The Blades: SAS Task Force Dagger is the 3rd book in Josef Black's The Blades SAS Series, a fictional account of life as a SAS operator following Danny Archer's career across a number of historical SAS missions set within historical conflicts from 1998 to the present day.
October 2001: In the aftermath of the 9/11 attack on the United States by Al-Qaeda, the Taliban regime controlling Afghanistan refuse a diplomatic ultimatum to hand over Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda leadership to face trial. In response, the United States rapidly forms Task Force Dagger: an international coalition of Special Forces inserted into Afghanistan to support the rebel Afghan Northern Alliance warlord militias to retake power from the Taliban regime.
Archer's Patrol from SAS Seven Troop are inserted in a daring HALO raid to disable a fortified Taliban Anti-Air position to open the Panjshir Valley for the US Special Forces helicopter insertion, before joining their colleagues from the British SBS (Special Boat Service) in undertaking a series of missions to take strategic objectives and capture high-value Al Qaeda targets.
Culminating in the siege of bin Laden's cave complex at Tora Bora, Operation Jawbreaker, where more than 2,000 international Special Forces operators supported the Afghan militias, THE BLADES: SAS TASK FORCE DAGGER is a fictionalised story based on the historical campaign to retake Afghanistan from the Taliban and dismantle Al-Qaeda's terrorist network - widely considered the most successful military operation of the Afghanistan conflict.