Relentless

Dean Stott

Description

The extraordinary true story of Tier One Special Forces soldier, adventurer, and world-record breaker, Dean Stott.

Dean Stott made a mistake that he was certain was going to cost him his life. As a former Special Operations soldier, this was not his first mission in Yemen. Yet although he was appropriately dressed head-to-toe as a local, he had neglected to put in brown contact lenses. Stott had been compromised. With thoughts of his family racing through his mind, Stott reached below his automobile seat and took hold of his weapon.

In a gripping retelling of his life story to date, Stott shares insight into his esteemed military career in the British army where he conducted deployments to hostile environments, worked within counterterrorism operations in some of the most dangerous places in the world, and survived a horrific parachute accident. As he leads others into his experiences, Stott discloses how he continued to fuel his journey of excellence five years after leaving the military by becoming the first man to cycle the Pan American Highway in under one hundred days while raising over a million dollars for mental health awareness charities. Throughout his retelling, Stott offers an inspiring reminder that we all have the capability to use our inner voices, drive, and instincts to become relentless in our pursuits in life.

Relentless is the extraordinary true story of Tier One Special Forces soldier, adventurer, and world-record breaker, Dean Stott.

Sujets

• Sport
• Autres sports
• Histoire
• Military
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Archway Publishing
• Date de parution: 22 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781665725187
• Langue: English

Extrait

DEAN STOTT
RELENTLESS
FROM SPECIAL OPERATIONS TO WORLD RECORD BREAKER


Read this book for an inspiring example of how to be RELENTLESS.
JOCKO WILLINK











Copyright © 2022 Dean Stott.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.



Archway Publishing
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.archwaypublishing.com
844-669-3957

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6657-2517-0 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-2516-3 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-2518-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022911141



Archway Publishing rev. date: 8/19/2022



Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
PAD BRAT
Chapter 2
RECRUIT
Chapter 3
COMMANDO
Chapter 4
OP AGRICOLA
Chapter 5
LYMPSTONE
Chapter 6
SELECTION
Chapter 7
FROGGIN’
Chapter 8
CIVVIE
Chapter 9
LIBYA
Chapter 10
GUINEA
Chapter 11
BACK TO THE DESERT
Chapter 12
LET THE GAMES BEGIN
Chapter 13
FRACTURES FORMING
Chapter 14
MY NEW NORMAL
Chapter 15
WORLD CUP
Chapter 16
BEAVER TAIL
Chapter 17
DEAD OR DIVORCED
Chapter 18
A NEW CHALLENGE
Chapter 19
PROMO VIDEO
Chapter 20
WHO DARES WINS
Chapter 21
CONTRACTIONS
Chapter 22
JOGLE
Chapter 23
HEAT TRAINING
Chapter 24
PAN AMERICAN HIGHWAY 18
Chapter 25
SETTING OFF—CHILE AND ARGENTINA
Chapter 26
CHILE AND PERU
Chapter 27
ECUADOR
Chapter 28
SHE WHO DARES
Chapter 29
BREAKUP IN MEXICO
Chapter 30
YOU HAVE BEEN INVITED …
Chapter 31
THE FINAL COUNTDOWN
Chapter 32
COMING HOME
Acknowledgments
About The Author



