In Paris, an elderly man is assassinated as he takes his morning walk. In the war-torn cities of Syria, government forces wage a bloody war against their own people. The Russians are propping up the government, the French are backing one rebel faction and the British are backing another. And in north Africa, young SAS trooper Danny Black is coming to the end of a gruelling tour of duty, or so he thinks ... Danny has a new mission. An MI6 agent needs to make contact with Syrian rebel forces, and also with the private military contractors who are – unofficially – training this rebel faction. As they travel deep into rebel heartland, Danny will learn who the masters of war, the men who call the shots, really are.
Danny Black is a lone wolf on an unofficial mission. He is in the deserts of East Africa looking for his old comrade in arms Spud, wounded in their last mission and now missing. A wounded British solder is a commodity in these parts... Danny recruits a grizzled ex-Blade to help him, encounters an ex-Mossad mercenary, who is part of the supply chain, and heads for a showdown with a small Somali army, led by most-wanted Islamist militant Abu Bakr. In the heat of battle Danny discovers, he is not the lone wolf he thought he was. He begins to wonder, as so many soldiers have before him, is he just a pawn in a greater game?
Hardcover - first edition, first impression - in very good condition. Minor edgewear on jacket. Pages are clean and sound. TS
A migrant boat battles through the rough Mediterranean. Its passengers are desperate, starving and scared. They are also being ruthlessly targeted by the SAS. Islamic State militants are smuggling themselves into Europe using these boats. Only by locating such men before they make it into the UK can the Regiment stop them committing their acts of terror on British soil. When one of these migrants reveals plans for a sickening Christmas Day atrocity in London, SAS operative Danny Black is tasked with infiltrating the most dangerous theatre of war in the world: Islamic State heartland. There, he and his team must lift a brutal IS commander - the only man who knows all the details of the London attack. The commander surrounds himself with vicious militants and a harem of sex slaves whom he treats in the most sadistic ways imaginable. And his jihadi wife is, if possible, even more abominable than him. As Danny pits himself against the violent thugs of the Islamic State, he learns that it is not just the UK that is under threat. His very presence on the mission has put at risk the safety of those closest to him. And he discovers that there are greater forces at work here, who do not care if the innocent live or die. Now there is nothing Danny will not do, no line he will not cross, to protect his family. Whether that makes him a good soldier or a bad soldier he neither knows nor cares. Because as he is fast learning, it is sometimes impossible to tell the difference between the two. And as every SAS soldier is trained to understand, the worst threats often come from the most unexpected places...
'The action comes bullet-fast and Ryan's experience of covert operations flash through the high-speed story like tracer rounds. ' The Sun The fifth book in the Danny Black series. On the border of the United States and Mexico, a war is raging that can never be won by conventional means. The drug cartels are rampant. Their victims number in the tens of thousands. Men, women and children are butchered in the most obscene ways imaginable. Of all the cartels, the most violent is Los Zetas. Originally made up of former Mexican special forces turned bad, they are perhaps the most ruthless and highly trained criminals in the world. Which is why only the most ruthless and highly trained operatives can ever hope to be a match for them. Enter the Regiment. When the CIA reaches out to the British military for help, SAS legend Danny Black and his team are despatched to give the Zetas a taste of their own medicine. Working deniably and under the radar, their mission is to sow death and mayhem among the cartel, and to coax out from hiding their elusive leader, the iconic Z1. But as Danny is about to find out, the arm of the cartel is long, their sickening strategies underhand and brutal. And in the dog eat dog world of this clandestine, bloodthirsty war, nothing is ever quite as it seems. It will take all the SAS team's skill to break through to the heart of the cartel. And even that might not be enough...
The attack dog had its jaws clamped round the target's forearm and had sunk its teeth into his flesh. Danny could see the dark stain of blood through his night-vision goggles. The screaming had stopped. The target was staring blindly into the darkness, but he clearly knew there were armed men approaching him... Helmand Province, Afghanistan. The Taliban are on the rise. A top-secret SAS kill team is assassinating high-value targets. It is bloody, violent, relentless work, suitable only for the Regiment's most skilled and ruthless head hunters. Like Danny Black. But when Danny joins the kill team, he learns that Taliban militants are not his only problem. There are elements within the British Army who want to bring the SAS to book. And there are elements within the SAS who have their crosshairs on Danny himself. Framed for a sickening war crime, Danny finds himself hunted in a brutal, dangerous terrain where his wits, training and strength may not be enough to survive. And in a world where his enemies are closer than he could have imagined, he must do whatever it takes to get to the truth. If he fails, it will mean the end not only of Danny Black, but of the SAS itself.
A series of gruesome killings take place in Dubai, Ghana and America. The victims are all connected with the SAS. In Hereford Danny Black realises they have something more specific in common - they were all involved in training a young Muslim soldier, Ibrahim Khan. Khan has been working under cover in Islamic State in a mission organised by MI6. Danny Black sets out to track him down with the help of Khan's MI6 handler on a trail that leads him to a library of ancient manuscripts in Damascus, the Syrian desert and finally back in the Brecon Beacons. There Danny discovers that he has finally met his match, his deadliest enemy - and it is the last person he ever expected.
An SAS unit codenamed Zero 22, operating covertly in the war-torn badlands of northern Syria, is ambushed and massacred by a small army of mercenaries dressed like Hell's Angels Danny Black survives the massacre and back in London learns that his unit was betrayed by a mole feeding high-level military intelligence to the Russians. Like any SAS man worthy of the name, his first thought is to avenge the men who lost their lives on the Zero 22 op. He has no hesitation in accepting the mission to assassinate the man responsible for the death of his mates. Danny finds himself operating with an MI6 officer and together they embark on a high-risk, deniable mission that will require all Danny's Regiment. As the mission unfolds, however, Danny learns that darker forces are at play. He realises that what started out as a simple act of revenge is just single play in a conspiracy that will take him across continents and pit him against the insidious machinations of the most powerful men in the world.