French-manufactured sniper rifles, chambered for the .338 Lapua Magnum round. All of them were equipped with leg-holstered Beretta Px4 Storm semi-automatic pistols as their side-arms. Each man also had a swept-back ballistic helmet, tactical plate carrier with front and rear armour, knee and elbow pads. Plus L2 grenades and flashbangs stowed in the pouches on the front of their vests, spare mags for their primary weapon systems, tactical radio sets, throat mics and headphones.

  Carter wore the same uniform as the rest of the lads, but a rank above. The Regiment liked its instructors to keep a low profile while they were on the job. For security reasons, mainly. Better to have the trainers blend in with the regular troops, especially if Whitehall didn’t want to advertise its relationship with the domestic government. Having to put on a foreign uniform every day only added to Carter’s foul mood.

  This isn’t why I joined the Regiment, he thought. Dressing up in the gear of some second-rate military and lecturing a bunch of amateurs.

  I shouldn’t be here.

  Carter had nothing against these lads personally. They were no different from the soldiers he’d trained in a bunch of other countries during his nine years in the Regiment. But he knew how these units operated. Often, the training programmes were a waste of everyone’s time. Whether a student passed or failed had little to do with his capabilities as a warfighter, and a lot to do with politics.

  In theory, Carter was there to develop a highly disciplined elite fighting unit.

  But in reality, he was more like a glorified range safety officer.

  It was like asking a World Cup-winning coach to manage a pub team.

  ‘Right, lads,’ he began. ‘This is the situation.’

  The soldiers listened keenly as he briefed them on the mission background. Painting a picture for them. Carter spoke in a deliberate, slow tone. Although these guys were reasonably fluent in English, some of them struggled to understand his Geordie accent.

  ‘Terrorists have taken over the Japanese embassy in Santiago,’ he went on, waving a hand in the direction of Tyre Village. ‘All attempts to negotiate a peaceful resolution have failed. An hour ago, the terrorists executed one of the hostages. They’re now threatening to kill one civilian every hour unless their demands are met in full. The President has been updated and has authorised the use of violence to resolve the situation. This is where you come in, fellas.’

  He paused as he glanced round the sea of faces in front of him. Carter had spent the past few weeks assessing the students and he’d swiftly identified those who were up to the job. There were a few of them, he reflected. Dedicated professionals. Guys who trained hard and took themselves seriously in spite of the crap pay and the political bullshit. Lads who were keen to learn from their mistakes.

  Most of the others were willing but limited. Honest soldiers, but not up to scratch as elite operators. Carter had no problem with them, as long as they put in a shift, did what they were told and didn’
t pull the piss.

  But several of them had no business being anywhere near a Special Forces unit.

  Upon his arrival Carter had been dismayed by the poor quality of some of the recruits on the training ranges. He’d seen soldiers getting panicky when handling grenades, dropping them by accident at their feet instead of hurling them at their targets. A few students had failed to cover their flanks or raced too far ahead of their colleagues during fire-and-movement drills. Lectures on navigation and map-reading had fallen flat. Some of their weapon-handling skills were slack.

  In the Regiment, you’d weed out the bad apples early on in the selection process. Time-wasters didn’t last long.

  Here, Carter had no choice but to grit his teeth and get on with it.

  He said, ‘Snipers have been observing the stronghold for the past twenty-four hours. We know that there are sixteen embassy staff and civilians being held hostage inside, and eight X-rays. They have to be dealt with now, to prevent any further loss of life.’

  He looked towards the unit commander. Captain Carlos Medel was a single bloke in his early thirties, tall and lean, with a chin so prominent you could hang a coat from it. He was a fundamentally decent soldier who, rather unusually, appeared to have earned his rank on merit. He was diplomatic, disliked small talk and bluster. He was also one of the few friends Carter had made since he’d arrived in Chile. They often enjoyed a few jars in one of the bars in Santiago, shooting the breeze.

