Total control, p.1
Total Control, page 1
Praise for the Jack Tate series
‘Looking for breakneck pace and a relentless hero? Alex Shaw has you covered’
James Swallow
‘Alex Shaw is one of the best thriller writers around! Fast-paced, Total Blackout gripped from page one and didn’t let go … as fast as a Hollywood movie’
Stephen Leather
‘Compelling and authentic. An explosive new series with an uncompromising hero’
Tom Wood
‘A perfect mix of hi-tech, high-concept modern action thriller and old school Cold War espionage where evil Russians are still plotting the downfall of the West and only one man can stop them’
Simon Toyne
‘Jack Tate is a powerful character, a true Brit hero. A cracking start to a new series!’
Alan McDermott
‘Alex Shaw is a master of the action thriller. Grabbed me from the first page and never let go’
Michael Ridpath
‘Riveting thriller with an original plot and surprising twists. Tate is totally convincing as a classic Brit operative. Great drama and characterisation’
Duncan Falconer
About the Author
ALEX SHAW has lived and worked in Ukraine, the former USSR, the Middle East, and Africa. He is the author of the number one international Kindle bestselling Aidan Snow SAS thrillers. His writing has also been published in several thriller anthologies alongside international bestselling authors Stephen Leather and Matt Hilton. Alex, his wife and their two sons divide their time between Ukraine, England and the Middle East.
@alexshawhetman
/alex.shaw.982292
www.alexwshaw.co.uk
Also by Alex Shaw
The Aidan Snow Series
Cold Blood
Cold Black
Cold East
The Jack Tate Series
Total Blackout
Total Fallout
The Sophie Racine Series
Traitors
Total Control
ALEX SHAW
HQ
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
HarperCollinsPublishers
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First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2022
Copyright © Alex Shaw 2022
Alex Shaw asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
E-book Edition © July 2022 ISBN: 9780008441760
Version: 2022-05-17
Table of Contents
Cover
Praise for the Jack Tate series
About the Author
Also by Alex Shaw
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
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
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Dear Reader …
Keep Reading …
About the Publisher
For my wife Galia, my sons Alexander and Jonathan,
and our family in England and Ukraine.
Prologue
North Dakota, USA
No one spoke. That suited him. He didn’t like to talk. People talked too much and said too little. He had always taken issue with it. Roe Kwang stared out of his passenger window into the black abyss of night. It was 3 a.m., and the ballistic-plated Chevrolet Tahoe was heading east on the I-94.
It was the middle of nowhere. That was the point. The GPS coordinates of their destination had been received just two hours prior. It was a classified facility, a new ‘black site’ on US soil. One of an unspecified number of places built after eagle-eyed plane spotters and the world’s media had rendered rendition flights somewhat less than clandestine. In short, it was a place that officially did not exist, just like the prisoner by his side.
Roe glanced at his charge. The man was Chinese, but, having been raised in the UK, his English was fluent. He hadn’t uttered a single word, which Roe appreciated, since they’d left the old facility. The prisoner wasn’t physically strong, the shackles he wore were overkill, but they were part of the ‘protocol’ which Roe’s deniable unit of ‘babysitters’ had to abide by. Nevertheless, the prisoner was dangerous. He had masterminded cyber terror attacks on the assets of several sovereign states, culminating in his last strike at the US, which had caused a staggering amount of financial and infrastructural damage. Roe knew the man sitting shackled beside him was the world’s best hacker. To Roe, and without internet access, the man was nothing. He had been in US custody for almost two years and in Roe’s opinion the US should have saved the money it had already spent on his protection, transportation, and the building of a new facility by simply putting a bullet in his brain. That, however, had not been his decision to make, and he had orders to prevent anyone else from doing just that.
Roe’s gaze returned to the window. He scanned the dark, flat lands. Out there it looked as quiet as it was inside the Tahoe, but Roe understood this was all an illusion.
‘Exit. One minute out.’ Roe’s earpiece crackled as the driver of the lead vehicle updated the two others. The only words spoken by any of the team for over a hundred miles garnered one-word acknowledgements from the drivers of the second and third vehicle.
Tahoe 2, Roe’s Tahoe, started to slow as it negotiated the off-ramp. They left the highway and headed north, creeping through a miniscule place with a sign naming it as ‘Windsor’, whose only commercial building was a bar with a red and white Budweiser sign. The three full-sized SUVs crossed over a railway line, leaving the slumbering settlement they passed through a crossroads and took a still smaller country road dissecting the vast, flat plains.
