Brute Force

by Andy McNab

Genres: Mystery; Spy Thrillers

Synopsis

A cargo ship is apprehended by the authorities off the coast of Spain, loaded to the gunwales with enough arms and ammunition to start a war. Twenty years later, an unknown aggressor seems intent on eradicating those responsible for the treachery, one by one.

The last victim was brutally tortured with a Black & Decker drill, then shot through the head. And Nick Stone — ex-SAS, tough, resourceful, ruthless, highly trained — is next on the killer's list...

In his most daunting mission yet, Nick Stone must find a man who shared that past, and who may know more about the present threat than he is prepared to reveal.

As the two find themselves pursued across sea and desert, they become ever more enmeshed in a deadly network of betrayal, to which Stone himself unwittingly holds the key. And in a final confrontation that echoes his worst nightmares, only he can stop the unthinkable and save the lives of those he holds most dear.

A Random House UK audio production.

Release date: January 26, 2021

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 480

Sample

1

Tripoli docks

October 1987

I sat well back in my seat and listened as Colonel Gaddafi’s latest day-long rant burst from the radio like an Arab Fidel Castro on speed. I pictured a big mike blocking his craggy features as he denounced Reagan, Thatcher and all things Western, so all you could see was a mad mop of black curly hair and angry flecks of spit flying in every direction.

I was in the passenger seat of an old box-like Russian jeep. Africa was littered with the things, bare metal showing through the green paint where thousands of boots and hands had worn it away.

I was sweating big-time, and it had nothing to do with the weather. This might be North Africa, but it was October. It was cold. The leaking was to do with the wetsuit I had on over my clothes. Apart from my sweatshirt, tracksuit bottoms and trainers, I was totally sterile: no money, no weapon. I wasn’t going to need any, not even a watch. Time wasn’t going to matter on this job. I had to react to events as they happened, not when the little hand hit five. I would give my cover documents to Lynn at the very last minute.

Sitting back in the seat and completely still – that’s the secret of not being seen. The jeep looked just like any one of the ten-year-old American pimp-mobiles we were parked alongside: empty. I had my binos up, eyes on target. My main area of focus was the pair of big holes at the arse end of the ship from which six-inch-thick ropes snaked towards the quayside.

The life of the docks continued around us. The quay was jammed with boats unloading TVs and white goods to feed Libya’s consumer boom. This was an oil country and then some. Arabs from all over, brown and black, made up the labour force. The overseers were all ex-pats. The air was filled with German, French, British and American accents. So much for the sanctions against what the White House called the mad dog of the Middle East. All the old imperialists had their noses in the trough. Everyone was helping themselves to the huge salaries offered by this former Italian colony.

The driver was listening intently, hands resting on the enormous black steel steering wheel. ‘What’s he on about?’ I didn’t even bother looking over at him.

He powered down the small transistor. ‘The whole world is going down the gurgler, as per usual.’ The voice was softly spoken, the accent cut-glass.

Although the British embassy had long since closed – along with everybody else’s – as part of their sanctions against the Colonel for his habit of sponsoring global terrorism, everybody, Brits included, had left a couple of spooks behind. Colonel Lynn was one of them. Gaddafi remained one of the biggest threats to world peace, and his black-leather-jacketed heavies tended to come to the UK and murder anyone speaking out against the regime, so we needed people with their ear to the ground.

Lynn wasn’t a field operator. He was our man in Havana – only in Tripoli. In his late thirties, of average build, he looked and spoke like a history teacher – but his fresh-from-the-shower smell screamed officer, and his aura marked him out as a high flier. He spoke the language and knew the players. He’d probably been born here; for all I knew, his dad had been ambassador or something. Colonel Lynn – I never had found out what his first name was – ate, drank and breathed the place. He was what the Firm called an Arabist.

He was all right, I supposed – just not the sort of guy I’d phone up and ask out for a brew and a sticky bun. A bit too keen for me; a bit too full of devotion to the cause. He probably kept a picture of the Queen under his pillow. And he was also just a bit too keen to tell me how to do my job. He didn’t like people like me. There was just a hint now and again of disgust at what people like me got up to. Even though he was part of it, he was from the hands-clean side of the fence and everyone on my side was not much more than a necessary evil.

‘Don’t forget to confirm the cargo before anything else.’

‘OK. What if it isn’t there?’

‘It is.’

‘So why check it?’

‘Because I need you to tell me when you get back that you physically saw it.’

The target ship was parked up between two Libyan navy patrol boats in the military section the other side of the harbour. I deliberately didn’t say ‘moored’ because it got a rise out of Lynn. He knew about boaty stuff. I didn’t know many of the technical terms and I didn’t need to learn them. That was the navy’s job. As far as I was concerned it was parked up, and that was fine.

