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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First published in 2017

  Copyright © Bram Connolly 2017

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone:(61 2) 8425 0100

  Email:[email protected]

  Web:www.allenandunwin.com

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 9781760295455

  eISBN 9781760638979

  Set by Midland Typesetters

  Cover design: Romina Panetta

  Cover photograph: Stephen Mulcahey / Arcangel (main image), Serts / iStock (background)

  Dedicated to my father, Michael Connolly, for his selfless

  dedication to his children; and Jacky Connolly for her

  love and support.

  There are men among us who have sacrificed. They train while you sleep. They slept while you partied. They have endured physical and environmental hardships just to know they could. They have been tested, over and over again on the basics. When they were perfect at the basics, they learnt advanced skills you couldn’t comprehend. Then they were let loose on our enemies. Foras admonitio. On behalf of Australia – I thank you.

  Bram Connolly DSM 2017

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  PROLOGUE

  SARPOSA PRISON, 10 JANUARY 2013

  The walls of Faisal Khan’s small cell shook violently. Dust engulfed the perimeter of the prison. There were always explosions just outside the walls. In 2012, Kandahar had been vying for top spot on the suicide bomber hit list, going head to head with Baghdad and 2013 was off to an equally deadly start. In the first few weeks of his captivity, Faisal Khan used to peer out the barred window in the corner of his cell, trying to see the action or the aftermath, but he had grown used to the sound now and he ignored the blasts.

  The pressure from the next explosion, however, was immense. It blew Khan halfway across the room. One second he was on his feet; the next he lay unconscious and bleeding from the nose on the dusty floor, his body covered in rubble from the caved-in ceiling.

  As if at a signal, other prisoners began to rush towards the ruptured prison walls. The first explosion had blown the gates clear, toppling the guard towers in the process and felling the razor wire. Meanwhile, militants were swarming towards the buildings. One vehicle had even entered the open courtyard, the driver pulling to a stop directly outside Faisal Khan’s cell.

  A hunched figure, dressed in the flowing brown trousers and shirt favoured by ISIS and carrying an AK-47, jumped down off the back of the vehicle and sprinted through the dust-shrouded opening in the wall. He grabbed a fistful of Khan’s long matted hair and proceeded to drag him unceremoniously back through the opening, across jagged bricks and debris.

  The militant cleared his throat of the dust and smoke from the explosion and moved his mouth to the microphone on his collar.

  ‘I’ve got him,’ he said.

  ‘Good, move to the first pick-up location,’ came the reply.

  ‘I’ve told you before, it’s an extraction point.’

  ‘Whatever, just get him back here.’

  The militant picked up the bleeding Khan and dumped him into the tray of the waiting Toyota Hilux. He then leaped in behind him and slammed his hand twice on the roof. The vehicle spun its wheels and disappeared back through the wire as quickly as it had arrived.

  ...

  Steph Baumer’s iPhone screen came alive with a single thumbs-up emoji. She put her pen down and picked up the phone from among the clutter of folders marked TOP SECRET and sent a thumbs-up in reply. Then, she leaned back in her chair and looked up over the top of the computer monitors, printers and radar screens lining the long table. Folding her hands behind her head, she smiled as she gazed out of the huge bay windows to the snow-capped peaks of Italy’s Apennine Mountains.

  She was a world away from Kandahar, but she was still calling the shots.

  1

  WESTERN SYDNEY, ZERO DARK HUNDRED

  Adjusting the focus on his night vision goggles, Matt could just make out the three-storey industrial building less than sixty metres inside the fence line. Street lamps from an airfield down the road reflected off the low cloud cover and bathed the target building, giving it an eerie glow. On the top floor, someone had left some lights on. Save for that, the rest of the building was in darkness, deathly quiet. Matt’s forward scouts held open the chain wire fence for him. For fifteen agonising minutes, they had snipped away at the links, one at a time, covering each other, scanning for threats. Finally, they created a ripped hole barely large enough for a grown man to duck through.

  Matt climbed inside the perimeter and then signalled with an infrared torch to the rest of his waiting commando platoon, hidden back in the tree line.

  ‘Thanks, lads,’ Matt whispered as he turned around and knelt down. The wet ground immediately soaked through his kneepad and into his flight suit. He raised his rifle to cover the building. Daniel Barnsley, Matt’s signaller, moved in on the other side, also raising his rifle to cover the other half of the building’s frontage.

  The two forward scouts slowly lowered their weapons and started to assist the rest of the assaulters who had just arrived. Some of them had ladders, some had frame charges for windows and doors, and others had dogs. What was required here was teamwork to ensure they all got through the fence and on their way to their entry points without alerting anyone in the building that they were there.

