In this edgy, fast-paced and incredibly moving account, Chris Hunter chronicles the remarkable journey of a teenager with few hopes and limited prospects who went on to become one of the most successful counter-terrorism operators in Britain.Hunter depicts his grueling officer training at Sandhurst, and afterwards as a young troop commander in Bosnia. He describes how, as a bomb disposal operator in Northern Ireland and Iraq, he witnessed horrendous acts of terrorism and recounts the methods he employed to outsmart the terrorists who repeatedly tried to target him. Hunter takes us to some of the most perilous places on earth as he and his team relentlessly attempt to track down the world's leading terrorists and disrupt their networks. A journey that takes us from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan to the murky back-streets of Colombia and Israel. Whether he's protecting members of the Royal Family, responding to the 2005 London suicide bombings or trying to foil Al Qaeda bomb plots, he provides a fascinating, no-holds-barred insight into a fascinating world that has rarely been documented by somebody on the inside. By turns gritty, absorbing, and heart-breaking, this is the portrait of a man prepared to sacrifice everything for his country, but to concede nothing to the terrorists.
Author
Chris Hunter is the author of Eight Lives Down, a riveting first-person account of a high-threat bomb disposal tour – the world’s most dangerous job in the world’s most dangerous place. He joined the British Army in 1989 at the age of sixteen. He was commissioned from Sandhurst at twenty-one and later qualified as a counter terrorist bomb disposal operator. He served with a number of specialist counter-terrorism units and deployed to numerous operational theatres, including the Balkans, Northern Ireland, Colombia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Seconded to COBR-A as an IED and suicide terrorism expert, he played an instrumental role during the July 2005 London bombings. In early 2007 he retired as the MOD’s senior IED intelligence analyst to become a writer and Counter Improvised Explosive Device consultant. For his actions during his Iraq tour he was awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal by HM Queen Elizabeth II. His citation read: ‘There can be few other individuals who have so willingly played Russian roulette with their own life to safeguard the lives of others.’
