James Bond 007: Hammerhead is a spy thriller comic book miniseries featuring Ian Fleming's secret agent, James Bond in the central role of the plot, written by Andy Diggle and illustrated by Luca Casalanguida. It is a standalone story arc that spun off from the ongoing James Bond line published by Dynamite Entertainment and licensed by Ian Fleming Publications, making its debut in October 2016 and finished the course of its storyline in March 2017. A collected edition of all the issues was published in hardback in May 2017.
Plot
After returning from Venezuela to learn that Hunt Engineering, Britain's leading arms manufacturer, was targeted by a mysterious figure going by the codename of 'Kraken', a radical anti-capitalist, whose underlings he was sent to kill, James Bond is assigned on behalf of the British Intelligence to attend the Dubai Arms Fair and make contact with Hunt Engineering where they will be showcasing their newly developed weapons, for which M is under the impression that Kraken will be making another attempt on the firm. Bond meets Victoria Hunt, the daughter of Lord Hunt, the company's owner, who gives him a tour of all the products they have manufactured, including a technically advanced firearm rounds called APHEX and a massively large sized, heavily modified and overdeveloped railgun given the name of 'Hammerhead'.
Bond is invited to a gala held by Lord Bernard Hunt, whom he briefly meets before a sudden hostile attack ensues by masked gunmen in heavy combat armors. Lord Hunt is killed in the process with a headshot by a bullet which 007 identifies as an APHEX round, an off-the-market product manufactured by Hunt Engineering, suspecting the existence of a manipulative insider within the company. Bond manages to kill the assailants and protects Victoria in the process. After identifying the group of attackers, Bond tracks their source down to Al Hajjarah in Yemen and heads over there, escorted by Victoria in her personal jet, in which both have a romantic encounter. Meanwhile, at the Outer Hebrides, a Royal Navy helicopter transporting decommissioned Hunt warheads was shut down and its containment disappeared. Upon learning the news, Bond classifies the attack as a scheme planned and executed by Kraken.
Arriving at the Yemeni airport, Bond acquires a facilitated MI-6 vehicle by the Q-Branch, a gadget-laden Ford Mustang sports car, and drives to the location he tracked the source of the late gunmen down, kills the remaining members of the team, only to find out that their current involvement in the case was to deliver the smuggled goods to Karim Malfakhar. He contacts Bill Tanner to inform him of the grasp he has on the case, who tells him in return that Kraken isn't targeting the warheads but stealing them. Suddenly, Bond's car eliminates the connection with Tanner and enables the auto-pilot mode on its own, making several attempts to kill him. Bond, however, manages to manipulate the car into taking a leap over the edge of a cliff which falls into its own destruction. Among the remains of the vehicle, Bond finds the computer software microchip inserted into the source and identifies it as a product of Hunt Engineering, knowing that Kraken has been keeping an eye on him. Soon thereafter, in the middle of the Yemeni desert, Bond is captured and tranquilized by a group of mobsters led by a man who introduces himself as Malfakhar, the aforementioned smuggler.
Untrusting of his employer, Malfakhar tells Bond he had orders to smuggle a nuclear bomb, unrelated to that of the incident at the Hebrides, and eliminate the British agent. But, his orders from Kraken to wait for further instructions made him suspicious, hence 007 proposes an allegiance with him by revealing to him that the actual nuclear containment is missing, with the casing sent Malfakhar's way for distraction. Using the microchip to extract information from, Bond and Malfakhar track down the nuclear containment into a warhead in custody of The Bodicea, a militarized ship registered to Hunt Engineering, who are preparing to use Hammerhead to fire it at an undisclosed location on Kraken's orders. Bond, Malfakhar and his men engage in a firefight with the ship's crew and take over control of it, preventing Hammerhead from launching the warhead. And in the meantime, Bond comes to deduce the true identity of Kraken.