Retribution Read online



  Retribution.

  A novel by Nicholas Gill.

  Copyright 2011 by Nicholas John Vickers.

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Reproduction in any manner, except as authorized by the Copyright Act, is prohibited.

  Dedication.

  I dedicate this book with grateful thanks to my son Mark for his help and support in editing and formatting this manuscript and also to my wife Joy for her unfailing love and support at all times. Without their belief and encouragement this book would never have reached publication.

  Nicholas Gill.

  Quotations.

  Retribution: Deserved punishment for evil done.

  Collins Pocket English Dictionary.

  The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing.

  Attributed to: Edmund Burke (1729-1797).

  Synopsis.

  When a terrorist splinter group carries out a series of attacks on the West, an American intelligence analyst becomes involved in events far more closely than he could ever have imagined. Forced to witness a brutal murder at close quarters, and even closer to home, he vows to exact “retribution” - whatever the cost. The analyst becomes the catalyst in unfolding actions and the novel becomes both a detective story to track the mastermind and an action thriller to take out the terrorist organization. Events build to a catastrophic climax; can an international crisis be averted? Can an elusive urban guerilla be tracked and stopped? What will be the cost?

  Fast paced and international in scope, this is the first novel in a series built around a set of realistic characters immersed in extreme circumstances. Technically accurate and well researched; this series of novels takes us into the world of ex Special Forces operatives’ now working in. the private sector.

  These characters have taken on a life of their own and are telling me further tall tales - I’ll write them down as quickly as I can.

  Read and enjoy,

  Nicholas Gill.

  Table of Contents.

  Synopsis.

  PROLOGUE.

  CHAPTER ONE.

  CHAPTER TWO.

  CHAPTER THREE.

  CHAPTER FOUR.

  CHAPTER FIVE.

  CHAPTER SIX.

  CHAPTER SEVEN.

  CHAPTER EIGHT.

  CHAPTER NINE.

  CHAPTER TEN.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN.

  CHAPTER TWELVE.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN.

  CHAPTER TWENTY.

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.

  EPILOGUE.

  SEDITION.

  Author profile - Nicholas Gill.

  PROLOGUE.

  Palestinian Refugee Camp, Shatila, Lebanon, September 16th. 1982.

  The bitter tastes of gun oil and cordite filled the boy’s mouth. The barrel of the gun between his teeth and the foresight digging into the roof of his mouth prevented him from swallowing. His eyes, wide with fear, stared at the hand holding the gun anticipating the movement of the finger on the trigger.

  ‘Where are your daughters?’

  The question was snarled at the boy’s parents kneeling on the floor, their hands on their heads, the slightest movement of their bodies covered by Phalangist Maronite Christian weapons.

  The boy’s mother shook her head in disbelief at what was happening. Distraught she moved her hands to cover her face in an attempt to blot out the scene. The gunshot in the confined space was deafening. The boy’s mother pitched forward at his feet, a finger shot off; a blackened hole in her forehead and the back of her head blown away. The boy’s father reached out to his wife’s twitching body and was shot through the right ear. He fell on top of his wife. Blood, cerebral fluid, brain tissue and bone fragments sprayed onto the TV screen distorting the picture of the game show host; canned laughter brayed into the room.

  The boy’s control turned to water. A warm dark stain spread through the front of his clothing and the smell of urine mingled with the cordite fumes.

  ‘Ha, he pissed his pants.’ The gun barrel was jerked up digging the foresight blade further into the boy’s palate and then yanked out brutally tearing a triangular flap of flesh from the roof of his mouth. The gun barrel, swung through a short vicious arc, smashed the boy sideways to the floor spraying blood from his ripped mouth. A poorly aimed shot went through his shoulder; his bowels loosened and the smell of faeces added to the horror of the room. Shame and fear, two prime generators of hatred, began to fester in his mind. He blacked out before the Phalangist Christian militiamen hacked off his mother’s hands to get her gold bracelets and rings.

  Mercifully he remained unconscious as his beautiful sisters, twelve and fourteen years old, were dragged screaming from their hiding place under the floor, raped, mutilated and left with him to die. When he came round, covered in his own blood and the blood of his family, the horrific brutality perpetrated on his family hit him again. A vicious black hatred began to grow in this small survivor of the massacre at Shatila Palestinian refugee camp.