Defender: Intrepid 1 Read online

  About Defender: INTREPID 1

  Part Jason Bourne and part James Bond, Alex Morgan is an agent of Interpol’s Intelligence, Recovery, Protection and Infiltration Division – Intrepid. Policeman, soldier and spy, Morgan and his fellow Intrepid operatives are the faceless strangers who serve the greater good – the means to justify the end.

  When an intelligence agent is brutally murdered and the president of a small African country is put in danger, Morgan is sent in on his first solo mission.

  His cover is to evacuate a group of aid workers, with the help of the beautiful but distant Arena Halls, before the country is swept by civil war. But his true mission is much darker. A spy has gone rogue – and there's more at stake than the guy's career in the Secret Intelligence Service.

  A heart-pounding, no-holds-barred chase from the dark heart of Africa to the crystalline waters of Sydney culminates in a fight to the death to stop a vicious renegade intelligence officer and uncover the shadowy conspiracy behind him.

  Can Morgan stay alive long enough to save the girl, save himself and bring them all to justice?

  Access Intrepid HQ at intrepidallen.com and on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube: IntrepidAllen

  Want to share your reading experience with other fans in real time? Tweet using the hashtag #intrepidallen

  Contents

  About Defender: INTREPID 1

  PART ONE I’M SENDING YOU IN

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  PART TWO WELCOME TO MALFAJIRI

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  PART THREE TOO MANY LOOSE ENDS

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  PART FOUR THE PEACE DISINTEGRATED

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  EPILOGUE TO THE BRAVE BELONG ALL THINGS

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  Alex Morgan Will Return

  Acknowledgements

  About Chris Allen

  Copyright

  To my Sarah and our boys, Morgan and Rhett

  Intrepid agents are hand picked from across the world. Part policeman, part soldier, part spy, they are the faceless, unassailable strangers among us – serving the world and operating beyond the influence of the most powerful nations.

  PART ONE

  I’M SENDING YOU IN

  CHAPTER 1

  AUSTRALIA’S ECONOMIC EXCLUSION ZONE

  COCOS ISLANDS, INDIAN OCEAN

  The sky was stained black by clouds heavy with torrential rain. A violent electrical storm began its attack, stabbing at the horizon with angry, jagged blades a mile high. In the center of it all, the rigid-hulled inflatable boat bounced and crashed across the waves.

  Alex Morgan crouched low within the bow. The relentless bombardment of wind and rain stung through his sodden camouflaged overalls. His numb hands struggled to find a secure hold on the lashings along the boat’s swollen flanks and his knees smashed into the hull with each crash against the steel surface of the sea. He could just make out the smudge of the target in the distance. Adrenalin powered through his body.

  Not for the first time, Morgan dragged a wet sleeve across his brow. He sat shoulder to shoulder with a team of heavily armed clearance divers attached to HMAS Albany, a Royal Australian Navy Armidale-class patrol boat. The men, all armed with M4 Carbines and 9mm Browning Hi-Power pistols, were tactical specialists and veterans of the navy’s counter-piracy operations and the ongoing war on terror. Morgan was glad to have them in his corner.

  As far as the sailors knew, they were supporting an Interpol mission under cover of the navy’s border protection and maritime security ops. They were about to board a fishing boat that a few nights earlier had rendezvoused under dubious circumstances with an African cargo ship suspected of running guns in and out of the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Morgan knew that high-risk assaults at sea were the sailors’ bread and butter. He also knew, from the dubious expressions on the divers’ faces, that despite every one of them being prepared for the dangers of an imminent assault, this time it was he, the Interpol agent, who was the unknown factor.

  After all, Interpol were supposedly just advisors behind the scenes and yet Morgan had been winched aboard the Albany via chopper twenty-four hours ago in weather conditions even the clearance divers would think twice about; then he’d been a ghost, talking only to the skipper and the XO for hours. Later, when he surfaced to join the assault team for equipment issue and weapons test firing, he was aware that the more experienced among them knew he wasn’t there to give advice; they could spot an operator when they saw one. What they didn’t know was that Morgan was an agent of Interpol’s highly secret Intelligence, Recovery, Protection and Infiltration Division: Intrepid.

  “You know, sir,” yelled Lieutenant JJ Randle, the Albany’s executive officer, clinging to the lashings of the rigid-hulled inflatable boat, “I think this bastard thought he could outrun us. He’s trying to make a run back into the storm front.”

