Deep Black - Andy McNab [1]
He is also the author of the bestselling novels, Remote Control, Crisis Four, Firewall, Last Light, Liberation Day, Dark Winter and Deep Black. His new novel, Aggressor, will be available from Bantam Press later in the year. Besides his writing work, he lectures to security and intelligence agencies in both the USA and the UK.
Acclaim for Andy McNab:
‘McNab’s great asset is that the heart of his fiction is non-fiction: other thriller writers do their research, but he has actually been there’ Sunday Times
‘McNab is a terrific novelist. When it comes to thrills, he’s Forsyth class’ Mail on Sunday
www.booksattransworld.co.uk/andymcnab
‘Addictive . . . Packed with wild action and revealing tradecraft’ Daily Telegraph
‘Firmly established as one of the UK’s top thriller writers, McNab draws heavily from his experiences in the world’s most highly skilled special forces unit to make his fiction explosive, pacey and authentic’ Express Magazine
‘The word page-turner seems coined for McNab’s work’ Crime Time
Also by Andy McNab
Non-fiction
BRAVO TWO ZERO
IMMEDIATE ACTION
Fiction
REMOTE CONTROL
CRISIS FOUR
FIREWALL
LAST LIGHT
LIBERATION DAY
DARK WINTER
and published by Corgi Books
1
Bosnia, October 1994
From where I was hiding, the bottom of the valley looked like no man’s land on the Somme: acres of mud churned up by tank and heavy vehicle tracks, mortar craters filled with dirty water. Here and there a dead hand clawed at the sky, pleading for help that had never arrived.
It was a grey and miserable day, not yet freezing, but plenty cold enough to have robbed me of a whole lot of body heat over the last three days. Even so I was still luckier than the scattered corpses, half buried in the mud. Judging by their state of decomposition, some had been there since the summer.
I was about a hundred Ks north of Sarajevo, dug into the treeline at the base of a mountain. My hide looked across the valley to what had once been a cement works, precisely 217 metres away. The problem for the owners was that it had been a Muslim cement works. The perimeter fence had long since been flattened by Serb tanks, and not a single part of the complex had been left unscarred by the bitter fighting. Most of it had been reduced to rubble. A three-storey building that I guessed had once been a block of offices was just about standing, heavily pitted by artillery and small-arm rounds. Black scorch marks framed the holes where there’d once been windows.
I’d counted maybe thirty or forty Serb troops through my miniature binoculars, and I could see they were as cold and pissed-off as I was. Smoke billowed from an annexe, mixing with the occasional burst of diesel exhaust; one or two of Mladic’s boys were starting the vehicles, so they could get warm inside the cab.
I could only guess that, like me, they were waiting for the general’s arrival. Ratko Mladic, the commander-in-chief of the Bosnian Serb Army, had been supposed to show up the day before, but that hadn’t happened. Fuck knows why. Sarajevo had just told me to wait where I was, and that was what I’d do until they told me to lift off the target.
I was up to my ears in a Gore-Tex sniper suit, a big, bulky overall with a camouflaged outer and a duvet-type lining. It had kept me warm for the first few hours, but prolonged contact with the ground was steadily draining me. I had about two days’ food left, but being so close to the target, I was on hard routine. I couldn’t heat up food, or make a brew. Still, at least I was dry.
I raised the binos and scanned the ground again, controlling my breathing. It wouldn’t take much of a vapour trail for someone to think I