BLACK OPS

By Stephen Leather

Synopsis

As an MI5 agent, Spider Shepherd is used to going undercover, but when he's asked to assume the identity of the contract killer hired to take out President Vladimir Putin, he knows he'll become a wanted man. And then Spider discovers that his friend Charlotte Button has been running an off-the-books assassination operation, taking vengeance on the men who killed her husband. Spider owes his life to Button - but this discovery will stretch his loyalty to the limit...

Sample Player

Narrator	Paul Thornley
Length	12hrs 40mins
Catalogue No.	13880
Publisher	Isis Audio Books; 2015

Other audiobooks by Stephen Leather

THE CHINAMAN

Jungle-skilled, silent and lethal, he had killed for the Viet Cong and then for the Americans. He had watched helpless when his two eldest daughters had been raped and killed by Thai pirates. Now, quiet and hard-working he was building up his South London take-away business. Until the day his wife and youngest daughter were destroyed by an IRA bomb. Which was when the Chinaman, denied justice, decided on revenge...and went back to war.

COLD KILL

A run-of-the-mill investigation quickly turns into a matter of life and death when undercover cop Dan 'Spider' Shepherd, uncovers a terrorist cell on a mission of death and destruction. Shepherd and his colleagues realise that to avoid catastrophe, they have to be even more merciless than the terrorists.

DARK FORCES

A violent South London gang will be destroyed if Dan "Spider" Shepherd can gather enough evidence against them. What he doesn't know is that his work as an undercover agent for MI5 is about to intersect with a massive terrorist operation. Spider's going to have to proceed with extreme caution if he is to prevent the death of hundreds of people. The clock is ticking and only he stands between us and Armageddon...

DEAD MEN

Former SAS trooper turned undercover cop, Dan 'Spider' Shepherd, knows that there are no easy solutions in the war against terrorism. But when a killer starts to target pardoned IRA terrorists, Shepherd realises that the only way to save lives is to become a killer himself.

THE DOUBLE TAP

Mike Cramer's past in the SAS has caught up with him. Ex-IRA extremist Dermot Lynch blames Cramer for his lover's death and he's out for revenge. As Cramer trains for the most dangerous mission in his career, Lynch hunts down his sworn enemy. And the unknown assassin silently closes in on his target. The players are in position for the final, deadly game...

FAIR GAME

Somali pirates have kidnapped the crew of a yacht in a brutal attack, and are demanding a huge ransom. The pirates have chilling terrorist ambitions in the UK, and are making terrible plans to change the London skyline forever. Dan 'Spider' Shepherd is sent to sea on an undercover mission to stop the pirates. But time is running out.

FALSE FRIENDS

When Navy Seals track down and kill Osama Bin Laden, it's obvious there was a traitor on the inside. After the false friends are revealed to be two British students, former Islamic fundamentalists recruited by MI5 - they become targets themselves. Dan 'Spider' Shepherd must teach the pair how to survive undercover with al-Qaeda closing in. But with a terrorist plot looming, putting thousands of lives at stake, can he protect everyone before it's too late?

HARD LANDING

Detective Dan Shepherd does what he has to do to bring Britain's most wanted criminals to justice. In his latest case against a powerful drugs baron he has to go undercover in a maximum security prison. Dangerous as this is he soon realises that the man he must trap is even more dangerous than the police had anticipated.

HOT BLOOD

Dan 'Spider' Shepherd is used to putting his life on the line. But when the man who once saved his life is kidnapped in the badlands of Iraq, Shepherd knows that the only way to stop his friend being murdered is to put himself on the firing line in the most dangerous city in the world: Baghdad.

LASTNIGHT

A killer is murdering Goths - skinning and butchering them. The cops aren't getting anywhere so Jack Nightingale's nemesis, Superintendent Chalmers, asks him for help. Nightingale discovers that the murdered Goths had one thing in common: a tattoo connected to a secretive cult. As Nightingale closes in on the killers, he finds himself in the firing line. The Order will stop at nothing to protect their secrets and Nightingale realises that there is nothing he can do to protect himself. It leaves him with only one way to stop the carnage - and that's to take his own life...