Lynn had a small sailing boat of his own in a marina about fifteen Ks away. I’d spent the last four days living in it while he briefed me. The sitting and eating area downstairs was full of pictures of him and his wife in the creeks of north Norfolk. Nelson country, he called it.

I’d fucked up; by showing a spark of polite interest in a shot of the two of them standing outside their local, the Hero, I had opened the door to a serious history lesson, beginning with how the great man had been born a few miles up the road from their home.

The Egyptian-registered Bahiti could carry up to 150 tonnes of cargo. When the chairman’s wife smashed a bottle of Cairo’s fizziest against its side, all the bodywork was probably a gleaming white. Twenty or so years of saltwater and neglect had streaked it with rust. A crane was mounted at the bow for loading and unloading. The rest of the topside was flat, apart from the bridge tower at the back end. It looked like a miniature oil-tanker.

Lynn had his binos up too as forklifts hummed around us, laden with yet more crates and what looked like a consignment of dustbin lids. A group of dockers leant against walls smoking, waiting for the next job to come along or some German to bollock them for being Arabs.

‘You see the man on the gangplank now?’

I nodded.

‘Black leather jacket? Papers in his hand?’

‘Yeah, I’ve got him.’

‘That’s Mansour.’

I knew plenty about Mansour from Lynn’s briefing. He was in his forties and worked for Libyan intelligence. He was medium height and stocky, with brushed-back hair and a very neat moustache.

‘He calls me Leptis.’

‘Leptis?’

‘Just a name he gave me.’

‘You two mates?’

‘Hardly.’ He dropped his binos for a moment and turned to me. ‘Need-to-know, Nick – and you don’t need to.’

He was right. I didn’t need to know – I didn’t even want to. All this spookery was way beyond my pay scale.

‘You sure that’s him? He looks fatter than in the pictures.’

‘Absolutely certain. He’s over-indulged the falafels, that’s all. A sign of privilege. He’s overpaid.’

Mansour pointed and shouted, and generally seemed to take over the show as he walked up the gangplank. Two bodies emerged from the hold, headed for Mansour and started talking.

‘Stand by – that’s Two Cells.’

Lynn confirmed. ‘Yes, that’s Lesser.’



94



Her name was Layla Hamdi. She was Palestinian, and she ran the training camp in Ajdabiya.

Lynn tilted his head in my direction. ‘Eight hundred kilometres along the coast – halfway between here and Egypt.’

Mansour had more. ‘In October 1985, after the PLO was attacked by Israeli planes in Tunis, the various factions that made up the PLO had decided to accept a clandestine offer from Gaddafi to relocate many of their significant activities, including weapons instruction, to Libya.

‘Since Libya was already firmly on the West’s radar screens for its support of foreign terrorist organizations like PIRA, the PLO’s move here was picked up and tracked. But the Ajdabiya training camp and its leading proponents, including Layla, Lesser’s teacher, weren’t.’

He was happy to talk about it now, he said, because all of this was very firmly history; one of the many aspects of Libya’s past that the country’s Great Leader had freely renounced in the wake of the Lockerbie settlement.

Believe that and you’d believe anything. Mansour was waffling because he knew that the longer he talked, the more time he bought for himself. I’d have been doing the same.

Time for us, on the other hand, was ticking on. It was coming up to 5 a.m.: first light soon. Decisions were going to have to be made.

Layla Hamdi, he said, had trained as a chemist at UCLA, was incredibly gifted academically, and had shown no signs of radicalism until both her parents were killed by a stray IDF tank-shell that ripped through their quiet apartment in Gaza. The Israelis never apologized – Layla’s parents were merely collateral damage in the Palestinian homelands; reason enough on its own, I thought, to turn Layla away from life as an academic and to the Cause.

When she returned from the USA she signed up with Force 17, another PLO spin-off, and soon discovered she had a natural skill as a bomb-maker.

Pulling in disparate techniques in the art of explosive-charge construction from right across the Middle East – including those taught by the British to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan – Layla rose through the ranks of the PLO to become its bomb-maker supreme. ‘In the never-ending game of new countermeasures by us and then counter-countermeasures by you that characterized the bomb-maker’s world, Layla was the person who kept the PLO and its fellow travellers state-of-the-art.’

She started out as Lesser’s mentor and became his lover. Not long after that, she became his wife. ‘When she first met him, Layla was already in her mid-thirties. Lesser was still in his late twenties, the tall muscled Irish boy with the unkempt hair.’