Prologue
I’d made a mistake that was going to cost me my life.
As I sat behind the steering wheel, I turned to the man beside me. He was a Yemeni—we called him H—and he was the only passenger in the beat-up car. The air around us was stiff with heat and tension. The vehicle was almost rocking as the press of humanity outside began to shove and point at me. I kept my eyes down not out of fear but so those outside wouldn’t see them.
I knew exactly what had happened. How they’d spotted me. I was dressed head to toe as a local from flip-flops to a turban. I had dyed my beard and colored my skin so that I looked like that the love child of George Hamilton and Donald Trump, but what I hadn’t added to my disguise was my brown contact lenses, and my bright-blue eyes were drawing the locals in to point and stare. I knew it was only a matter of minutes before the local militia started slipping out of their hiding holes, and that night, I could look forward to an orange boiler suit. The last thing the world would see of me was the image of the former Special Forces soldier about to meet his fate courtesy of an enemy unfamiliar with the Geneva Convention.
Bollocks.
I wanted to talk to H. I wanted a local man’s opinion, but if the people outside saw my lips moving in a funny way, we would be truly fucked. And so instead, I raised an eyebrow and hoped that people would just think I was commenting on the traffic that had packed us into the bustling marketplace. H shrugged as if to say, What can you do?
What could I do? Get my head chopped off or go out fighting. Those seemed to be the choices. I knew which one I’d choose if it came down to it, but I heard that voice in the back of my head— You’ll never last two minutes in the army . Well, if this was the end, I’d show them how wrong they were.
I’d been showing them for years.
This wasn’t my first mission in Yemen—or any other war-torn country for that matter—and I hadn’t come to be sitting in a car in the middle of Sana’a because I had been scraping by in the g reen army. I was a former Special Forces soldier, and as such, I’ve had my mettle tested again and again. I tried to remember that as yet another local pointed at me and began waving toward my door. I pretended to be busy looking ahead at the traffic and checked my mirror behind me.
No sign of our second car.
I knew that he couldn’t be far behind. Though the local operators were brave and competent, they hadn’t received the level of training we had as members of the SBS, the Special Boat Service, and that’s why I was behind the wheel.
This wasn’t even supposed to be my job. The reason I was dressed up like a local and driving something that would make a MOT inspector burst into tears was that the guys who were supposed to be doing the job were still waiting on their qualifications. Only a few days earlier, our employer had sent us out into the local area but had neglected to mention that there was a very real threat of an IED on our route. This car would be lucky to stop a strong breeze let alone an artillery round. Three of us had been picked for this duty because we had the suitable qualifications, but we still had the task by night and doing pickups by day. I was c hin-strapped. Knackered. Maybe that was why I’d made the mistake. Maybe that was why I had to get on the covert radio with the push-to-send button hidden, out of sight of the Afghans who continued to walk by peering and pointing at me. I kept my message short trying to move my lips as little as possible. “I’ve been compromised.”
That would be the last thing I’d say over the net. Every answer would be given by depressing the send button for a second, a kind of Morse code—two beeps for yes, one for no.
My mate Sam came on the net from the second vehicle. He was out of sight, but I was sure he couldn’t have been more than a hundred meters away.
“Are you compromised? Over.”
Beep beep.
“Are you happy with the immediate action drill? Over.”
I knew that drill by heart—The key to Special Forces soldiering is that we trained and drilled relentlessly putting in the repetitions just like a bodybuilder does in the gym—but was I happy with it?
Hardly. The first part would involve my pulling a snub-nosed machine gun from beneath my seat and emptying a full magazine into the windscreen. This would send a very loud signal that it was a good idea for people to get away from me. It would buy me seconds to grab my wrapped-up assault rifle from the back seat and exit the vehicle. Then me and my flip-flops would be racing the thirty miles to the nearest safe house.
Was I happy with the immediate action plan? Fuck no. But I’d be even less happy without a head, so what else was there to do?
Beep beep.
Sam came back on the net. “Roger, mate. Your call. Out.”
My call. When it came down to it, the biggest moments in our lives always were.
I thought about letting out a deep breath but looking ice cool in front of H was important for me. Fear is contagious. I’d put mine on a shelf until I’d gotten clear of the situation. Instead, I imagined everything that was about to happen in this shitstorm. I ran through the drill one more time in my head. I’d have to fight long enough for the cavalry to arrive Black Hawk Down style.
Bloody hell! I almost laughed to myself. All this over a pair of contact lenses.
I looked to H and gave him the slightest of nods. He was probably sending up a prayer. Maybe more than one. I sent a thought to my wife and children. If people tried to stop me from seeing them again, I promised it would be a fight they’d never seen before.
With the thought of my family piping like fire through my veins, I reached below my seat and took hold of my weapon...




PAD BRAT
As you might expect, it was a long ride from my coming into the world as a baby and ending up in Yemen just seconds away from going full Jason Bourne in a busy market street, but maybe I’d had a shorter road than most people did into the military. In fact, I took my first breaths and screamed my lungs out for the first time at the hospital of RAF Wroughton, an air force base not far from Swindon.
The reason for that was my father. He was a career squaddie based in Tidworth, and like so many pad brats—kids belonging to those in the service—my early childhood was a blur of packing and unpacking boxes and homes in the army’s drab version of council estates as we relocated every few years. After Tidworth, it was Germany, but I was too young to remember much of that. Then came Bradford, and I remember when the football stadium burned down. Like a lot of kids, I’d had sports etched into my early memories, and little wonder—my dad was player, manager, and coach of the army’s football team.
After Bradford, we were moved down to Aldershot, at that time a huge garrison town, and close by was 3 Royal School Mechanical Engineering (REME), where my father was a Squadron Sergeant Major at Gibraltar Barracks. I remember him standing at the head of his formation of young soldiers while I looked on with my hair close cropped to my head like the rest of them. Queen Elizabeth Avenue ran through the heart of the garrison, and it w