Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Dragonfire

By James Swallow

A heart-stopping military thriller from Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell – betrayed, hunted and disavowed, Sam Fisher’s toughest mission has just begun

Inside North Korea, veteran Fourth Echelon agent Sam Fisher finds himself on the run when a top-secret covert mission goes fatally wrong. Betrayed by his allies, hunted by his adversaries, and disavowed by his own agency, Sam is stranded deep inside hostile territory – and his only chance of survival is to uncover a murderous plot that reaches into the heart of the hermit state, and beyond. Meanwhile, Fisher’s estranged daughter Sarah risks everything to assemble an off-the-books effort to find her missing father before his luck runs out – but the conspiracy that framed Sam goes deeper than either of them realize… 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aconyte
• Release date: Jan 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9781839082009

James Swallow

James Swallow is a New York Times and Sunday Times (UK) bestselling author, BAFTA-nominated screenwriter, and the only British writer to have worked on a Star Trek television series. His Star Trek fiction includes The Latter Fire, Sight Unseen, The Poisoned Chalice, Cast No Shadow, Synthesis, Day of the Vipers, The Stuff of Dreams, Infinity’s Prism: Seeds of Dissent, and short stories in Seven Deadly Sins, Shards and Shadows, The Sky’s the Lim­it, and Distant Shores. His other works include the Marc Dane thriller series and tales from the worlds of 24, Doctor Who, Star Wars, Halo, Warhammer 40,000, and more. He lives and works in London.

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USC02-Dragonfire-by-James-Swallow.jpgTom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Dragonfire

Dragonfire

In a flash of fire, Dembe saw something dark as night moving, dropping from a ledge hidden in the shadows. He saw three shimmering green eyes search for and find the other fighter. The fear that Dembe had been holding back exploded and he fired, but the man was already moving, dropping behind cover as the AKM’s rounds sparked off the walls.

It was just five paces to the doorway and back out into the corridor. He didn’t make it. The black shape with the glowing emerald eyes came at him, and Dembe thought he heard the crackle of a vulture’s wings. Pain burst across his arm as iron-hard fingers trapped his limb and snapped bone. He cried out and lost his grip on the AKM. The rifle clattered away.

Then the blunt muzzle of a suppressed pistol jammed into his cheek, the metal of it still searing hot from the previous shots, burning his flesh. Dembe stifled a gasp and waited for death.

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Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Dragonfire

First published by Aconyte Books in 2023

ISBN 978 1 83908 199 6

Ebook ISBN 978 1 83908 200 9

© 2023 Ubisoft Entertainment. All Rights Reserved. Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, Ubisoft and the Ubisoft logo are registered or unregistered trademarks of Ubisoft Entertainment in the US and/or other countries. The Aconyte name and logo and the Asmodee Entertainment name and logo are registered or unregistered trademarks of Asmodee Entertainment Limited.

This novel is entirely 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, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Cover art by Larry Rostant and Shutterstock

Distributed in North America by Simon & Schuster Inc, New York, USA

ACONYTE BOOKS

An imprint of Asmodee Entertainment Ltd

Asmodee Entertainment

Mercury House, Shipstones Business Centre

North Gate, Nottingham NG7 7FN, UK

aconytebooks.com // twitter.com/aconytebooks

For Marc, who is always on point.

Author’s Note

Dragonfire takes place after the events depicted in the novel Splinter Cell: Firewall and the Operation Watchman mission in Bolivia (as seen in Ghost Recon: Wildlands).

One

Sahel Region – Burkina Faso – West Africa

Dembe spotted the first of the bodies in the night’s long shadows as their vehicle rolled up to the front of the old bunker, and he yelled at the driver to stop. Baako dutifully stamped on the brakes, and they lurched to a halt, and Dembe was scrambling out and across the dusty ground even as the other Toyota technical following skidded to a stop behind.

He heard Amadi calling out to be careful, but ignored his brother’s entreaties. Amadi worried like an old woman, and it was the reason why the warlord had put hard-headed Dembe in charge instead of his lanky, morose sibling.

Clutching his battered, war-worn AKM assault rifle at his side, Dembe crouched by the dead man. He’d almost missed the corpse, catching sight of a pair of scuffed sneakers peeking out from behind an oil drum as the headlights threw illumination across them. The shoes were connected to a skinny body lying over an assault rifle still clasped in his hands. Dembe’s gut twisted in revulsion.

