sections:
1976, war-torn Beirut city. Under the cover of a massive firefight, an unknown band of armed men blast their way into the Imperial Bank of Beirut. Over the next 48 hours they load up three trucks with gold bullion, and the raiders and the loot disappear forever.
Two weeks earlier, a young SAS Major newly arrived in The Regiment had tasked his men with scoping out just such a Beirut bank robbery – strictly as an exercise only. But when SAS veteran Luke Kilbride presented his plan for the heist, the Captain tore it apart as being a, ‘useless piece of crap’. Kilbride didn’t appreciate this jumped-up officer telling him he was a fool. Neither did the men in his unit. Together, they decided to prove the Major wrong and rob the bank anyway, as a freelance operation.
But whilst the heist went like clockwork, that was just the start of things going badly wrong for Kilbride and his men. Eventually, they are forced to hide the loot and make their getaway. Thirty years later, Kilbride and his team are planning their return. The only problem is that a powerful and ruthless enemy is hell bent on finding the gold before them. Kilbride dreams up a cunning and audacious decoy mission to lead them away from the loot – and so begins a race against time to get to the gold before the Black Assassins can catch up with them.
Fact: the 1976 Beirut bank heist remains the biggest ever bank job. No one has ever been arrested. The crime has never been solved. None of the gold has ever been found.
book reviews
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Peterborough Evening Telegraph
“ An absolute belter of an adventure/thriller based on rumours that the SAS was behind the most audacious bank robbery in history.” -
Peter James
"A rocket-fuelled adrenaline rush" -
David Loyn
“It does not get more authentic than this. Damian Lewis is an author at the top of his game with a tale spun out of pure gold from the deep heart of the SAS.” -
Mail on Sunday
" A hardcore, high-tech thriller. Perfect for summer pool-side escapism" Janet Thompsett, Amazon.co.uk
“I’ve just finished reading this. What an absolutely brilliant book. Chris Ryan meets Andy McNab meets Frederick Forsyth. The story - whether it was based on fact or not - was superb. The action towards the end was amazing. It will certainly make fabulous tv/movie - I can’t praise it high enough. WOW!”- Simon Barret, Blogger News Network
“Damien Lewis is no novice to the authoring world and has been hugely successful in the UK marketplace: his writing style is accomplished, and the plot and character development are masterful. This is a high-octane story that propels the reader at speed through a world of intrigue, greed and terrorism. There are all sorts of twists in Cobra Gold, and the writing style is a little like early Clancy, without the boring and tedious techno drivel that Clancy loves to incorporate. Damien Lewis sticks with what we want – action, action and yet more action. This is a powerhouse of a book – if you are headed off on vacation put this one in your luggage and whilst sipping a cold beer on a tropical beech treat yourself to a wild tale of derring-do.” - A.J. Hogan, Compass Magazine
“Cobra Gold is a fast moving story built around the biggest bank robbery the world has ever seen. The story starts with a highly professional bank-heist in Beirut. The SAS team that break in are faced with a prize of staggering and unexpected proportions, then as courage, greed, opportunism and recklessness starts to unfold you get sucked into the problems of trying to hide, let alone dispose of a heavy and cumbersome mountain of gold valued at $50million. With an eye to technical accuracy, which is such a feature of Damien’s writing, the tale finally brings us to the modern day. The terrorist organization that claims ownership of the gold and the authorities that send the team in to this most covert of covert operations are formidable adversaries and throwing them off the trail is no easy matter. This is modern drama at its best with Damien Lewis in top form.” -
Sid Olivera, REM-FM
“Tell the gripping story of the world’s biggest bank robbery, and those who may have done it. Amazing and superb.” -
Gerry Ryan, the Gerry Ryan Show, 5th June, 2007
“My next guest is a Ryan Show favourite. He’s reported from many of the world’s war zones, including the Sudan, Zimbabwe, Iraq, Syria and the Balkans. He’s reported on the heroin trade, child trafficking, tiger poaching and famine; he’s met smugglers, arms dealers, genocidal leaders, peacekeepers, world presidents, rebel warlords, child prostitutes, Islamist terrorists, mercenaries, soldiers and spies. He’s posed as a Muslim extremist penetrating some the UK’s most dangerous Islamist groups and been hospitalised with flesh-eating bacteria. You’d imagine he has some stories to tell and he has. Having experienced war, terror and espionage he’s now writing about it, and his new book is a fictionalised account of an extraordinary true story - the world’s biggest bank robbery featuring special forces in Beirut, in the 1970s. It’s a crime that was never solved and it’s now a griping thriller called Cobra Gold. It’s a cracker. Damien Lewis rejoins us in the studio.” -
The Mail on Sunday Live Magazine, Sunday 3rd June, 2007
“In 1976, a crack team blasted its way into Beirut’s British bank of the Middle East and stole gold bars worth 100 million sterling at today’s prices – making this the world’s biggest ever bank heist. Neither the robbers nor the bullion were ever found – but now, with the story the basis of a major new bestseller, a remarkable theory has emerged.”
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