  “Yeah, he’ll be hoping he can lose us in this weather and give us the slip when it gets dark,” Morgan yelled back. “Better make our move.”

  Morgan cast a final critical eye over the fishing boat. Covert aerial surveillance had confirmed that a number of large packing crates had been transferred across to the trawler from the cargo ship the Marengo. It was the Marengo that was of interest to Intrepid. Discovering whatever had been transferred was paramount to Intrepid’s ongoing campaign against an international gun-running consortium. Determining exactly who wanted the shipment, whatever it was, would be for another time. Morgan just hoped the trawler wasn’t only full of fish.

  The treacherous conditions were worsening. The assault team was ready to board with the full firepower of the Albany trained on the fishing trawler. Morgan and the RHIB crew were closing fast. With less than 50 yards to go, the waters were churning, and the small tender was thrown around as they bounced and crashed their way closer.

  “OK. It’s a frequent flyer. That means we’ve come across her before,” Randle added for Morgan’s sake. “Standby, everybody. Security, you’re up first.”

  Two of the heavily armed clearance divers immediately sprang forward with M4s slung across their chests. The black webbing straps of their slings, flotation vests and l
eg holsters crisscrossed their mottled-gray camouflage overalls. Once aboard they would cover the rest of the team. The Albany’s radio operator, Maddy Lambert – a young woman who doubled as the patrol boat’s translator – would head straight for the wheelhouse with Randle; they would deal with the captain. Morgan would lead a sweep team and search the boat while the security team would remain on deck, covering the crew and maintaining visual and radio contact with the Albany.

  The two men who would board first were hanging on tight to the RHIB with one hand, stretching their bodies over the side, grasping for the fishing boat. Morgan and the rest of the team covered them from the RHIB, M4s drawn and rammed tight into their shoulders, fighting to maintain their aim through the sleeting rain. They could finally make out the dark figures on the starboard side of the fishing boat, watching their approach.

  “Steady boys!” Morgan cried. Then the RHIB thudded into the hull of the fishing boat with a boom. “Go! Go! Go!”

  CHAPTER 2

  MALFAJIRI, WEST AFRICA

  It would be a tough shot. The night was black as death and Sean Collins had been forced to select a firing position deep within the remains of a derelict house.

  Built in the old colonial style, the house had once been a grand home with sweeping views of the surrounding landscape. But that was before it had been consumed by the poverty and wretchedness of the shantytown now gathered around it. For Collins, the firing position was too exposed but he had no choice. To complicate matters, he was operating alone, when snipers ideally operate in pairs – spotter and shooter. There was nothing ideal about this. It was something that had to be done and he was the new boy.

  He slid a hand across the coarse bristles of his hair, which he kept cropped almost to the scalp, pushing another wave of sweat clear of his eyes. This job bugged him more than anything he’d had to do before, but he didn’t have the luxury of second-guessing orders. They obviously had their reasons back in London. Whatever those reasons were, they were of no value out here. Two targets. No backup. Talk about exposed. Fuck.

  On the plus side, if there was a plus side, the local government’s curfew was having the desired effect. The poorly trained troops of the conscript army patrolled to the rim of the city every night, operating on shoot-to-kill orders. Even out this far in the hills surrounding the city, the general population were staying off the streets. Only the rebels had the balls to surface after 2200. That was good, he thought. It meant fewer distractions; less chance of a mistake. With the country already on the verge of collapse, the ramifications of shooting the wrong person were inconceivable.

  Collins had selected what once would have been a guest room on the second floor of the southwest wing as his hide. It reduced the risk of his being seen from the street or any of the other neighbouring buildings, and provided the best available line of sight to the enemy compound and the exact 10 square feet of forecourt he had determined to be the killing ground.

  This stuff was bread-and-butter for Sean Collins. A former member of the British Special Air Service, Collins was considered a rare find by his superiors in the regiment, quite a compliment considering where it came from. Rising to the rank of sergeant with a Military Medal from Iraq under his belt, it was inevitable that he would be watched and eventually headhunted. But it wasn’t the money offered by private firms that finally enticed him away from Hereford. Collins wasn’t interested in money. He was a queen-and-country soldier. So, when the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6 as it is more commonly referred to outside the service, eventually tapped him on the shoulder, he was a perfect candidate.

