Ryan, Chris - Zero 22

Zero 22

Chris Ryan

www.hodder.co.uk

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

Head Hunters

Black Ops

In the Strikeback Series

Deathlist

Shadow Kill

Global Strike

Red Strike

Circle of Death

Chris Ryan Extreme

Hard Target

Night Strike

Most Wanted

Silent Kill

First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Coronet

An Imprint of Hodder & Stoughton

An Hachette UK company

Copyright © Chris Ryan 2020

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.

Cover image: Lewis Csizmazia

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

Hardback ISBN 9781473667952

eBook ISBN 9781473667945

Trade Paperback ISBN 9781473667969

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DZ

www.hodder.co.uk

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

TWENTY-SIX

ONE

23.45 hrs, Eastern European Time

The convoy headed west.

It comprised four vehicles. Three sand-coloured Jackals, each containing three guys and mounted with two general-purpose machine guns. The Gimpys had an effective range of two thousand metres in sustained-fire mode. Regular infantry would need two men to operate each weapon. Not the SAS. Each gun was constantly manned by a single Regiment guy wearing night-vision goggles, surveying the desert terrain and ready for whatever threats they might encounter. The fourth vehicle was a Bushmaster. Camouflage paint. Sturdy, rear-mounted spare tyres. A safe, sealed, air-conditioned unit. Five guys. Remote weapon station with a manned 40mm grenade launcher. Heavily armoured. It led the convoy as it trundled through the night along a rough, unmade road.

The Iraqi border was seventy-five klicks to the east. Thirty klicks north: Turkey. This bleak, blasted patch of desert was officially Syrian territory, and there was always the risk that the convoy would encounter Syrian government forces. Unofficially? Emboldened by the American withdrawal and the backing of the Russians, the Turks were making frequent sorties across the border. The militants of Islamic State still infested the region. The Kurds, fierce fighters with good reason to fight, viewed this land as part of their tribal territory of Kurdistan and were still in situ, despite their supposed friends the Yanks fucking off and leaving them to the non-existent mercy of the Turks. The Russians had Spetsnaz special forces on the ground and some remaining Delta Force were here.

Try to untangle that little web of enmity and alliances. Try to distinguish your friends from your enemies in this messed-up part of north-eastern Syria.

Danny Black didn’t care to. He was happy to follow orders and so were the rest of his troop. They were heavily armed and confident in their ability and firepower. They knew they could handle anything they came across.

B Squadron SAS had been in-country for a month now. At first, Danny had been glad of the distraction after the rigours of his previous op: a mission to hunt down a lone-wolf killer called Ibrahim Khan that had not gone at all the way anyone had expected. Now Danny was throwing himself into B Squadron’s current objective: regular sorties mounted from a base in Iraq, over the border into Syria to take out known IS targets. It had been a blood-soaked month. A month of night raids on isolated villages. Of 9mm rounds discharged ruthlessly into the skulls of IS scumbags. Danny had no problem with that. None of the guys did. Each IS militant they put in the ground made the world a better place. But it had also been a month of screaming wives and suddenly orphaned children. It would get to even the most cold-hearted Regiment death squad eventually.

Their latest orders, delivered to Danny that morning over the encrypted radio, felt like a momentary relief. Even Bullethead had said so. Implacable, relentless Bullethead, who had more kills to his name than anybody Danny knew. He was so called because of the pointed shape and shine of his bald head, which beaded with sweat in the heat whenever he wasn’t wearing a helmet. He had the lowest voice Danny had ever heard. When he spoke, it was like the engine of a motorbike turning over. ‘Change is as good as a rest,’ he had growled, as Danny told them they had new instructions.

‘There’s a secure prison facility three hundred klicks south-west,’ Danny said. ‘Up until a couple of months ago it housed IS prisoners and was guarded by Kurds.’

‘So, when we say prison facility, we mean torture facility, right?’ Bullethead said. ‘Otherwise the Kurds would have just killed the fuckers.’

‘I guess,’ said Danny. ‘Anyway, the Kurds came under attack and had to abandon the site. The IS prisoners escaped. Chances are we’ve shot a few of them in the last few weeks. The facility’s been deserted since the breakout, but a Kurdish unit have just returned. They’ve got some documentation that might help identify further targets. And reading between the lines, they’re shitting themselves. They want an escort out of Syria in return for the intel. That’s us. Operation call sign, Zero 22.’

Which was why, as the rest of B Squadron continued their dark work across the area, Danny now found himself sitting in the Bushmaster, the constant groan of the engine grinding in his ears. The vehicle had two places up front and two vertical rows of four seats in the back, facing each other. It was cramped and hardly luxurious, but it was a hell of a sight better than the tin ovens that were the Jackals. As the senior guy, Danny reckoned he’d earned his place here. When they grew closer to the target, however, he’d transfer to one of the Jackals. If anything went wrong, he wanted to be in the best position to call the shots, not stuck inside this armoured beast.

Bullethead sat opposite him, staring into the middle distance, his body moving with the vehicle. Next to him was Dougie, an acerbic Glaswegian which a shock of ginger hair. They were all in their early thirties. Tough men in the prime of life and peak of fitness. They were dressed similarly. Crye Precision camouflage gear with knee pads sewn into the trousers. Armoured flaps to cover their groin area, currently clipped up. Plate hangars with magazines for their personal weapons stashed round the front and side. Personal radios at shoulder height with a stubby antenna pointing upwards and coax cables coiling round their bodies. Boom mikes and earpieces. Helmets, cut away around the ears, with night-vision goggles fitted to the top, ready to pull down when necessary. GPS units on their wrists. Their personal weapons – suppressed C8 rifles and Glock 17s – were sprayed in olive camouflage colours. Dougie had a black bandana over his mouth and nose. In other circumstances, it would be there to conceal his identity. Out here, it was a filter from the dust that stuck to everything. Lots of the guys wore them. Danny didn’t bother. He’d operated in this part of the world so often that clean air was now a novelty to him.