Into the Fire

The Jungle by Mark Dawson is Book 9 in The John Milton Series.

John "Smith" is still in London living his austere, minimalist lifestyle when he volunteers to help an acquaintance (Tommy) from his AA group to drive some furniture to Calais, France. Once that's done, as John and Tommy travel back to catch the ferry for Dover, refugees from the encampment known as "the jungle" threaten to get in the trucks lined up in the slow going traffic. After finally making it through to the ferry, everything seems in order when they disembark, but when they open the locked door to the back of the trailer, they discover men inside who entered through making a slash in the roof.

The final young man (Samir) is reluctant to come out, so John climbs up to assist before the police manhandle him to get him out. He explains he's come to find his sister (Nadia) who was sold to sex traffickers after they came on a boat from a place in Africa. He begs for John's help, so that's all it takes for guilt-laden John to find a purpose after advising the young passenger to ask for asylum. 

John gets as much information as he can from Samir before he's introduced to an asylum attorney at the detainee center. 

The process to find the Albanians who use the purchased girls for prostitution isn't easy, but John's not easily deterred. When what he manages to do requires help, he calls Hicks who helped him take down the killers of a taxi driver he knew in AA and through John's and Hicks' combined efforts rescued Hicks from a serious attachment in The Ninth Step while providing the money needed to treat his wife's cancer. 

John dares to travel to Tripoli to find the man responsible for these "arrangements" for people seeking opportunities to find work and better lives – it's the sad worldwide tale for those in third world countries. While he isn't able to do as he'd hoped there, he learns what he needs to make headway at the jungle. Except that his efforts go horribly wrong.

With unforeseen trouble that could easily lead to both Hicks' and John's deaths, their predicament finds them in the worst of hands. 

It's ironic that John doesn't believe in God but thinks he can atone for the wrongs he tallied up while being the number one assassin for Group 15. Again, through each circumstance where he decides to help someone, his God-complex allows him to execute some of the same kind of individuals as he did while serving in Group 15. At times, when he struggles with empathy and awkward displays of affection or appreciation, the reader sees him as a man stripped of his emotions in order to complete his near impossible but impeccably planned – even if often bizarre – missions both previously as Number One and presently as a private citizen. It seems somehow he needs to come to terms with the fact that there is evil and he worked against it in his past and now in his present. Not everything in his past needs atonement – even if he could atone for any of his sins, past or present. The fact that he can eliminate one kind of evil by using what he learned from his past does little to satisfy his innate desire for atonement. And that is something only God can provide.  

This was perhaps the most difficult of the series so far (for me) to read which is why the ending was so satisfying. 

Profanity present.

God, only you provide what we ultimately need. Only you. Please continue to give Mark the stories you have just for him to write. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.