Roe had the sensation he was no longer in an SUV, but in a plane cruising thousands of feet above a sleeping earth. The absolute lack of light from the world around him gave the impression that the stars above were burning in the clear, cold, cloudless sky. Between two constellations he saw a shooting star, or perhaps it was a comet or maybe it was something else entirely. It grew larger. It seemed to be heading directly towards him … it streaked past him …
Instinctively Roe screwed his eyes shut as an explosion momentarily turned night to day. The heavy Tahoe came to a squealing halt as its tyres bit into the rutted, rural tarmac.
Sudden chatter on their comms network stated the obvious.
They were under attack.
Ahead, white reverse lights replaced red taillights and the lead vehicle jerked backwards, tyres smoking. Sitting directly in front of Roe, and riding shotgun, his teammate unclipped his assault rifle from its secure position on the dashboard. As Roe reached for his own, their driver, following the lead vehicle’s actions, slammed their Tahoe into reverse. He jerked forward, his seatbelt tightening. Beside him, the prisoner shrieked.
A second explosion from behind made the convoy stop again. Roe turned to see Tahoe 3 on fire. But it continued to move backwards, to pick up speed as it attempted to evade the attack. Roe’s own Tahoe was barrelling backwards. It jerked to one side, as the driver performed a ‘J-Turn’ and brought it nose to nose with the vehicle behind. Which had stopped moving, and which was now being hit by heavy 0.50 cal rounds. The thunderous thud … thud … thud … registered in Roe’s ears like the heavy punches of a prize-fighter. Flames flared from firing positions in the fields on both sides. The front of Tahoe 3 dropped as the fusillade from numerous rifles ripped away the run-flat tyres, wheels and all.
Roe had been taught never to leave the vehicle, to stay inside the impregnable ballistic skin, but now as what had to be armour-piercing rounds shattered the windows and ripped through the bodywork of the stricken Tahoe, he could see there was no cover at all. The driver and then the man next to him convulsed as they were hit.
The driver of his own vehicle let out a yell as he floored the accelerator and they tore forward, clipping the other SUV before powering back the way they had orig
Next to him, the prisoner had become hysterical; he was now shouting in Chinese and shaking and pulling at his restraints. Roe had no time for this, so punched him in the head. The man’s head jerked, then fell forward and his noise ceased.
‘Comms are down!’ the voice of the team member in front of him shouted.
The driver, like Roe, said nothing as they left the burning hulk of Tahoe 3, Tahoe 1 following on their tail. It was time for action, not talk. They reached the crossroads as explosions on both their left and right forced them to continue straight on. Funnelled back towards Windsor, the incoming fire followed them. The rear windscreen of Roe’s SUV shattered as rounds pierced the ballistic glass and chewed up the empty backseats. A new noise now sounded above the whipping wind and roaring engine – the whine of rotor blades.
A helo buzzed them, then jinked and arched into the sky before it bore back down on them. In the darkness Roe couldn’t tell who it was, or what it was. But then this made no difference as flames erupted from either side of its bulbous body as more heavy lead hurtled towards them.
Every instinct told Roe to run. Instead, he turned sideways and fell on top of his prisoner, shielding him with his body. The glass around him exploded and the Tahoe shook but continued on.
He pushed himself back up and grabbed his weapon. Turning again, he now saw Tahoe 1 had become a rolling ball of flames. He knew his Tahoe was the target, and the attackers wanted to take the man next to him alive.
‘I’m hit …’ The driver’s voice was husky, weak.
Roe pulled himself forward; his teammate in the passenger seat was slumped sideways, a shard of ballistic glass glinting from where it had embedded itself in his neck. Roe looked at the driver as the man’s hands slipped from the steering wheel and the bulky SUV lurched to one side. Roe braced himself against the seat back as the Tahoe continued and slammed into the wall of the nearest building. Airbags deployed around the two dead men as the front of the vehicle crumpled. Roe’s chest was slammed against the seat and his lungs were punched shut. He slid off the seat and landed on top of his already unconscious prisoner.
There was a sudden silence, made even more eerie by the bright-white lights now flooding the interior of his SUV. Roe turned his head, but a spotlight directed at his eyes blinded him. A gruff voice barked in a language that wasn’t English but was one that Roe recognised and then he felt needles of pain and heard a crackle as a blast of electricity short-circuited his entire body. Unable to resist and unable to move, it was just Roe’s eyes which told him he was being dragged from the Tahoe. Through the ghosting caused by the spotlight, he caught glimpses of his teammates, slain, slumped in their seats and then the bright stars filled his vision as he was dropped, face up, on the unforgiving tarmac. Roe tried to fight his paralysis as two masked men hurried his prisoner from the shattered SUV, but his body would not comply with his orders. A figure loomed above him, face hidden and dressed in black coveralls. The man’s right leg stamped down, and a boot connected with the side of Roe’s head. A starburst flashed in his vision before everything went black.