It didn’t have a face anymore. A single shot had penetrated the back of the man’s skull and killed him instantly. The guard had died never knowing what took his life.

Another one here. Chidike called out from the other side of the bunker entrance, aiming his rifle at a dark heap in the shadows. And drag marks.

Dembe rose again. A traitorous churn of oily fear turned in his gut, and he forced himself to ignore it. He could not show even the slightest hint of weakness, not in front of the others. They killed them and hid them, he said. A coward’s ploy.

A mutter of agreement went through his men. As long as he projected strength, they knew their place. They were his best soldiers, and while they might look like nothing special – with their mismatched surplus gear, aging Russian rifles, and third-hand soccer shirts – they were, to a man, vicious killers. Dembe thought of them as a pride of lions, with him at the head, roaming the dusty landscape and instilling terror in all who saw them. That was why the warlord gave them the bloodiest work to do, because they were brutal and relentless.

When the opportunity presented itself, Dembe would put a knife in his commander’s back and take that role for himself, preferably before one of his fighters tried to do the same to him. There was little scope for advancement in their so-called army that didn’t come at the edge of a blade.

But not tonight. There was too much going on, too much at stake. There was a lot of money to be made, and no one wanted to risk it.

He made a sharp hissing sound and the men fell silent. Dembe cocked his head and listened to the land, hearing nothing but the faint chirp of insects. No human noises, no gunfire. The bunker, with its big steel door hanging wide open, was as quiet as a tomb.

We go in? ventured Baako, pointing his rifle at the black rectangle of the doorway. Silence made the man edgy, and he always talked to fill it. We go in, he repeated, as if answering his own question. But he didn’t move, not without permission.

Dembe looked away, off in the direction of the other bunkers lined up and down the length of the valley. He could see pinpricks of light from them, but no sounds carried to him. Every radio call sent to the men guarding the bunkers and the patrols in the valley had gone unanswered. Sometimes the batteries in their aging walkie-talkies failed and contact was lost, but never all of them at once. If something was wrong, he needed to find out straight away.

His fingers clasped the AKM’s grip tightly. Go, he ordered. Anything strange in there… Shoot it.

Leaving the others outside to stand guard, Baako was first through the door, Chidike following two steps behind, then Dembe and his brother at his heels. It’s dark, Amadi noted, with a grasp of the plainly obvious that irritated his older sibling. What happened to the lights?

Dembe was about to answer rudely, but then he realized that now they were inside the entrance corridor, he could hear the faint mutter of the bunker’s generator. So it wasn’t that the power had been cut.

Up ahead, Baako’s boots crunched on fragments of broken glass. He hesitated, looking down. Dembe saw a mess of tiny shards scattered over the dusty concrete floor, caught in the light coming through the door from the jeep. He pushed forward and picked one up. The glass was delicate, coated in powder, but where had it come from? He bit down on a twinge of fear.

With a crackle of ignition, Chidike struck the head of a road flare into life. The stick fizzed and burned, spewing out thin smoke and a flickering orange flame. Shadows jumped around them in the wavering, hellish light. Everyone tensed, aiming their guns into the corridors that fanned off the main path.

With this new illumination, Dembe could see up to the bunker’s ceiling, and he noted that every one of the fluorescent tubes mounted up there had been shot out, methodically smashed to plunge the place into darkness. The light revealed other things as they advanced. More fallen men, each one killed with great skill and economy, never with more than two shots, in the chest or the head.

Brass glittered among the broken glass and Baako stooped to pick up a shell casing. Show me, demanded Dembe, and the other man dropped the shiny metal cylinder into his palm.

He rolled it between his fingers, examining it closely. The casing was from a 5.56 bullet, longer and thinner than the 7.62 Soviet intermediate rounds in their surplus Kalashnikovs. American, he pronounced. That meant whoever had done this was not likely to be from one of the other rival war-bands or Boko Haram fighter groups.

They’re here for the– gushed Amadi, but Dembe silenced him with a shove in the back.

Don’t keep talking, he snarled. Find them! We didn’t see anyone on the road. That means they are still here. Other men might have balked at the idea of facing US soldiers in the dead of night, but Dembe’s fighters had bravery bolstered by bloodlust and a diet of chewed khat to numb any reservations that might arise. Dembe wished he had some of the leafy plant right now. Its stimulating effects would have sharpened his courage.