  ‘Captain, I want you to plan a multi-entry assault,’ Carter said. ‘You’ve got thirty minutes. Then I want you to prosecute an attack on the stronghold. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, Jamie,’ Medel said. ‘No problem.’

  ‘I should lead the main assault group, Captain,’ one of the soldiers cut in.

  Carter slanted his gaze towards the guy who’d spoken. Fabian Vargas. One of the bad apples. A doughy-faced fat kid in his early twenties. Carter had taken one look at the guy and wondered how the hell he had managed to get selected for SF duty. When he’d put the question to Medel, the captain had merely shaken his head and muttered something about the kid’s father, a general who had recently been appointed as the President’s chief of staff. Carter had disliked Vargas on first sight, and nothing he’d seen since had changed his opinion.

  The previous day they had been practising a Man Down drill. A straightforward exercise. A couple of guys run over to a soldier pretending to be wounded, lift him up and carry him to safety while their colleagues put down suppressive fire to cover them. Vargas had even managed to cock that one up, dropping the injured lad as they legged it from the kill zone. The guy was a walking disaster.

  ‘Put me in charge,’ Vargas carried on. ‘I’ll cut those bitches down, Captain. Show the gringos how we do things here.’

  Carter laughed. ‘The only thing you should be leading is the line at the camp cookhouse, you fat fuck.’

  A handful of the other students chuckled among themselves. Vargas stared at the instructor, jaw clenched tightly with rage. Carter wasn’t bothered by his reaction. He wasn’t here to throw an arm around the soldiers and make them feel good about themselves. Then he noticed something, and his expression shifted.

  ‘Where the fuck is your rifle?’ he demanded.

  The soldiers instantly fell silent, sensing their instructor’s bad temper. Vargas flushed and rubbed the nape of his neck.

  ‘I asked you a question,’ Carter growled.

  ‘In the truck,’ Vargas replied. ‘I forgot it. No big deal.’

  ‘That’s “sir” to you.’ Carter jabbed a finger at his flabby chest. ‘Rule number one. Your weapon doesn’t leave your side. It should never be more than arm’s length away from your person. That’s basic.’

  ‘It was a mistake . . . sir,’ Vargas replied defensively.

  ‘I don’t give a shit.’ Carter stepped closer, moving into the Chilean’s personal space. ‘Start taking this exercise seriously or do us all a favour and fuck off.’

  Vargas stared back at him, lips pressed into a hard line. He said nothing.

  ‘I didn’t hear you,’ Carter said.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake. Hurry up and get your weapon.’ Carter watched Vargas hurry over to the truck, then turned to the others. ‘What are you lot waiting for, a bloody invitation? Get a move on. Clock’s ticking.’

  Medel turned and barked orders at one of his subordinates. Victor Ramirez was a stocky bloke with short-cropped hair, eyes that were too close together and a nose so wide it looked as if he’d snorted a golf ball. He was the team’s Method of Entry expert. The demolitions guy. He was also a moody fucker. Carter liked him about as much as he liked tofu and low-alcohol beverages.

  The soldiers hastily gathered around a patch of dirt on the periphery of the range while their captain took a knee in the middle of the semicircle. Like footballers getting a pep talk from the coach before the big match. Carter looked on from a distance as Medel fashioned a crude map of Tyre Village on the ground, laying out sticks for the walls, rocks to mark the entry points. Then he divided his men into five three-man assault groups and started delegating. Telling the guys who would go where.

  Although the soldiers were familiar with the range, they didn’t know the precise layout waiting for them inside. To add to the element of surprise Carter had spent the morning on the range with a pair of staff helpers, laying traps. Targets depicting masked gunmen and hostages had been pasted onto strips of plywood and strategically placed around the rooms, with some hidden behind bits of furniture, or sited inches from the hostages. Booby traps had been planted: smoke grenades triggered by tripwires, some of them strung out at ankle level, others at chest or head height, because guys conducting an assault tended to focus on the ground and often missed the threats closer to eye level.