Undisclosed Location
Fang Bao was a British national, the son of a Hong Kong Chinese couple who had emigrated to the UK. He was also one of the world’s most-wanted cyber terrorists. His talent had been prized by all those he had worked for, and it was this which afforded him some comfort. He doubted whoever it was who had gone to such lengths to take him from the Americans would want him dead. However, this did not stop Fang from worrying.
Early morning light seeped into the room from around the externally mounted boards that obscured his view. His room was larger and much more comfortable than anything the Americans had kept him in and whoever his new jailor was, they certainly feared for his safety enough to have two guards posted on the other side of the door.
Unable to sleep because of the stress of the situation and the discomfort he still felt from the burns on his left arm, he had watched the sun come up; as much of it as entered his room, that was. The quality of light leaching in from the shutters had changed as the new day banished the night and its shadows. But the shadows had always been his friend, it had only been once he had been pushed into the light of publicity that he had been caught. Yet that had also led further to his notoriety, which he imagined was the reason he had been snatched.
He finally rolled out of bed as what he imagined was full dawn warmed the other side of his shuttered window. His cell was a room which rivalled the luxury residences he had been put up in by his paying clients, and the air was just as he liked it; sharply filtered fresh. In fact, it was only the lack of a view or any way to communicate to the outside world which reminded him he was a prisoner.
He took a step towards the bathroom and almost instantly there was a sound outside, the result he knew of hidden cameras recording his every moment. There was the sound of a bolt being drawn back, and then the grating on the key and, finally, a click. The door opened and a man entered. It was the guard who had brought his food for the two days since he had been incarcerated. Stepping into the room, his feet sank into the thick pile of carpet.
‘Yes?’ Fang’s hands were folded and his head was held high, even though his voice trembled.
‘Uncle wishes to see you. Get dressed.’
‘Uncle?’
Fang wanted to know exactly who ‘Uncle’ was and why he had rescued him from his American captors. The guard retreated without reply and Fang continued his way to the shower, pulling off his pyjamas and leaving them in a heap on the floor. He washed and then, ten minutes later, after applying a new dressing to his arm, stood dressed by his bed in the simple clothes and plimsoles he had been provided with. The door opened and the guard beckoned him out. He had been brought to this place cuffed and hooded, and only now saw the space outside his room. The hallway too resembled a luxury hotel. There was a faint whiff of paint, as though the place had recently been decorated and the carpet felt springy and newly laid. Standing by the elevator was the second guard; he, like the first, was Asian probably Chinese, possibly Korean, but Fang couldn’t tell from their harshly accented English and he hadn’t wanted to anger them by asking them either in English or Chinese. The second guard was haloed by the diffused light emanating from the floor-to-ceiling obscured-glass windows at the far end of the hall. He pressed a button and the elevator doors opened. Without being told to, Fang stepped inside. Both guards followed and then the last one in pressed a button for the top floor, just a floor above. The pair both had 9mm Berettas on their right legs. He imagined these were for show because attempting to draw them, in such a confined space, would take far too long.
The elevator opened at the top floor. Again, the light from the windows was diffused by obscured glass. With one guard in front and the other behind him, they proceeded along the corridor. Passing a window, Fang noticed the glass had been obscured by a film, which he thought incongruous with the rest of the decorations, fixtures, and fittings.
They stopped at the far end of the corridor. A pair of giant, arched double doors gave the impression that beyond lay a Viking longhouse. The doors simultaneously opened inwards, Fang was pushed into the room and they immediately closed behind him. Directly in front of the doors, a huge floor-to-ceiling window, which he imagined showcased an impressive one-hundred-and-eighty-degree panorama, were again hidden by film. An Asian man with a shock of white hair sat behind a large dark-wood desk. He stood, faster than Fang had believed a man of his age could.
‘Mr Fang, how delighted I am to finally be acquainted with you. Please take a seat.’
Unlike his own Essex-tinged English, the man’s words were said with a crisp, clear Home Counties accent.
‘Thank you.’ Fang sat.
‘How is your arm? Not troubling you too much?’
‘It’s fine.’
The white-haired man returned to his desk chair. He sat back, interlaced his fingers, and then he smiled at him. ‘I am Gu Joon. I am the one responsible for ending your captivity with the Central Intelligence Agency.’ Gu raised his right palm. ‘I do not expect you to thank me. How do you like your room? It’s one of the best, currently.’
‘It’s OK.’