Advancing in a rough line, they passed deeper into the crumbling bunker’s echoing spaces. Their rifle muzzles moved left and right, pointing into the depths of the shadows where killers could hide, jerking in the direction of every noise that might have been a hushed footstep.

The air of the block-built interior was dense, hot, and leaden. Manufactured decades ago to designs cribbed from the Red Army, the military had dug out these hard points for the storage of munitions and fuel, only to abandon them when the warlords had contested the territory. Dembe didn’t like the bunkers. They were like giant stone coffins and being inside felt as if he were buried alive. He had no desire to join the numbers of the dead already here.

There were no alarms, whispered Amadi, ignoring his brother’s previous order. The ones who were killed, do you see their guns? No shots fired.

We will not make the same mistake, said Dembe. I will give a prize to whoever brings me an American’s helmet. He patted his shaven head and forced a grin.

But it quickly faded when he found another man near the entrance to the command room, lying with his back to the wall, staring blankly at nothing. The dead fighter’s throat had been opened to the air, as if cut through by some monstrous talon, and the front of his too-big shirt was soaked through with the dark blood from his wound. Dembe had a sudden vision of some gigantic, black-winged vulture clawing at the luckless fighter, and shook it off.

As he studied the corpse, the light from Chidike’s flare sputtered to nothing and the man tossed it away. I have another, he began, but Dembe put out a hand and touched his arm.

Wait. Without the glow from the flare, he could see a shaft of weak light falling through the half-open command room door, and there was a sound coming with it, an irregular plastic clattering like the rattle of a baby’s toy.

Someone is there, said Amadi.

I’ve changed my mind, Dembe replied. I want a live prisoner.

Why?

"For punishment. He nudged Amadi with his rifle. Open the door."

With Baako at his side, Amadi moved up and did as he was told. The door creaked wide to reveal the expanse of the command room.

Most of the chamber was in darkness. There were tables and a few chairs in the center, facing a heavy iron hatch at the far end, like something from on board a submarine. Another dead fighter lay in a heap on the floor, collapsed over an unfired assault rifle.

A single strip-light hanging from the high ceiling threw a pool of yellow illumination across a muscular, densely built white man in desert camo gear and a dun-colored shemagh in the middle of the space. He had a heavy beard, and hard eyes beneath the peak of a blue baseball cap that were lost in the screen of a battered laptop computer. Wires from the machine snaked away to the iron hatch, connecting to bricks of paper-wrapped plastic explosive that had been jammed into the hatch’s crevices.

The man in the cap did not acknowledge the new arrivals, his gloved hands tapping out commands on the keyboard. The computer gave off a negative-sounding tone and he cursed under his breath.

Dembe and Chidike followed the other two men into the room, sweeping the dark corners for other threats. Finding nothing, Dembe grimaced and turned toward the white man. American, just as he had suspected. Although the man with the cap had no insignia on his gear vest, and no flag patch on his arm, Dembe knew the type from the pirated copies of Hollywood action movies the others liked to watch.

An operator, they liked to call themselves, as if it made them better than regular soldiers. They had fearsome reputations, but Dembe decided that was just make-believe, just more American bragging. This one didn’t seem so special. He didn’t reach for the highly modified carbine lying on the table next to the laptop, didn’t show the slightest spark of a warrior’s aggression.

Baako shouted at him. Who the fuck are you? Who do you think you are?

At length, the American looked up as they cautiously approached him. Evening, fellas, he offered. His tone was even, almost conversational. Listen, I’m having trouble getting that booby-trap disarmed. He jerked his thumb at the wired-up explosives. "I already tried one-two-three-four, the usual stuff. Don’t want to pull on the wrong thing. Help a guy out? Give me the code and we can all go home."

Dembe knew the four-digit sequence that would make the bomb safe – the warlord had told him so that when the time came, they could trade what was on the other side of the hatch for a lot of money – but if the American was trying to intimidate him into revealing it, his attempt was a poor one.

Dembe raised his AKM and pointed it at the American’s head. The man in the cap took his hands off the laptop and held them up. Easy now, cowboy.

You did this? Dembe jutted his chin at the dead fighter. You killed the men here? Not just you! Where are the others?