I pictured him in bomb class. He must have stuck out a mile in the company of his fellow students: Latinos from the Shining Path, Muj from Afghanistan, Arabs, and the odd Red Brigade Italian. Fuck knows what he and Layla had had in common, beyond bomb-making and sticking it to imperialist, bourgeois, capitalist regimes.

According to Mansour, it had been love at first sight. The Palestinian and the Irishman. It sounded like a bad joke…

When Gaddafi did his deal with the West, one of the conditions was that he gave up his support of terrorism. The bomb-making school was shut down and Layla suddenly found herself out of a job.

Now in her mid-fifties, and not in the best of health, she had decided to stay in Libya rather than go back to the West Bank. I couldn’t say I blamed her. Ajdabiya, whatever that was like, couldn’t be any worse than the Gaza Strip. Well, we were about to find out.

‘How long to get there?’

‘By car? If you take the coast road, maybe eight hours. But for you, that would not be an option. It runs through the oil fields and there are many checkpoints. Without papers, you would not get through.’

‘Is there another way?’

‘There is the desert road, but it will add another four hours to the journey. There are still checkpoints, but fewer. And the guards are more likely to accept baksheesh. The road, however, is still dangerous.’

‘How so?’

‘There are potholes – deep ones; deep enough to shatter an axle. And after a storm, the sand can bury several kilometres of tarmac, forcing you off-road. You would need a four-by-four, at the very least.’

Mansour must have realized, the second he’d opened his mouth, that he’d walked straight into that one. He added almost immediately: ‘Of course, Al-Inn, you are at liberty to take my car. In fact, it would be an honour…’

I turned to Lynn. ‘Grab whatever you think might help us on the road: a map, even if Mansour’s Q7 has sat nav; water – lots of it; and food – as much as you can find, so we can eat on the move.’

I packed the revolver in my day sack and pocketed the Makarov along with Mansour’s mobile phone.

Mansour told me where in his study he kept his spare mags and ammo. I went and took all I could fit into the day sack.

It was there that I also found his money – just as Lynn had predicted: a briefcase full of dollars – roughly ten grand’s worth. Ten grand would go a long way in the baksheesh stakes – all the way between here and Johannesburg, if need be.

Lynn was still emptying the fridge of water bottles when I got back. I ripped at the clingfilm to release Mansour.

He rubbed his wrists. ‘What are you going to do with me?’

I tapped my watch. ‘You’ve got five minutes to get dressed. Then you’re coming with us.’



95



We drove out of Tripoli into the rising sun.

I was at the wheel. Lynn was in the back, and Mansour was beside me, ready to take on any checkpoints. Nobody spoke much. Nobody needed to. All I’d had to do was reset the sat nav’s voice commands from Arabic to English and load in Ajdabiya. According to Mansour, the house we wanted was located on the beach. His memory wasn’t great. He’d have to point out the actual building once we got there.

We got past the city limits. I’d given Lynn the .38 and told him to keep behind Mansour’s seat. On the coast road, with the sea on our left, the desert stretching away on our right, there weren’t many opportunities for the Libyan to cut and run, but there was no telling what he might try.

I glanced across at him. ‘What’s with the Russian?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘You started to talk to me first in Arabic, then in Russian. Why?’

‘I didn’t know who you were. I still don’t know who you are – only that you are British. When you were in my room, you could have been anyone. And a man like me has many enemies.’

Lynn leant forward. ‘Why would the Russians be after you?’

Mansour kept his eyes on the road. ‘I have always been a survivor, Al-Inn. But how could a man like me, with my background, survive in the new Libya? Our Great Leader had publicly renounced terrorism. He’d informed the world that Libya was ridding itself of its ballistic missiles, its weapons of mass destruction. I had emerged from prison with nothing. Nobody was interested in a disgraced former spy. What was I to do?’

‘What did you do?’ Lynn asked.

‘All I had were my connections – contacts built up over many years – and my interests … our interest, Al-Inn. In the desert, there are treasures beyond your wildest imaginings – you know this – many of them still waiting to be discovered. From prehistory to the time of the Romans – the desert is full of these priceless remnants of my country’s past. And there is only so much room in the Al-Jamaheri Museum…

‘Now, many people come to Libya to look for these artefacts. I know what is out there, Al-Inn. I have spent years in the desert. The desert is my home. There are places I know that nobody else does. Why should some archaeology student from an American, Italian, British or French university be allowed to make these discoveries – to take these antiquities back home with them, supposedly for study? They are Libya’s heritage and they should stay here.’

I couldn’t see the problem. If some geek with a metal-detector discovered Septimus Severus’s money box, he should be allowed to hang on to it. Finders, keepers.

