The False Leopards

Kenya, 1955. The enemy is hiding in the forest. But the most dangerous men may be on the same side. When Lieutenant Thomas Rooke's patrol walks into a perfectly prepared ambush in the Aberdare Range, four of his men are killed in less than two minutes. The attack should have been impossible. Their route had been changed only hours earlier. Someone knew they were coming. Recruited into a secret pseudo-gang operation, Rooke enters the forest disguised among former Mau Mau fighters, trackers and intelligence operatives. Their mission is to find the elusive insurgent commander known as General Kifaru and uncover the source feeding him British military intelligence. But the deeper Rooke goes, the less certain he becomes about who is hunting whom. Orders come from men who may not exist. British weapons appear in enemy hands. Covert units operate beyond normal command. And behind it all is a name whispered through the intelligence network: Strickland. As Rooke follows the trail from the rain-soaked forests of the Aberdares to secret offices and hidden operations, he discovers a clandestine war in which loyalty can be manufactured, betrayal can be authorised, and soldiers can become expendable pieces in someone else's intelligence game. To expose the truth, Rooke must survive the Mau Mau, his supposed allies—and a system determined to bury anyone who learns too much. The False Leopards is a tense historical military thriller of ambushes, pseudo-gangs, covert intelligence, betrayal and divided loyalties, set against the brutal uncertainty of the Kenya Emergency. In this war, the uniform tells you nothing.