Duncan Falconer The Protector (epub)

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.Table of ContentsTitle PageCopyright PageDedicationChapter 1 - Mallory’s TreasureChapter 2 - Abdul’s DilemmaChapter 3 - Abdul’s MiscalculationChapter 4 - Stanza’s DilemmaChapter 5 - Tasneen’s DreamsChapter 6 - Mismatched PairsChapter 7 - A Life RebornChapter 8 - Forbidden FruitChapter 9 - The Team DeploysChapter 10 - The Lion’s DenChapter 11 - Plans Within PlansChapter 12 - The BetrayalChapter 13 - Into the BreachChapter 14 - Rendezvous with DeathChapter 15 - War Without WinnersDuncan Falconer is a former member of Britain’s elite Special Boat Service and 14 Int., Northern Ireland’s top-secret SAS undercover detachment.After more than a decade of operational service he left the SBS and went into the private security ‘circuit’.His first book, the best-seller First Into Action, documented the real-life exploits of the SBS.His three subsequent books, The Hostage, The Hijack and The Operative, follow the fictional exploits of SBS operative Stratton.The Protector is his fourth novel.In the last few years Falconer has operated at length and often alone in places such as Afghanistan, Palestine, Liberia and throughout Iraq.He now lives anywhere between his three bases in England, North America and South Africa.‘A gripping and authentic view of life and death in the dangerous world of private protection by someone who has been there and worn the T-shirt’Soldier MagazineAlso by Duncan FalconerThe HostageThe HijackThe OperativeNon-fictionFirst Into ActionThe ProtectorDUNCAN FALCONERHachette Digitalwww.littlebrown.co.ukPublished by Hachette Digital 2010Copyright © Duncan Falconer 2007The moral right of the author has been asserted.All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.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 permission in writing 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 including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.A CIP catalogue record for this bookis available from the British Library.eISBN : 978 0 7481 2228 8This ebook produced by JOUVE, FRANCEHachette DigitalAn imprint ofLittle, Brown Book Group100 Victoria EmbankmentLondon EC4Y 0DYAn Hachette Livre UK CompanyTo Ricky1Mallory’s TreasureThe Royal Navy Search and Rescue Sea King helicopter flew low and fast over the flat grubby desert, all eyes in the cockpit focused on a thin trail of black smoke half a mile ahead.Beyond it was a blurred collection of dilapidated dwellings on the other side of a road that marked the northern edge of the town of Fallujah that was a short flight west of Baghdad.Visibility was poor in every direction, a fine dust filling the air like smog and with more trails of carbon smoke dotting the hazy landscape like plumes from the stacks of distant steamships, columns of dark vapour bending gently on a south-easterly breeze.The pilot was tracking a signal that had its focus point a little to the left of the closer, finer plume.It was on an emergency bandwidth emitted by a radio in the hands of a British Tornado pilot whose aircraft had been shot down in the last twenty minutes.Royal Marine Corporal Bernard Mallory stood beside his Royal Navy partner, Petty Officer Mac Davids, in the narrow doorway that connected the cabin to the cockpit.At thirty, Mac was a couple of years older than Mallory, a head taller and not as strongly built but a hundred yards faster in a mile race.Mallory pushed the inside of his helmet against his ear as he strained to listen to the weak, intermittent radio message from the Tornado pilot who was answering the co-pilot’s request for his situation report.‘All I want to know, for Christ’s sake, is if the area is hot or not,’ the pilot said, a little tense, more to himself than to anyone else.His eyes darted back and forth across the range of his vision, looking for any sign of a threat that he knew was out there somewhere.It would not have been this crew’s normal responsibility to carry out the rescue of a downed pilot in hostile territory.That task usually went to Special Forces flights and the rescue crews were normally made up of SAS and SBS operatives.But when the distress call came in none were immediately available and Samuels, the Sea King pilot, a gung-ho type who had missed the first Gulf War by only a couple of months, elected to at least check the level of hostility.The duty watch officer running the operations desk had allowed him to give it a go but only if there was zero enemy ground activity.Mac and Mallory had exchanged glances when they’d first heard their boss’s request to do a recce, knowing his hankering for a bit of the excitement whose lack he had been complaining of.His appetite was more urgent now that the war was fast coming to an end.The tension in the helicopter increased perceptibly as Samuels took some lift out of the rotors and dropped the heavy beast to a couple of hundred feet above the ground.They were now exposed not only to anti-aircraft guns and rockets but also to small-arms fire.In the back of everyone’s mind was the questionable logic of risking the lives of four men to save just one but that was a danger they had accepted before joining the search-and-rescue service.This was the wrong time to dwell on it anyway but the arithmetical reasoning was more acute at this stage of an operation.Mallory stepped back from the cockpit doorway, pulled his black-tinted sunshade visor down, gripped the heavy handle of the large side door and yanked it across on its runners until it engaged the catch that locked it open.The wind charged in aggressively, ravaging every inch of the cabin and tossing around anything that could not hold firm against it.He held on to the winch above to lean out and get a better look to starboard while Mac went to a port-side window.Mallory looked down at the arid ground a hundred feet below as it shot past: dirty gold sand with a sprinkling of black giving way to sparsely cultivated patches of bracken-like vegetation, a track with a battered pick-up trundling along it, a line of parched, dust-coated eucalyptus trees, a herd of scattering goats with the shepherd boy twisting in their midst to look up at him.What sounded like far-off explosions were barely discernible above the noise of the engines and rotors chopping the air and except for the handful of distant smoke columns he could see little evidence of the heavy air assault taking place in the southern part of the town.The Sea King had originally been on its way to an American base - confidently named ‘Camp Victory’ - at Baghdad International Airport on the west side of the city when they’d picked up the downed pilot’s distress call [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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