But Mansour was getting sparked up. ‘It is we who should decide what is to be bought and sold, what is to stay or leave my country.’

I loved how this guy twisted and spun. Now he’d recast himself as some kind of custodian of national treasures. It was fucking obvious he wasn’t just squirrelling these objects away for posterity; he was trading them as well, and not on eBay.

I kept my eyes glued to the potholes that peppered the lumpy tarmac. ‘And that’s where the Russians fit in?’

‘I am sorry?’

‘The Russians. You decided that some of these priceless artefacts weren’t quite Libyan enough, and that entitled you to do a little trading with your old mates?’

Mansour stared straight ahead, tuning me out.

I didn’t want to let him off the hook. ‘Let me see if I’ve got this right. In the eighties, Libya’s foreign terrorist programme was up and running, and you were the guy who put it all together. The training, the weapons, the shipments…’

‘If you want to put it that way, yes.’

‘The market was big – PIRA, PLO, the Red Brigade, you name them. And the Soviets fell over themselves to supply you with all the kit. So there you were, top of the heap, pulling all the strings. Until the Bahiti op went to rat shit … And when you finally got out of jail, it wasn’t just Gaddafi’s little slice of paradise that had changed, was it?’

‘No.’

Too right it wasn’t. The Cold War was over. The Soviet Union didn’t exist any more. But a lot of those GRU colonels Mansour used to deal with, his regular weapons suppliers, had grown rich – or, at the very least, had some extremely rich, well-connected friends.

I swerved to avoid another pothole that was deep enough to rip a wheel off. ‘If there’s something a wealthy Russian loves to spend his money on, apart from bling, powerboats and football clubs, I bet it’s bits of old Roman bric-a-brac.’

Mansour bristled. ‘The alabaster bust in my house is of Septimus Severus. It is one of a pair. The other one is at the Capitol Museum in Rome. On the black market, it would fetch millions.’

It explained a lot, not least the Q7, the briefcase of cash and the curious symbols I’d noticed on the sat nav’s map display. Mansour had marked the location of these out-of-the-way archaeological sites. Nice work if you could get it. It almost made me wish I’d paid more attention at school.

Mansour turned and looked directly at Lynn. ‘I was only ever prepared to sell things that didn’t matter – a late classical statuette here, a bust from the Hellenistic era there. These things are two-a-penny, Al-Inn. You know that. But they always want more.’

‘It’s a Russian thing,’ I said. ‘Old habits die hard.’

He turned and watched the road. ‘Some of my former contacts are still in the military and the GRU. Some now work for the FSB and Russian arms manufacturers. Many of them have a great deal of money. They also have some powerful friends.’

No surprises there. The Russian mafia were everywhere. ‘What did you do that means you have to sleep with a weapon?’

Mansour sighed. ‘There were certain treasures, like the Severus bust, that I am not prepared to sell. They should remain in Libya. But the people you speak of are putting me under a great deal of pressure. Their clients – some of them well-known public figures – these men are extremely powerful, and they want only the very best. When they set their eye on something, they will stop at nothing to get it. I have started to become … nervous … There is no one I can turn to here. I needed the advice – the help – of someone I could trust.’

‘So you decided to call Lynn?’

Mansour didn’t answer. Something on the dead-straight stretch of road ahead had caught his eye. It had also caught mine.

Half a mile away, shimmering in the morning sunlight, was a checkpoint.



96



As we slowed to join the queue of waiting traffic, I told Mansour to put on his shades.

I tucked the Makarov under my thigh. ‘Got that .38 within reach?’

Lynn shuffled about in the back.

‘Make sure you can get to it.’

The old familiar feeling was crawling through my stomach – that sickening lurch, when you know you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time and, worst of all, with no one and nothing to back you up.

‘Get about $400 out of the case. Then keep it closed and under your feet.’

Our passports didn’t have visas or entry stamps. To a guard who was even half alert we’d stick out a mile. But a few hundred USD might help us on our way.

I watched a sentry making his way towards us, past taxis laden to capacity, the odd private car and a couple of long-distance trucks headed for Benghazi and beyond. Immediately in front of us was a Toyota pick-up stuffed with farm produce. A goat stared vacantly at us from the tailgate, alongside a stack of bamboo cages filled with emaciated chickens.

I left enough room to pull a hard right into the scrub and loop back on the road to Tripoli if it turned into a gang fuck. We’d have to find another route to Ajdabiya. I wanted this sorted; I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder.

The checkpoint was basic: a red-and-white-striped pole tied to a couple of sand-filled oil-drums. The sentry was picking vehicles out of the line at random and waving them through. A voice at the back of my head told me we weren’t going to be one of them.