  Matt could just make out a low pitch sound off in the distance. He knew it well enough. He had heard it a hundred times before, the sound of helicopters approaching. Still beyond truly audible, it starts off as a change in the ambient noise, almost silent at first, the lowest humming sound. He checked his watch and then looked around at his men making their way to their entry points, all on track. The Sniper Platoon was acting as the other tactical assault platoon. Commanded by Trav Mercardo, it would be here in less than three minutes. Matt’s platoon needed to be in position to blow in on the second-floor entry points. They would need to have their ladders and charges in place and dogs in position to synchronise with Trav’s platoon, which would fast rope out of the helicopters onto the roof and the top-floor balcony. As if this wasn’t complex enough, a platoon of Navy clearance diver
s would be coming in at speed on V8 Land Cruisers with the intention of making entry through the ground-floor doors. They had practiced this more times than Matt cared to remember, but he still felt a sense of excitement and anticipation.

  ‘All call signs, this is Oscar Charlie, two minutes…over.’

  ‘Yankee Alpha, acknowledged,’ Matt replied to the radio message from Mike Truscott, the officer in charge of the tactical assault group.

  ‘X-ray Alpha, roger over.’

  Matt could hear the helicopter engines screaming as Trav made the call. The pilots would have accelerated the birds to around 140 knots and they would be coming in low and fast on the other side of the treetops. Matt knew that Trav’s guys would be sitting with the rear doors open, ready to throw the ropes out and slide down to their target.

  ‘Whisky platoon ready to roll…’ Matt looked over to the navy platoon’s start point and could see the infrared spotlights on top of the Land Cruisers. He twisted the dial on his radio presser switch to change the frequency, allowing him to talk directly to his platoon.

  ‘All call signs, this is Yankee Alpha. Send status…over.’ He pushed his Peltor hearing protection tighter over his right ear to hear the whispered replies. One by one, each of his teams messaged back that they were at their primary entry points and ready to go.

  The officer in charge of the tactical assault group came over the entire radio network to all three platoons. He timed the radio call with perfection, taking into account the speed the aircraft were maintaining and the location of the clearance divers.

  ‘All call signs, this is Oscar Charlie. Ready…Ready…Ready…Ready…Ready…STAND BY…GO GO GO!’

  The six teams from Matt’s platoon detonated their frame charges. The second-storey windows exploded into the building and a stream of men poured in from the top of the ladders. Dogs ran into the hallways, silhouetted momentarily by flash grenades lighting the building up like a Christmas tree. Four helicopters flared violently overhead and then hovered sixty feet above the roof. Two ropes out of each helicopter delivered lines of assaulters, who no sooner hit their landing points than they sprinted for entry positions, blowing the top-storey balconies and windows to smithereens. At ground level, the Land Cruisers screeched to a halt and the clearance divers, who threw themselves out of the vehicles even before they had completely stopped, sprinted the few feet required to smash open the windows with hooligan tools, jumping through and engaging the meagre resistance offered by the terrorist elements.

  Matt moved in behind Team Three with Barnsley right behind him. The lights came on inside. Matt flipped up his NVGs and went to white light on his primary weapon.

  ‘Follow me, Barns.’

  ‘With you,’ said Barnsley.

  The two of them broke off from Team Three and made their way towards an open stairwell. The lights went out again, plunging them into darkness. Matt tried to flip down his NVGs. A sudden flash from a stun grenade lit up the stairwell entrance.

  ‘Ah, shit…I can’t see.’ Matt let go of the night vision goggles and switched on his torch again. Pivoting to his left, he lifted up his M4 short-barrelled assault rifle and cleared behind the bottom of the stairwell. The torch made him an instant target and rounds whizzed past his face. Barnsley’s torch came on next to him. The two conducted a hallway drill, covering each other as they pivoted further in behind the stairwell.

  Zip Zip. Two more rounds flew past Matt’s ear.

  ‘I’m hit, boss.’

  ‘Fuck, what?’ Matt spun around just in time to see Barnsley fall to the floor. At that same moment, he felt the impact on the back of his helmet and neck.

  Whack. He crumpled down next to Barnsley. The two men lay at the bottom of the stairwell. Matt looked across to Barnsley.

  ‘I’m sorry, boss. He was in the cupboard on the other side of the stairwell. I didn’t see him until it was too late. We didn’t stand a chance…’ Barnsley’s voice drifted off.

  ‘It’s okay, mate. I should have left my torch off.’

  Matt winced in pain as two more rounds slammed into the back of his legs. He closed his eyes tight for a moment then looked again at Barnsley. He could see Barnsley had taken two rounds to the face. In any other circumstance the shots would have been fatal. Instead, paint was smeared all over the left side of Barnsley’s Scott protective mask.

  One of the attack dogs came barrelling past from the top staircase and smashed his way into the cupboard, placing a bite on the guy who was playing terrorist. The handler jogged past, giving Matt a cursory glance. No one stopped for a downed assaulter, not until all the hostages had been saved, not in training, not for the real thing. If the tactical assault group was called in there was no other option. Failure wasn’t on the cards.

  The lights came on inside the kill house, as the guys called it. Matt stood up, helping Barnsley up at the same time. He keyed the microphone on his chest rig.