  An instinct thing, Carter guessed.

  Medel continued briefing the team.

  Carter checked his G-Shock. Counting down the minutes.

  As he watched and waited, the hot anger flared up in his chest again. The same rage he’d felt back at Hereford a couple of months ago, when they had told him about his next job.

  The head shed had stitched him up. He was certain of it. There had been no good reason to fly him out to South America on a training stint. They had stuck Carter on a shite posting as punishment.

  Eleven months earlier, things had been different. He had been the toast of the Regiment back then. Hero of the Bamako siege.

  Carter had been posted to Mali to run a training package for the security forces while the rest of the country went to hell. A bullshit job, but he’d accepted it without complaint.

  Until one morning, five months into the rotation, his phone had vibrated with an incoming call from a voice he didn’t recognise. Which turned out to belong to the defence minister.

  There had been a terrorist attack, the minister had said. Gunmen from a breakaway faction of Islamic State were laying siege to one of the city’s most popular hotels. Dozens of Western aid workers, businessfolk and embassy staff were bottled up inside. The security forces were struggling to coordinate their response and the minister wanted Carter to help organise the assault.

  At that particular moment, Carter had been working on the ranges several miles outside of the city. He’d hastily grabbed his gear, bundled it into his civvy vehicle and raced over to the scene. Then he’d thrown on his plate armour, grabbed his suppressed M4 rifle and flashed his military ID at the cops manning the cordon, telling them to point him in the direction of the terrorist attack.

  Within minutes, he’d cleared the hotel lobby, dropping three targets.

  Carter had then turned his attention to securing the upper floors of the hotel, where the rest of the gunmen were holed up with the hostages. He had been rapidly organising the security forces when he’d received a hostile call from Nigel Brathwaite, the British ambassador, ordering him to back down.

  ‘This isn’t your job,’ Brathwaite had thundered down the line. ‘You’
re here in a strictly advisory capacity. Leave it to the domestic forces to resolve. That’s a fucking order.’

  Carter had ignored him. A no-brainer. Lives were at risk. He was in a position to do something about it. He wasn’t going to walk away.

  The assault on the hotel complex had been a textbook deliberate action plan. A swift coordinated attack to neutralise the gunmen without having to gamble away the lives of innocent civilians. Carter had directed the security forces every step of the way.

  The desperate firefight inside the building had lasted for less than four minutes. By the time it was over, twelve terrorists had been killed for the loss of one hotel security guard. Fifty-eight hostages had been rescued, including the British chargé d’affaires and several American citizens.

  If Carter hadn’t formulated the plan of attack, he doubted many of them would have survived. Maybe none.

  Although his picture and name had been withheld from the media on the orders of the Regiment, everyone at Hereford knew him as the guy who had done the business on the ground in Mali.

  Slotting the enemy. Saving lives.

  In the aftermath of the attack, the President of the United States had privately met with Carter to express his gratitude. Later, there had been a discreet medal ceremony behind closed doors in Washington, attended by a coterie of high-ranking generals and members of Congress. There Carter had been presented with the Medal of Honor, the highest award the US can bestow on a warrior. The decoration was traditionally reserved only for American service personnel, but the President had personally insisted that Carter should receive it.

  The head shed had been uncomfortable with a Hereford man accepting such a rare distinction and had only grudgingly agreed on condition that the ceremony remained a private affair, withheld entirely from news outlets. That had been fine by Carter. He didn’t want the publicity anyway. He was a quiet man by nature. Happiest in his own company, walking the hills around his home in Credenhill.

  For a while, he had been a living legend at Hereford.

  Then it had all gone south. Big time.

  Brathwaite had given Carter a bollocking for his refusal to follow orders. Soon after his return to Hereford, Carter had realised the extent of his mistake: he’d made a powerful enemy for life. The ambassador had used his clout in Whitehall to make Carter’s life in the Regiment a misery. Turned him into an outcast. Hence the bullshit job in Chile. Punishment, for failing to follow orders.