Peter Nealen's Blog, page 14

Crimson Star is on Audio!

So, audio has been a tricky proposition for me. Last year, Tantor Media hit me up about the audio rights for Escalation and Holding Action. This was a big deal, so far as I know, so I jumped at it.

Only to be rather let down by the result. Despite what they’d told me, Tantor apparently didn’t do anything to promote the books, so they’ve languished. Which led to silence when I asked about continuing with Crimson Star.

Well, if you want something done right, do it yourself.

Cody Parcell did the audio for Kill Yuan, and he did a bang-up job of it. So, he and I worked out a deal to get Crimson Star done. It’s taken some time–audio is a lot of work–and the quality control check took a long time, but it’s finally done, and it’s finally up. And Cody is currently working on Strategic Assets (he went the extra mile when it came to Mandarin pronunciations in Kill Yuan, and he’s doing the same with the Polish in Strategic Assets.)

They call themselves Soldados de Aztlan.

The Mexican cartels have a foothold in Phoenix.

Can Hank’s team put down the movement?

All around the globe, tensions mount. While Matt’s team heads off to Slovakia, Hank’s unit has been given its orders to quell an uprising in Arizona. The rampant crime and political unrest in the home of the Suns and Cardinals have reached a tipping point. 

It wasn’t just the cartels… Local gangs had joined them.

When the grid goes down, all the rules change. Panic spreads. Around 1.6 million people’s lives hang in the balance as Soldados de Aztlan brings down a firestorm of terror on the city.

What’s the team’s next move?

Crimson Star is now on Audible, and will be cross-posted to Amazon and iTunes soon.

The post Crimson Star is on Audio! appeared first on American Praetorians.

Murky Alliances – Enemy of My Enemy Is Out

The Brannigan’s Blackhearts series hits Book 8 with Enemy of My Enemy. The series had to take a bit of a break for a few months, as the maintenance I’ve mentioned before (and you can see in the sidebar) happened. But it’s back, and it will continue after this.

A new terror mastermind is on the rise…

…And the Blackhearts might have a chance to stop him

But is the opportunity a trap?

Abu Mokhtar al Shishani wants to be the next Osama bin Laden. And if he takes delivery of the five former Soviet backpack nukes making their way across Central Asia, he just might accomplish that goal.

But no one knows where the nukes are.

The Russians have located the money that al Shishani intends to buy the nukes with. And since they have a mutual enemy, they’ve approached the US for help to seize it. The cache is in Azerbaijan, and they don’t want a large Russian footprint on the operation.

Enter Brannigan’s Blackhearts.

It’s already going to be a difficult mission.

But the Chechens and the Azeris might be the least of their worries…

Enemy of My Enemy is now out on Kindle and in Paperback. (It should be up in the shop in a month or so; lots of work still needs to happen there.)

The post Murky Alliances – Enemy of My Enemy Is Out appeared first on American Praetorians.

Enemy of My Enemy Chapter 4

“How’d you even find out about this?” Santelli eyed the small studio from across the street warily.

“The dumbass tried to recruit me.” There was wry contempt in Mario Gomez’s voice. Which was more than Gomez usually expressed; he was a quiet man, and rarely spoke, much less showed much emotion. “I guess he thought the quiet guy would make a good wingman, or something.”

Santelli shook his head, frustrated. Even so, this was more the kind of problem he was used to as a Senior NCO. This was the sort of thing he’d wrestled with for years as a First Sergeant, and later as a Sergeant Major.

“Well, let’s go corral our wayward prodigal.” He wasn’t sure if he was using that combination of words right, but it sounded right. Santelli knew he wasn’t the most eloquent or well-read of the Blackhearts, but like most men of his background, he tried.

At least he had never flubbed things to the level of one First Sergeant he’d known, back when he’d been a Corporal himself, who had tended to say, “It would be the who of you,” when he’d meant to say, “It would behoove you.”

Of course, if he’d messed it up, Gomez wouldn’t say. Which was simultaneously a comfort and a source of irritation. Santelli could never quite read Gomez. The most he’d ever seen the man open up had been when most of his immediate family had been murdered, and even then, it had been a mostly quiet, cold rage.

That quiet, cold rage had led the Blackhearts south of the border, where they’d slaughtered most of an entire upstart cartel in the process of rescuing Gomez’s sister. The half-Apache former Recon Marine had been grateful, but as always in his wordless, cool way, his black eyes as unreadable as ever.

What bugged Santelli about him was that he’d known Marines who acted much like him, who had been perennial discipline problems, mainly because they held pretty much everyone around them in contempt. Many of them had been Hispanic, too. It was part of the machismo that suffused the Hispanic culture, especially the Mexican one. Now, Gomez wasn’t Mexican. He was half Tex-Mex, half Mescalero Apache. And he’d never been a discipline problem, so far as Santelli knew.

Maybe it was the Apache part that raised Santelli’s hackles. He didn’t know. Joe Flanagan was almost as quiet as Gomez, most of the time, and didn’t have the same effect. But Joe didn’t have that air of a predator lying in wait all the time. Gomez did.

Santelli shook his reverie off as he got out of the rental car. He hadn’t wanted to use a taxi for this, and Gomez had been entirely willing to throw in for the rental when he flew up from New Mexico. After their phone call, Gomez had been more than willing to come along.

Together, the two men, Gomez standing a head taller than the slightly rotund, balding former Sergeant Major, walked across the street to the studio.

George Jenkins had pulled out all the stops. The sign for “Dynamic Defense Concepts” had been professionally painted on the glass doors, along with the SEAL trident right below it. As they walked in, the lobby looked professional enough, with a reception desk—currently unoccupied—plants tastefully arranged on the counter and the floor, and all sorts of the kind of posters and notices one might expect from a professional dojo.