  ‘Okay, lads, that’s a wrap. Move outside and wait for further orders.’ Matt and Barnsley strolled down the stairs and out the front door into the warm summer night air. Trav Mercardo came out close behind them.

  ‘That didn’t exactly go to plan,’ said Trav, slapping Matt’s shoulder and wiping the paint off the back of his helmet. Trav was a little shorter than Matt, but with brown wavy hair and chiselled features the two could be mistaken for brothers. Trav eased his way through life. A country boy from outback Queensland, nothing seemed to overly bother him and Matt had always been envious at how easy things came to his younger colleague. Trav was already earmarked as potential commanding officer material. All the other officers knew it.

  ‘It’s these bloody goggles.’ Matt released his helmet, took off the safety goggles and wiped the fog from inside the lenses. ‘I’d rather wear a gas mask, at least they seal properly. These things shit me to tears. No situational awareness and when we use sound and flash grenades the light reflects off the mask.’

  ‘Really good excuse, Matt.’

  ‘Piss off, Trav, you little prick.’

  ‘Good comeback, brother, I wasn’t prepared for such a witty reply. Oh wait, yes I was,’ Trav laughed. He acknowledged Major Mike Truscott, the officer in command of the tactical assault group, who had walked in from his vantage point.

  ‘That went well. Good work, the both of you. Now that’s how we synchronise an assault. Let’s just hope we can do the same tomorrow night during the multi-jurisdictional anti-terrorist exercise.’

  ‘Shouldn’t be an issue if the water platoon guys can swim into the target vessel on time, boss.’

  ‘Trav, in all my years in special forces I’ve learnt one thing: don’t worry about what the water boys are up to, worry about your own shit. They’ll sure as hell take your job if you’re not up to it.’

  Matt knew that Major Truscott was talking from experience; he had been in the Special Air Service Regiment for some twenty years before coming across to the Commando Regiment. He was a good boss, a little crazy at time with a penchant for speaking his mind in spectacular and abrupt fashion, but get him on a good day and he was more than fair towards his younger officers.

  Matt took off his chest rig and placed it on the ground, switching off his radio to conserve the batteries. He stretched out and bent down to wipe the paint off the back of his legs.

  ‘Have you heard the news this evening, Matt?’ the CO asked.

  ‘Hardly, I’ve been walking in the dark for the past five hours.’

  ‘There was a prison break in Kandahar today. Seems your old mate the ever-elusive Faisal Khan is back on the run.’

  Matt straightened his rifle on top of his chest rig to stop the barrel falling in the gravel. He slowly looked back up at Mike Truscott.

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Yep, I’m afraid so. The commanding officer let me know a few hours ago.’

  Matt nodded at the mention of Mark Hoff. The commanding officer had always been good to him. A few years previous, while deployed in Afghanistan, Hoff had been the onl
y one Matt could trust. Back then the murderous Taliban commander, Objective Rapier, had been on a destructive rampage across the country and Matt, commanding Yankee platoon, had been on the back foot the whole time. Sold out by senior CIA operator Steph Baumer, and undermined by his own command structure, Matt’s career looked like it was in tatters—that was, until Mark Hoff arrived on the scene and ordered Matt to go after Faisal Khan, Objective Rapier’s intelligence officer. Khan’s capture lead to the fall of the Taliban commander and his men. Matt dealt out violent justice to them across the province.

  ‘The CO told me that there was a major assault on the prison. It’s suspected that it was an ISIS inspired attack. Of course, no one has claimed responsibility yet. Faisal was snatched from his cell and about thirty other prisoners escaped.’

  ‘Makes you wonder why we even bothered going to Afghanistan in the first place, hey, Matt?’ said Trav, removing his own helmet and running his hands through his hair. He motioned to his guys, who were now coming out of the kill house, to make their way over to the briefing area.

  Matt stared at him, deep in thought.

  ‘What?’ said Trav.

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with our role in Afghanistan, Trav. This is fucking personal. Faisal was a human intelligence contact for Steph Baumer.’ Matt spat on the ground as if her name itself had dirtied his mouth.

  ‘The CIA chick?’ Trav knew exactly who Matt meant. He was glad that Matt was actually talking about this. It was the first time he had heard him speak of Steph Baumer since the incident in Kandahar back in 2010. Of course, everyone in the 2nd Commando Regiment knew the story, that Matt had fallen in love with Dutch intelligence officer Allie van Tanken and that Steph had killed her. All the guys had liked Allie. She had been smart and popular across the contingent and everyone had known her to be highly professional. She had also taken a shine to Matt.

  ‘What did this Steph do exactly?’ asked Mick Truscott innocently.

  ‘Steph killed a friend of mine, Allie van Tanken. Allie had been trying to warn everyone about a guy she had recognised as a facilitator for suicide bombers, who had arrived to meet Steph. He was also the trigger man for a suicide bomber who was on the inside. He hadn’t been checked properly. In all the confusion, Steph shot Allie. I was the first on the scene and she died in my arms a few minutes later. We think Khan had organised a hit on Steph, but we never heard it from him directly.’