The Kremlin Device features SAS Sergeant Geordie Sharp who is always a loner and a maverick, but finally goes over the edge in this adventure.
He is sent to Moscow to lead a team training the Russian Protection Service, a division of the former KGB, to acquire new anti-terrorist skills. At the same time, his superior also asks Geordie to undertake an SAS operation so outrageous that his conscience will barely allow him to carry it out. The ostensible aim of Operation Nimrod is to train a new Spetsnaz unit to combat the threat of the Russian Mafia, but Sharp's orders include a sinister agenda - to plant two nuclear devices, aptly named Apple and Orange, in the sewers of Moscow. They are protection against any future Russian attack on the UK and the US, a renewed danger in view of fast increasing political volatility and lawlessness in Russia.
The team manage to complete their mission to plant the Apple device under the tunnel near a church opposite the Kremlin Building.
Unfortunately, while Georgie and his men are on their way to carry out the second insertion of the Orange nuclear device, they are confronted by the Russian Mafia posing as Russian police GAI. After a brief confrontation and shootout, two members of Georgie’s team are kidnapped and taken away together with the car they are driving that carries the Orange device. When Geordie realises that Mafia have control of the nuclear device, and learns subsequently that it is being transported back to the UK, all hell breaks loose. He is promptly summoned back to the UK for a debrief.
Meanwhile, the Russian Mafia threaten not only to take control of their country, but Geordie learns, too, of their massive new presence in London.
The British authorities have earlier arrested some 12 Mafia members in London based on the information that Georgie receives from his Russian counterpart. This has apparently angered the Mafia based in Chechen. And in retaliation, they decided to confront Georgie and his men after learning that the SAS men are attempting to plant the Orange device.
Back in London, the British authorities receive new information that one of the Mafia leaders has just entered the country and they track him to one of the luxurious apartments in the city. Georgie manages to identify the man as Akula, aka the Shark, who is the second of the three Gaidar brothers of the Chechen Mafia. A successful hit on the place is carried out with Georgie leading one of the teams. After threatening Akula and his other partner in the apartment, Georgie manages to get a confession that the Orange device is actually in the country and is hidden in a garage behind the apartment. A professional squad is then despatched to disarm the nuclear device.
Next, Georgie and the British teams leave for Akula’s house near Grozny in Chechen to rescue his two colleagues who are taken prisoners there. During the invasion, Barrakuda, the youngest Mafia brother is killed as well.
The Kremlin Device is an unremitting police-racing thriller from start to finish. Chris Ryan writes it in the first person narration by Georgie and the readers get to share the SAS man’s conflicts and emotional pains as he struggles to reconcile the guilt he feels in carrying out his secret mission. And also the anguish he feels when his men are kidnapped. An absorbing read, especially when it comes to nitty-gritty planning of the attack operations.