I’d normally expect guys like this, in the back of beyond, to be half asleep, bored or just pissed off. But he and his mates looked particularly switched on; they wore shades under their ball caps, crisply pressed green uniforms and carried AKs across their chest.

Mansour gave a low groan. ‘Money will not help us.’

‘Why not?’

‘They are Kata’eb Al-Amn – Security Battalions. Gaddafi’s men.’

I looked at Lynn. ‘What’s he talking about?’

Lynn spat something in Arabic. Mansour grunted back.

‘What?’ I hated being out of the loop.

‘It’s unfortunate.’ Lynn’s head appeared between the front seats. ‘You don’t usually find the Security Battalions at VCPs. They consider themselves above this kind of thing. Checkpoints are normally manned by the army or the People’s Militia. Draftees. Eminently bribable. But not this lot.’

Unfortunate? Not quite the term I’d have used. ‘Are they looking for something – us, maybe?’

Mansour sucked his teeth. ‘Perhaps they had some trouble here. There have been protests over the price of bread and rice. They could be looking for troublemakers.’

‘What are you going to tell them?’

‘Quiet; I will deal with it.’

The guard reached the Toyota and started talking to the driver. Even the goat was starting to look uncomfortable. Mansour’s time was up and I wasn’t liking this one bit.

I turned to Lynn. ‘Weapon?’

The strain was registering on his face too. ‘On my lap.’

I checked. It was concealed by his jacket.

I nodded towards Mansour. The sweat was starting to trickle down his face. ‘A word out of place, shout and I’ll put my foot down. Then shoot him through the back of the seat.’

The guard handed back a fistful of papers to the driver of the Toyota. The goat celebrated by trying to bite the head off a chicken that chose that moment to stick its neck through the bars of its cage.

The guard turned his attention to us.

Our fate rested in the hands of a man who’d have slit his own mother’s throat twenty years ago on the say-so of the Great Leader with the big lapels.



97



I kept my hands on the wheel so the guard could see them and so I could turn the wheel as soon as this went noisy. The Makarov was still where I needed it – cold comfort in a rapidly worsening situation.

The guard swaggered up to the Audi and tapped the glass with the muzzle of his AK.

Mansour powered down his window. Warm, dust-laden air blew into the car as he beckoned the guard to his side of the wagon.

The guard bent down to give us a good look and I saw the pips on his shoulders. I wasn’t hot on Libyan rank insignia, but I reckoned he was a captain or a major. His face was heavily pockmarked. A layer of black stubble showed beneath the ball cap. He stared at us over the top of his Aviators before finally addressing Mansour.

‘Taruh fein?’ Not a hint of deference; just a whole lot of suspicion.

I caught the word Ajdabiya in Mansour’s reply.

There was another burst of questioning and I glanced in the mirror at Lynn. I didn’t like the way this was going. By the look on his face, he didn’t much either.

I ran my right hand down the side of the wheel so it was nearer the weapon.

The guard barked again and Mansour reached slowly into his inside pocket.

The guard’s head moved a fraction; I was pretty sure the eyes behind the Aviators were looking straight at me. I smiled back.

Mansour handed over a small green carnet. More questions, more suspicion. The guard looked from me to Lynn, then switched his attention to Mansour’s little green identity card.

I swore I heard the tick of the electronic clock on the Q7’s dashboard as the officer scrutinized each line of Mansour’s ID.

He glanced at the card, then at Mansour’s face. Suddenly he barked at us, using a different tone altogether: ‘Yallah, yallah, yallah.’

The officer stepped back. I had no idea what was going on. Was he going for his weapon?

My hand moved towards the Makarov. I’d drop the guard before he could fire and then get my foot down.

Mansour realized what was going through my mind. He held his hand flat below the level of the window, where the guard couldn’t see what he was doing. He was signalling for me to cool it. ‘They’re letting us through.’

The guard pressed Mansour’s identity card back into his outstretched hand.

‘Drive.’

I didn’t need to be told twice. I edged past the vehicle in front.

More shouting. Lots of excitement. The sentry on the barrier snapped a smartish-looking salute as we passed beneath it.

Mansour hit the button and his window slid upwards.

I blipped the accelerator and the Audi’s big engine purred as we headed back out onto the open road.

I checked the mirror, glancing back every so often as the checkpoint receded into the distance. Nobody was following us. It soon disappeared in a cloud of dust.

I turned to Mansour. ‘What happened?’

The big, satisfied grin had found its way back onto the cat’s face. ‘Gaddafi still uses many Russian advisers. There are Russians everywhere in this co. . .