LIGHT TOUCH

Working undercover is all about trust - getting the target to trust you and then betraying them in order to bring them to justice. But what do you do when you believe an undercover cop has crossed the line and aligned herself with the international drugs smuggler she was supposed to be targeting? When a deep-undercover cop stops passing on intelligence about her target, MI5 sends in Dan "Spider" Shepherd to check that she is on the straight and narrow. As Spider finds his loyalties being tested to the limit, an SAS killer is on a revenge mission in London and only Spider can stop him.

LIVE FIRE

Dan 'Spider' Shepherd and the Serious Organised Crime Agency are facing a sinister threat on the streets of London when a group of home-grown Islamic fanatics embark on a campaign of terror, the like of which Britain has never seen. Car bombs and beheadings are only the prelude of what they have planned. And Shepherd is the only man who can stop them.

THE LONG SHOT

Cole Howard of the FBI knows he has only days to prevent an audacious assassination. But he doesn't know who the target is or where the crack marksmen will strike. Former SAS sergeant Mike Cramer is also on the trail, infiltrating the Irish community in New York as he tracks down Mary Hennessy, the ruthless killer who tore his life apart. Unless Cramer and Howard agree to cooperate, the world will witness the most spectacular terrorist coup of all time...

MIDNIGHT

Jack Nightingale found it hard enough to save lives when he was a cop. Now he needs to save a soul - his sister's. But to save her he has to find her and they've been separated since birth. When everyone Jack talks to about his sister dies horribly, he realises that someone, or something, is determined to keep them apart.

NIGHTFALL

Jack Nightingale - struggling private detective - inherits a mansion from a man who claims to be his father. It comes with a warning that Nightingale's soul was sold at birth and a devil will come to claim it. Jack doesn't believe in Hell, but when people close to him start to die horribly, he is led to the inescapable conclusion that real evil may be at work. And that if he doesn't find a way out he'll be damned in hell for eternity.

NIGHTMARE

What goes around, comes around. Jack Nightingale learned that as a cop and discovered that it was just as true in the world of the supernatural. His life changed forever on the day he failed to stop a young girl throwing herself to her death. Ever since, he's been haunted by thoughts that he could have done more to save her. Can Nightingale put things right? Or are the forces of darkness torturing and deceiving him in order to gain the ultimate prize - his soul?

NIGHTSHADE

In Jack Nightingale's world - where reality and the occult collide - sometimes the only way to fight evil is with evil. A murdered young girl miraculously returns to life, claiming she's spoken to those from beyond the grave. Those in contact with her are dying hideous deaths . . . forcing Jack to make the hardest decision he's ever faced.

ROUGH JUSTICE

Villains across London are being beaten and killed by vigilante cops. Crime rates are falling, but the powers that be want Dan 'Spider' Shepherd to bring the wave of rough justice to an end. He goes undercover with an elite group of officers risking their lives daily, but he has hard decisions to make when his family is in the firing line...

SAN FRANCISCO NIGHT

Jack Nightingale fights his battles in the shadows – in the grey areas where the real world meets the supernatural. But when he arrives in San Francisco to take on a group of Satanists bent on opening a doorway to Hell, the danger is out in the open and all too real. The Apostles – a Satanic coven using murder and torture to pave the way for a demon to enter the real world – realise that Nightingale is on their tail. And unleash their own brand of monsters to take him down.

SOFT TARGET

When a group of armed police in an elite unit turn maverick and start to rip off drug dealers at gunpoint, undercover cop Dan 'Spider' Shepherd is given his most dangerous mission so far. And as Shepherd finds himself in the firing line, he has to decide exactly where his loyalties lie.

TALL ORDER

He is one of the world's most ruthless terrorists, codenamed Saladin. Ten years ago he blew a plane out of the sky above New York - and now he's struck again, killing dozens in a London strike. But one of the latest victims is related to the acting head of MI5, who knows exactly who she wants on the case: Spider Shepherd. Dean Martin, a psychologically damaged former Navy SEAL, is the only person in the world who can identify Saladin. But Martin was killed ten years ago - wasn't he? Shepherd must find Martin and take him back to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Revenge on Saladin is long overdue, and Shepherd is determined to be the one to deliver it...