Echo Foxtrot
Abigail Jones, one of the Cousin’s, has spent two years tracking the bombmaker and extended her term of service in Iraq to see this covert operation through to a conclusion. Codename Echo Foxtrot, she will be the one to brief and run the surveillance team from the UK. Special in so many ways, she is protected by four men from the private security services – but with names like Shagger, Corky, Hamfist and Harding they are hardly drawn from American stock.
The plan… Get close to the ‘Engineer’ at home and eavesdrop, knowing that discovery must lead to death. There can be no signals sent or received, no possibility of rescue. There can be no incursion into Iran by an armed group. The best Echo Foxtrot can do is site her group in the marshlands, masquerading as naturalists making a study of threatened species. Even so, they can only stay close to the Iranian border for four days. That’s all the time Badger and Foxy have before they must get back to their rendezvous to report in. Courage and loyalty are tested to the limit and deceit and bribery all figure in the outcome.
When the endgame is played out Badger reckons it was ‘not in my name’ but then it was never in anyone’s name.