The Unknown Soldier

Summary
Hidden in the vastness of the world's greatest desert - the Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia - a tiny caravan of fugitives and camels moves slowly towards its goal.

In extreme heat and exposed to cruelly vicious storms, they cross a wilderness were only the strongest and most determined will survive. Deep in the sands, lost from sight, are the men they seek, the leaders of Al Qaeda, hunted, pursued and regrouping to strike again.

One man in the caravan stands out. His strength and self-imposed discipline mark him. To look into his face and memorize it is to court death. His identity is masked, his past is blanked from his memory. What drives him on into the brutal harshness of the desert is his obsessive quest to rejoin his family - the leadership of Al Qaeda - and his loyalty to the family is total. For them, he will kill without mercy and without conscience. But first he must reach them and there be briefed on his target.

Searching for him in the limitless sands are American and British experts in counter-terrorism with a full range of sophisticated electronics at their service. Above him, quartering in the desert, is the unmanned Predator aircraft, invisible in the cloudless skies and carrying Hellfire missiles.

But he is no easy prey. If they fail to find and kill him, if he reaches his family and receives his orders, the Outsider will disappear again, before re-emerging in a teeming Western city with a suitcase that will create havoc and death when it is detonated...

Extract
Marty chipped, 'You didn't tell us when you were down here - if we get a target, what's the status?'

'You'll have Hellfire on the wings when you go operational. I'm running late for my meeting ... If I'm right in what I'm predicting, and it's a courier route, then you track, but if you're at the end of your fuel load and can't stay and track, then a target is a "shoot on sight". Adios, amigos.'

The static burst in Marty's headphones. He threw the switch and cut the link. He felt the excitement and looked at her. Lizzy-Jo winked a big brown eye at him. Shoot on sight.

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