Nick Stone, ex-SAS operative turned deniable intelligence asset, gets dropped into Washington DC with a simple mission: assassinate a woman and her child. But when the hit goes sideways and Stone finds himself burned by his own handlers, he's left with a dead partner, a seven-year-old witness, and nowhere to run. What starts as a black-ops assignment spirals into a desperate cross-country chase through the American South, with Stone trying to keep the kid alive while figuring out who set him up and why. McNab — former SAS soldier himself — writes action that moves like a bullet train, all tactical precision and zero fat. The tradecraft is real, the violence unglamorous, and the moral terrain muddy as hell. For fans of Forsyth or Le Carré's grittier moments, or anyone who wants their thrillers stripped of Hollywood gloss.