Not just me, you’re right about that. The American nodded. A buddy of mine did the hard work. I took out your patrols in the valley, then walked up in here. He shrugged. See, me and my guys? We’re the ones who get called when someone wants to start a war… or stop one. But my buddy? The man in the cap smiled thinly. He’ll put you in hell an hour before the devil knows you’re dead.

Dembe’s annoyance surged at the other man’s unfazed attitude, and he reeled back to strike him with the AKM’s heavy wooden stock. But in the same moment he caught a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye, from up in the deep, ink-black shadows.

Muffled chugs of discharge sounded, and suddenly Baako and Amadi were reeling away from one another, aerosols of blood and brain matter jetting from ragged gunshot wounds in their heads. Dembe pivoted and Chidike fired off a burst from his rifle in sheer reflex, a tongue of flame from the AKM’s muzzle briefly dispelling some of the darkness.

In that flash of fire, Dembe saw something dark as night moving, dropping from a ledge hidden in the shadows. He saw three shimmering green eyes search for and find the other fighter. Then Chidike was hit too, stumbling backward, clawing at his throat.

The fear that Dembe had been holding back exploded and he fired too, but the man in the cap was already moving, dropping behind cover as the AKM’s rounds sparked off the walls.

It was just five paces to the doorway and back out into the corridor. Dembe broke into a sprint, ignoring Chidike’s last gasps as the other man lay dying on the floor, bolting past him in a headlong rush.

He didn’t make it. The black shape with the glowing emerald eyes came at him, and Dembe thought he heard the crackle of a vulture’s wings. Pain burst across his arm as iron-hard fingers trapped his limb and snapped bone. He cried out and lost his grip on the AKM. The rifle clattered away.

Then the blunt muzzle of a suppressed pistol jammed into his cheek, the metal of it still searing hot from the previous shots, burning his flesh. The shape in black shoved him against the wall and he felt hot breath against the back of his neck. Dembe stifled a gasp and waited for death.

But death wanted something from him.

I’m going to tell you the price for your life, said the shadow, his tone flint-hard and uncompromising. He nodded toward the laptop. Four numbers or one bullet. Make your choice.

Two

Sahel Region – Burkina Faso – West Africa

Sam Fisher had seen it before, the particular kind of terror that came over a man who wasn’t used to being afraid of anything. Soldiers of every stripe liked to believe they were fearless, but the reality was any man could know real panic when the moment came.

The fighter with the gun in his cheek was like that. Probably the big dog here, comfortable with being the guy in charge, comfortable with inflicting violence on others, never expecting that there might be a bigger, nastier predator lurking in the shadows, waiting for the right moment. He blinked, his eyes widening as he got to grips with the truth of his situation.

Fisher had seen that look before too. He’d seen it in the faces of the enemies he had fought, the men he had killed on mission after mission, in places no less godforsaken than this arid corner of the African veldt.

What… are you? The fighter pushed out the question, his body rigid with terror.

"Demons, Fisher told him, and then nodded in the direction of the man in the cap. Demons and Ghosts. Then he adjusted his grip on his pistol, pushing the blunt muzzle of the SC-IS semiautomatic into the man’s flesh. I won’t ask you again. What’s the disarm code?"

I tell you and you will shoot me!

That depends, he replied. "But you can be damn sure I will kill you if you don’t tell me." There were a lot of psychological tricks and coercive techniques that an operative could employ in a field interrogation, but Fisher had always found the most expedient to be a combination of honest threats and carefully applied menace.

He had the experience to back it up. Most men his age in his line of work were either out for the big sleep in a pine box somewhere or pushing papers behind a desk. Covert operatives of Sam Fisher’s caliber rarely made it to retirement, either taken out of the game by someone from their legions of hard-earned enemies or lost to injury, mileage, or sheer wear and tear. He was a rarity, too long in the tooth to be able to leave it behind, but still fit and capable enough to be at the cutting edge.

Fisher had sharp, hawkish eyes in the craggy, granite-hard face of a lifelong fighter. He was older than he looked, but not that you would know it, built rangy and athletic with a close-cut beard and short hair, gunmetal gray with a scattering of faded black. Under his dark tactical gear, there was a lean form with barely any fat on it, a body mapped with scars and old healed wounds, each with a tale to tell.

