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POST
Haunted by years of war, nothing is going to stop military veteran Byron Tibor returning home to the woman he loves. But is Byron the same man that Julia Tibor fell in love with? And why is the government determined to stop him from reaching her?
From the blood-soaked mountains of the Hindu Kush to the glittering lights of Manhattan, via the dark underbelly of the Las Vegas Strip, POST is the story of one man's struggle to retain his humanity - before it's too late.
"Black's style is supremely slick." - Jeremy Jehu, The Daily Telegraph
The new series from the bestselling author of the Ryan Lock thrillers.
"This is a writer to watch." - Geoffrey Wansell, The Daily Mail
EXCERPT
They came to kill me an hour before sunrise. There were three of them, silhouettes hewn in silver by a late autumn moon high above the valley.
Checked keffiyehs wrapped tightly around their faces left only their eyes, noses and lips visible. White trousers, greyed by the dust of the plain, fluttered in the breeze as they picked their way up the moonlit slope toward the first house. Two looked to be little more than teenagers while the third, the leader, would have been in his late twenties or early thirties ‒ a good age in this part of the world, where four decades pretty much secured you elder status.
The younger men had AK-47s slung casually over their shoulders, barrels pointing earthwards. The leader was carrying what looked like an old Soviet Makarov semi-automatic handgun tucked into his waistband. A pulwar, a single-bladed curved sword, dangled from his other hip.
Somewhere in the near distance, a rhesus monkey began to chatter. It was joined by a companion, howling in solidarity. They were either greeting the dawn, pressing at the edges of the horizon, or reacting to the foreign presence, but I couldn’t be sure which.
The men stopped for a moment, frozen in place. Grey-blue moonlight splashed across the edge of the pulwar as the leader adjusted his belt. The monkeys lapsed into silence.
Steadying the sword with his hand, the leader beckoned his two compatriots with a wave. They began to walk again, closing in on the village with each step. The gradient of the slope grew more severe, but the men maintained the same pace, unhindered by the terrain. That told me they were native to the area.
The village consisted of around two dozen houses, which had been built into the side of the hillside from traditional mud bricks. Using the slope, and the natural hollows of the hillside, the houses were stacked on top of, as well as alongside, each other. The mud bricks kept them cool during the scorching summer weather, which parched the valley below, and warm during the winter, when snow covered the peaks of the mountains that led north into Pakistan.
The arrangement of the houses and the steepness of the gradient was such that one villager could walk out of his front door directly onto the roof of his neighbor’s house. Like a series of tiny two-room castles, the slope provided a natural defense against intruders. Not that the men approaching seemed worried by this. The village was completely still and everything about them, from the open display of weapons to the way they strolled languidly toward the makeshift school house perched on a rocky outcrop, suggested that they anticipated little resistance.
They were wrong. I was waiting for them.
POST
Haunted by years of war, nothing is going to stop military veteran Byron Tibor returning home to the woman he loves. But is Byron the same man that Julia Tibor fell in love with? And why is the government determined to stop him from reaching her?
From the blood-soaked mountains of the Hindu Kush to the glittering lights of Manhattan, via the dark underbelly of the Las Vegas Strip, POST is the story of one man's struggle to retain his humanity - before it's too late.
"Black's style is supremely slick." - Jeremy Jehu, The Daily Telegraph
The new series from the bestselling author of the Ryan Lock thrillers.
"This is a writer to watch." - Geoffrey Wansell, The Daily Mail
EXCERPT
They came to kill me an hour before sunrise. There were three of them, silhouettes hewn in silver by a late autumn moon high above the valley.
Checked keffiyehs wrapped tightly around their faces left only their eyes, noses and lips visible. White trousers, greyed by the dust of the plain, fluttered in the breeze as they picked their way up the moonlit slope toward the first house. Two looked to be little more than teenagers while the third, the leader, would have been in his late twenties or early thirties ‒ a good age in this part of the world, where four decades pretty much secured you elder status.
The younger men had AK-47s slung casually over their shoulders, barrels pointing earthwards. The leader was carrying what looked like an old Soviet Makarov semi-automatic handgun tucked into his waistband. A pulwar, a single-bladed curved sword, dangled from his other hip.
Somewhere in the near distance, a rhesus monkey began to chatter. It was joined by a companion, howling in solidarity. They were either greeting the dawn, pressing at the edges of the horizon, or reacting to the foreign presence, but I couldn’t be sure which.
The men stopped for a moment, frozen in place. Grey-blue moonlight splashed across the edge of the pulwar as the leader adjusted his belt. The monkeys lapsed into silence.
Steadying the sword with his hand, the leader beckoned his two compatriots with a wave. They began to walk again, closing in on the village with each step. The gradient of the slope grew more severe, but the men maintained the same pace, unhindered by the terrain. That told me they were native to the area.
The village consisted of around two dozen houses, which had been built into the side of the hillside from traditional mud bricks. Using the slope, and the natural hollows of the hillside, the houses were stacked on top of, as well as alongside, each other. The mud bricks kept them cool during the scorching summer weather, which parched the valley below, and warm during the winter, when snow covered the peaks of the mountains that led north into Pakistan.
The arrangement of the houses and the steepness of the gradient was such that one villager could walk out of his front door directly onto the roof of his neighbor’s house. Like a series of tiny two-room castles, the slope provided a natural defense against intruders. Not that the men approaching seemed worried by this. The village was completely still and everything about them, from the open display of weapons to the way they strolled languidly toward the makeshift school house perched on a rocky outcrop, suggested that they anticipated little resistance.
They were wrong. I was waiting for them.
