Fictional character history
Geordie Sharp (born George Sharp) had an unhappy childhood which prompted him to join the British Army at the age of 16. When he eventually was badged a member of 22 Regiment Special Air Service, he felt as if his life had actually been worth living, through the best and worst of the times. But this begins to change when Sharp returns from the Gulf War, severely wounded after an accident deep in Iraqi-held territory which resulted in his brief internment as a prisoner of war.
The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of British Armed Forces. As of 2018, the British Army comprises just over 81,500 trained regular (full-time) personnel and just over 27,000 trained reserve (part-time) personnel.
The Gulf War, codenamed Operation Desert Shield for operations leading to the buildup of troops and defense of Saudi Arabia and Operation Desert Storm in its combat phase, was a war waged by coalition forces from 35 nations led by the United States against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait arising from oil pricing and production disputes. The war is also known under other names, such as the Persian Gulf War, First Gulf War, Gulf War I, Kuwait War, First Iraq War or Iraq War, before the term "Iraq War" became identified instead with the 2003 Iraq War.
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person, whether combatant or non-combatant, who is held in custody by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates to 1660.
Sharp begins to suffer from marriage problems when he is dispatched to Northern Ireland to train with the SAS, but the problem becomes personal when his estranged wife is killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army and, nearly maddened with sorrow and rage, Geordie goes on a personal vendetta to hunt down the terrorists responsible, putting at risk his entire military career in the process.
Northern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom in the north-east of the island of Ireland, variously described as a country, province or region. Northern Ireland shares a border to the south and west with the Republic of Ireland. In 2011, its population was 1,810,863, constituting about 30% of the island's total population and about 3% of the UK's population. Established by the Northern Ireland Act 1998 as part of the Good Friday Agreement, the Northern Ireland Assembly holds responsibility for a range of devolved policy matters, while other areas are reserved for the British government. Northern Ireland co-operates with the Republic of Ireland in some areas, and the Agreement granted the Republic the ability to "put forward views and proposals" with "determined efforts to resolve disagreements between the two governments".
The Irish Republican Army (IRA), also known as the Provisional Irish Republican Army was an Irish republican paramilitary organisation that sought to end British rule in Northern Ireland, facilitate the reunification of Ireland and bring about an independent republic encompassing all of Ireland. It was the biggest and most active republican paramilitary group during the Troubles. It saw itself as the successor to the original IRA and called itself simply the Irish Republican Army (IRA), or Óglaigh na hÉireann in Irish, and was broadly referred to as such by others. The IRA was designated an unlawful terrorist organisation in the United Kingdom and an unlawful organisation in the Republic of Ireland.
He soon finds himself thrown into danger again when the PIRA attempts revenge by forcing Sharp to assassinate the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom by threatening to murder his only son, Timothy Sharp.
A few years after this incident, Sharp is reassigned to Moscow, supposedly to train a Spetnaz unit, although Sharp is secretly expected to plant nuclear explosives under The Kremlin while using the military as his cover. However, he goes on to compromise the entire operation by launching an unauthorized mission against the Chechen Mafia, which leave several Russian gangsters dead. Moscow's underworld is swift to retaliate, kidnapping two of Sharp's SAS contacts and getting control of the nuclear device. Although Geordie is quick to attempt a remedy of the situation before it spins out of control and causes a major international crisis, he finds himself reassigned again at the operation's end, this time to Southern Africa.
Moscow is the capital and most populous city of Russia, with 13.2 million residents within the city limits, 17 million within the urban area and 20 million within the metropolitan area. Moscow is one of Russia's federal cities.
Southern Africa is the southernmost region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics, and including several countries. The term southern Africa or Southern Africa, generally includes Angola, Botswana, Eswatini (Swaziland), Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, though Angola may be included in Central Africa and Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe in East Africa. From a political perspective the region is said to be unipolar with South Africa as a first regional power.
Sharp's new post is Kamanga, a former British colony now prone to brutal tribal massacres. The corrupt dictatorship government is led by General Bakunda, a Kaswiri member of the majority northern tribe in Kamanga. The majority southern tribe, the Afundis, wages a brutal guerrilla war against the regime under the direction of their unlikely leader: Gus Muende, Bakunda's former adopted son and an avowed Marxist of mixed European-African ancestry. Geordie and seven other UK military operatives are asked to train one of Bakunda's anti-Afundi death squads, a special forces militia known as the Alpha Commando. Again, things go wrong on the operation's first week, when a member of the team driving a truck strikes and kills a local village boy. The witch doctor in the region puts a curse on Sharp if he refuses to leave Kamanga immediately: Ten white people shall die, and their blood will be on Geordie's head. In the days that follow, the curse comes horribly true: Two South Africans traveling with a German Namibian woman are killed in a plane crash which Sharp witnesses; the woman herself is saved but promptly reveals she is in the Afundis' employ and betrays Sharp to the rebels. One by one, several members of Sharp's team die: The first trampled by an elephant, a second cannibalized by Gus Muende, and a third shot dead during a daring escape attempt. The next three victims are local Afrikaner mercenaries in the employ of a rogue private military corporation: The first is executed by the Alpha Commando, the second is killed trying to help Sharp escape a rebel camp, and the third is thrown out of a helicopter by Geordie himself. The Alpha Commando promptly turn against Sharp and declare him and his team wanted criminals in Kamanga, due to the greed of a major who believes they are in possession of a diamond stolen from a government mine.
A witch doctor was originally a type of healer who treated ailments believed to be caused by witchcraft. The term witch doctor is sometimes used to refer to healers, particularly in regions which use traditional healing rather than contemporary medicine..
White people is a racial classification specifier, used mostly and often exclusively for people of European descent; depending on context, nationality, and point of view. The term has at times been expanded to encompass persons of Middle Eastern and North African descent, persons who are often considered non-white in other contexts. The usage of "white people" or a "white race" as nomenclature for European populations - indicated by their light skin, among other physical characteristics, and contrasting with "black people", Amerindians, and other "colored" people or "persons of color" - originated in the 17th century. It was only during the 19th century that the category of white people was transformed in a quasi-scientific system of race and skin color relations. The term "Caucasian" is sometimes used as a synonym for "white" in its racial sense and sometimes to refer to a larger racial category that includes white people among other groups.
Cannibalism involves consuming all or part of another individual of the same species as food. To consume the same species, or show cannibalistic behavior, is a common ecological interaction in the animal kingdom, and has been recorded in more than 1,500 species. Human cannibalism is well-documented, both in ancient and in recent times.
It is eventually revealed that this diamond in question was hidden in the plane piloted by the Namibian woman and her companions when it crashed. She subsequently recovers it with Muende's help; the two, facing only inevitable defeat against Bakunda's army as it rapidly intensifies the fighting, decide to go into exile in Central America, dividing the proceeds of the diamond's sale. However, a vengeful Geordie tracks them down, and both are shot dead by a Kamangan soldier. This brings the figure of dead whites since the witch doctor's curse up to nine. While later attempting to stop the rebels from getting their hands on an old stockpile of Soviet warheads, Sharp is exposed to a near-fatal dose of radiation.
In physics, radiation is the emission or transmission of energy in the form of waves or particles through space or through a material medium. This includes:
He eventually flees Kamanga and soon afterwards learns he may have contracted cancer. This earns Sharp a discharge from the army, and he retires to Northern Ireland to live with his child. However, even there the witch doctor's curse haunts him; his son notes that if Geordie dies from his radiation exposure, the prediction would come true: He would be the tenth white man down.