For his part, Fisher’s personal story was shrouded in shadows as deep as those around him. Once a US Navy SEAL before becoming a paramilitary for the Central Intelligence Agency, his career in the clandestine black world had finally led him into an organization so secretive that only a handful of the world’s elite spies were aware of its existence. Known as Fourth Echelon, powered by the cutting-edge intelligence engines of America’s National Security Agency, the group operated directly by presidential order against terror threats, rogue weapons of mass destruction or anything else that placed American interests – and those of her allies – in direct jeopardy.

Fisher and others like him were Splinter Cells, lone-wolf agents empowered to keep the world in balance, even in the most extreme of circumstances, and sometimes that meant being able to kill without hesitation.

The fighter saw that in Fisher’s eyes, and he made the smart choice. The code is… Nineteen eighty-four.

The year the country of Burkina Faso was incorporated, said Fisher’s companion, from across the room. Somebody’s a student of history. Cautiously, he typed the numbers into the laptop. That, or a fan of George Orwell.

If you’re lying to us… Fisher began, drawing back the gun.

The fighter let out a gasp. It does not matter, he managed, struggling to recover some of his earlier defiance. "You will not leave this valley alive. None of you."

On the metal hatch, the crimson indicator lights on the explosive rig went out, and Fisher shared a look with the other American. We good, Nomad?

The soldier nodded, letting out a breath. Looks like. Let me make sure. Gathering up his M4 carbine, Nomad slung the weapon over his shoulder and made his way to the door, running gloved hands over the latches dogging it shut, studying it carefully for any secondary triggers he might have missed first time around.

Fisher didn’t anticipate any additional problems. Nomad had a keen eye, and he was one of the few people on the very short list of operators the Splinter Cell agent considered worthy of his respect. Smart, competent, and quick, the other man led a team from the US Army’s 5th Special Forces Group. Those in the know called them the Ghosts, and as a former Navy squid, Fisher was willing to overlook the fact that Nomad and his crew were grunts based on their exemplary record in combat. This wasn’t the first time Fourth Echelon had partnered with Nomad’s unit, and the unique circumstances of this mission had called for such collaboration once again.

All good, declared the other man, before pressing the throat mike tab at his neck. Ghosts, check in.

Over the radio bead in his ear, Fisher heard the other three members of the Ghost team – he knew them as Midas, Weaver, and Holt – sound off one after another. Each had taken another of the old bunkers up along the valley, searching for their mission objectives. As with this one, the hard-points had been prepared with explosive charges that could be remote-detonated.

Nomad passed on the disarm code. Stand by, he told them. I’ll open this one first. If you don’t hear thunder, you’re clear to proceed.

You will regret this, muttered the fighter. You should have stayed home, Americans, you and your friends. Africa will be your grave!

Quiet. Fisher’s aim with the pistol never wavered.

Here we go, said Nomad. With deft movements, he turned the latches and the hatch groaned open on rusted hinges. Immediately, a wave of musty air and mingled odors vented into the command room – the stale smells of human bodies confined too long, and a chemical reek that made Fisher’s gut twist.

Voices called out from inside, men and women crying in alarm, and Fisher couldn’t help but look in that direction. For the fighter, it was the fractional distraction he had been hoping for, and he shoved Fisher in the chest, sprinting for the other door.

The SC-IS pistol chugged, but Fisher’s shot was off, just clipping the running man before he raced away back out into the dark corridor.

Shit. Fisher took a step after the fleeing fighter, but Nomad called out to him.

Panther! Forget that guy, I need help over here.

Reluctantly, Fisher holstered his weapon and moved closer. What he saw inside the chamber beyond the hatch made his jaw harden. Bloodied and sickly-looking, there were four out of the dozen hostages the mission had been tasked to locate. Some were still wearing shirts bearing the logo of the charitable NGO they represented, all of them good people who had come to the Sahel Region in hopes of helping those displaced by the constant fighting.

Doctors and technicians, the civilians had made the mistake of thinking their neutrality and their worthy intentions would protect them. That had lasted barely a month before the most malicious of the local warlords had found another use for them as human shields.

One of the men, an older gent with a fatherly look to him, grabbed Nomad’s hand and pumped it with a vigorous shake. You came for us. Thank you! He looked around and caught sight of Fisher. Those thugs put us in there. Wouldn’t let us leave, and… He lost the rest of his words as he tried to smother a harsh, racking cough with his hand. Fisher saw blood on his fingers as the old man wheezed.

Those things, said a pale woman with a sweat-filmed face. I think they’ve been making us sick. She waved at a pyramid