  He’d moved in just after nightfall, positioning himself well back in the room, ensuring that he was not silhouetted against any areas susceptible to natural or reflected backlighting, like the doorway, or another window. The collapsed stairway and general wreckage between him and the ground floor meant that he’d at least have some warning if anybody started ferreting around unexpectedly downstairs. The fact that the wooden floor below had rotted away leaving a gaping black hole acted as a safeguard against surprises.

  Waiting was a killer in this game. Five feet ten inches tall with a physique like an Olympic-class sprinter, Collins knew he couldn’t afford to allow muscle fatigue to set in. He began a series of controlled stretches to ensure he was ready, starting at his feet and slowly, deliberately, working the well-practiced regimen along the entire length of his body.

  Fires, smoke, cooking smells and crackling radio music came from the shacks and houses nearby. The headlights of the rare passing vehicles bounced and flared off every surface. Locals, mostly gangs of displaced and angry young men, the rebel foot soldiers, were moving through the streets. A golden hue shone onto the target area from generator-powered lamps around the edge of the enemy compound, covering almost every square foot – it might just as well have been daylight. Perfect. Or was it? There were suddenly far too many dogs nearby, barking, fighting, sniffing around down in the street below.

  Collins glanced along the rifle, following the line of the barrel. It was a Czech-made bolt-action Česka-Zbrojovka, CZ 700, standard NATO 7.62mm ammunition. A blunt instrument. Not ideal, but the caliber was right for the job and it had been readily available at short notice. He looked back along the flank of the weapon until he could see the luminous hands of the watch that he wore, its face on the inside of his left wrist, enabling him to motionlessly check the time through the bindings of the weapons sling. 2230 hours. Not long now.

  He returned his attention to the sounds of the dogs. By the noise they were making, it seemed that a pack was forming. Damn! It would only be a matter of time before one of the bastards stumbled onto his scent. Then there’d be more barking, which could draw attention to the old house. If need be, he’d shoot any dog that came too close. He started to regret his choice of firing position and took himself through the stretching routine again to ease the tension. Besides, it was too late for regrets. Reluctantly taking his right hand away from the rifle, he reached for the silenced Browning automatic that lay beside him on the floorboards, drawing it a few inches closer.

  He ran through the game plan again, and with his right eye now pressed up hard against the rubber eyepiece of the scope, he traversed the barrel along the expanse of the enemy forecourt. He would make the shot as soon as he acquired the first target, before the man had time to make it to the main entrance of the house. Once that target was down, he’d have to acquire and confirm the second target with no delay. Then he would take the shot while there was still confusion in the compound. His withdrawal would have to be immediate – they’d be all over him within seconds if it wasn’t.

  Again the job’s shortcomings hit him. Two targets. Christ! What the hell were they thinking back at SIS headquarters?

  Headlights appeared in the distance, reflecting off the walls of buildings and lampposts as a vehicle, a Land Rover, neared the bend in the road. It slowed as it approached the rebel compound. Guards appeared from nowhere. Two men with rifles slung over their shoulders ran in unison across the compound under the glow of the lights. They dragged the large cyclone mesh gates open. The sniper’s pulse quickened immediately. A grimace split his menacing features – a tightly closed left eye, rugby-flattened nose, exposed teeth – and the contorted flesh of his right cheek rolled up hard against the laminated butt of the 700.

  Control your breathing, he ordered himself.

  There was a sound. Very close by. Not the dogs. Not the vehicle slowing down as it approached the compound. He sensed movement nearby and froze.

  The unmistakable shriek of floorboards creaking under boots was deafening in the silence of the old house. It came from the ground floor, approaching from the back of the house where earlier he’d crept through a rut beneath the floorboards. Collins lay dead still, mouth and eyes wide open. Outside, the target’s car was at the gates, entering the killing ground of the rebel compound. Whatever was happening below him could not interfere with his mission. He could not fail.

&n
bsp; But he couldn’t forget the immediate threat below. Was it one or two pairs of boots? Voices. Mumbling. Two men. Two guns. The skin of his face became taut. Again, he fought to control his breathing, impossible given the rapid thump of his heart resounding like a timpani in his ears. The voices were getting louder, deep, sonorous tones. His hand instinctively left the rifle and again crept toward the Browning. Self-preservation was irresistible. No! Contact now would blow everything. He had his orders. The targets, both of them, had to die tonight. Collins returned his hand to the rifle and his attention to the rebel compound. Back out on the road, the engine noise had dropped to almost nothing as the car was crunched into low gear, preparing to enter the compound. The dogs were going crazy. He had maybe a minute before the vehicle reached the entrance and the targets emerged.