Gambian Bluff

Gambian Bluff
David Monnery

Ultimate soldier. Ultimate mission. But can just three members of the SAS quell a rebel uprising?July 1981: while Gambian President Jawara attends a royal wedding in London, Marxist rebels seize power. Fearing armed intervention from neighbouring Senegal, they take hostages – including one of the president’s wives and several of his children – and empty the prisons in a desperate search for allies in the coming struggle.As opposing factions of the police force wrestle for control, prisoners settle old scores, slaughtering almost two thousand Gambians. In tourist beach hotels hundreds of Europeans fear the worst.At Jawara’s request, three men of SAS 22 Regiment are sent into this cauldron, supposedly to advise the President and his Senegalese allies. But within days, they have become the spearhead of the counter-revolution, embroiled in both the pursuit of heavily armed criminals and the dangerously delicate business of rescuing hostages.

Gambian Bluff

DAVID MONNERY

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by 22 Books/Bloomsbury Publishing plc 1994

Copyright © Bloomsbury Publishing plc 1994

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

Cover Photographs © MILpictures, Tom Weber/Getty Images (main image); Shutterstock.com (textures)]

David Monnery asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

Though many of the events depicted in this novel actually took place in The Gambia in the summer of 1981, it should be considered 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, down-loaded, 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.

Source ISBN: 9780008155186

Ebook Edition © December 2015 ISBN: 9780008155193

Version: 2015-11-02

Contents

Cover (#ucecee0a0-82f8-5072-a57a-43ccde223ae9)

Title Page (#u1bc07a4e-82bd-5338-a3cf-8dc39b23648a)

Copyright (#u66596831-398e-553b-a2c9-9f0904151777)

Chapter 1 (#u98a300ab-8324-5476-b226-30f58abe4af2)

Chapter 2 (#ucbef5cf0-0c32-55b8-9fa8-348655aeed24)

Chapter 3 (#u31f2552e-3f4d-5d33-bfb7-fa85d61cd95c)

Chapter 4 (#u6ac3b5b4-2c4e-595b-b462-12cac3e6b4fa)

Chapter 5 (#u8c6c9511-2ec9-5147-9cd5-fa1dd4d9bd62)

Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

OTHER TITLES IN THE SAS OPERATION SERIES (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

1 (#u97166c23-e248-5433-bc1c-ec16a665cbc4)

‘This town is ’coming like a ghost town…’

The song seemed to float ominously out of every open door and window as Worrell Franklin walked slowly down Acre Lane.

‘Do you remember the good old days before the ghost town?’

No, not really, he thought, although only a fool would deny that things were getting worse.

A Rasta walked past him, going up the hill, and the look he flashed Franklin was for his uniform, not his face. Or, to be precise, the combination of the two. The oppressor’s uniform, the face of the oppressed. A black soldier in a white man’s army.

Franklin was used to looks like that, and to the more subtle ones that blended hostility with respect, contempt with envy. He was someone who had got out, escaped. He was someone with a job, which these days felt more and more like a privilege in itself.

Normally he did not wear his uniform around Brixton – it was just easier not to – but this morning he had it on for a reason. The only reason around here. For impressing Whitey.

He turned left onto the High Road and walked north. A crowd of youths were outside the tube station, doing nothing, just waiting for something to ignite their interest. On his side of the road a crowd were gathered round a TV shop, watching the Royal Wedding on the dozen or so sets in the window. When Franklin had left his mum in their living room Lady Diana had been setting out from Clarence House in the ceremonial Glass Coach, looking like an upmarket Cinderella. Now she was walking up the steps of St Paul’s, trailing an ivory-coloured dress which looked long enough to play cricket on.

The camera followed her into the cathedral, dwelling on a few famous faces in passing: Mrs T in a blue pillbox hat, Nancy Reagan in a nauseating pink, the Queen in aquamarine, looking like she usually did, as if she was trying hard not to notice that someone had farted nearby.