He’d dropped a pretty penny on this operation. Unfortunately, if what Gomez had said was true, all with ulterior motives that were getting Santelli pissed off all over again.

The two of them walked right past the reception desk and pushed through the doors that led back into the dojo proper. The single large room was equipped with a full-coverage martial arts mat, several striking dummies, stacks of kick pads and foam and rubber weapons, and a full wall of mirrors. Two doors on the far side bore men’s and women’s locker room signs.

The mats were currently occupied by about a dozen women, ranging from their early twenties to a couple who looked to be very fit fifty-somethings. Jenkins was at the front, running them through some very, very basic defensive moves. He was dressed in track pants and a skintight brown t-shirt, his sandy hair longer than the last time Santelli had seen him.

He saw the two men come in and faltered for just a moment. Santelli’s lips thinned. Jenkins had never been good at disguising his emotions. He’d been caught, and he knew it.

Gomez took up station by the door, leaning against the wall with his arms folded. Being Gomez, he was almost guaranteed to be strapped, probably with that CZ P01 he tended to favor, regardless of the fact that they were in Colorado Springs, and there was no way that Gomez had a Colorado concealed carry permit. Again, being Gomez, he wouldn’t give a damn.

He wouldn’t need a weapon for this. But Gomez was always prepared.

Santelli planted himself in front of the door, his meaty arms folded, watching Jenkins. The younger man was noticeably more self-conscious as he continued to run the women through the drills, and several of his students were also distracted, casting glances over their shoulders at the two men standing silently and ominously by the door. The fact that Jenkins was obviously trying to ignore them only made the discomfort of the situation that much more acute.

Finally, as it neared the bottom of the hour, Jenkins stopped, looking at the clock. More of the women seemed puzzled; he hadn’t moved from his position at the head of the dojo since the two Blackhearts had come in. Santelli was pretty sure he knew why, based on what Gomez had told him.

“Okay,” Jenkins said. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to cut it a few minutes short this week, but we’ll try to make up for it next week. I’ll see you then; I’ve got to go here soon.”

Gomez didn’t make a sound, but Santelli snorted, drawing several curious glances. Most of the older women in the crowd could obviously tell something was wrong; the one with undyed, salt-and-pepper hair was watching carefully, her gaze moving from Santelli to Jenkins, her brow furrowed. She was evidently putting some pieces together.

Of course, she might be putting the wrong pieces together. Santelli knew he often resembled a Mafia goon more than a professional soldier. His callsign was “Guido,” after all.

The rest of the class started packing up and heading for the exits. Santelli was tempted to call Jenkins out right then and there, but he refrained. “Praise in public, correct in private” had long been a mantra of his, and he wasn’t going to put that aside now, no matter how much Jenkins’ attitude often made him want to put the man on blast in front of the whole world.

Jenkins wasn’t a bad soldier, not really. He just wasn’t nearly as good as he thought he was, and his status as a former SEAL didn’t mean he could get away with as much as he thought he could, either.

The women in the class filed out past Santelli, who didn’t move, casting curious glances at him. A few tried to approach Jenkins, but he waved them off, as he was obviously simultaneously trying to watch Santelli and Gomez while avoiding eye contact.

They waited until after the last of the women had left. That happened to be the graying older woman, who had paused as she passed Santelli, studying him long enough that Santelli had greeted her politely. Only after the door shut behind her did the two of them start to cross the floor to where Jenkins was fiddling with a stack of kick pads, trying to look busy.

“Have we got a job?” he asked, still not looking either man in the eye.

“Yeah, we do,” Santelli said. “Which is the only reason I’m not conducting some wall-to-wall counseling right now.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Carlo.” Jenkins stood up and turned to face him, clearly trying to get some of his bluster back.

“Sure, you don’t,” Santelli sneered. “Which is why you got nervous as soon as we walked in, dismissed the class early, and didn’t try to keep any of the hotter young chickies back for some ‘special training.’ Am I about on course?”

Jenkins tried to look surprised and offended, but Santelli had faced enough junior enlisted in trouble to know when he’d scored. “Drop the act, George. I know what you’ve been up to with this little studio. Gomez told me. Now, as long as you’re actually training them, I suppose it’s not technically illegal to be using your martial arts/self-defense classes as your own personal dating service, but it’s sure unethical as hell. And if we didn’t need you for a job, I’d break both your legs and let you try to pay the rent on this place from a fucking wheelchair.”

Jenkins didn’t seem to have an answer to that. He knew Santelli well enough to know that there would be no good answer, and that the thickening of an already thick Bostonian accent was not a good sign. In a previous life, Santelli probably would have just thrashed him, taking him out to the woodline and making him do pushups, jumping jacks, flutter kicks, and eight-count bodybuilders over and over and over until he puked or just collapsed in a puddle of his own sweat. Now?

These days, Jenkins could have no doubt that Santelli would follow through on his threat of grievous bodily harm.

“Now, pack your shit and be out to the usual place by tomorrow evening,” Santelli snapped. “I’d suggest you close this place up and get on it, before I decide we don’t need you that bad.” He turned on his heel and started to leave. Gomez stayed where he was, his arms still folded, watching Jenkins with those cold, black eyes of his.

Santelli paused at the door. “Oh, and Jenkins?” He looked back over his shoulder to see the former SEAL still standing there, looking a bit shell-shocked. He was not the best-liked of the Blackhearts, and this wasn’t going to help anything. Oh, Curtis might give him a high-five, and Javakhishvili would probably just shrug. Even Wade might, except Wade already detested Jenkins. “I’m not going to make you close this place down, but let me find out that you’re picking up your students again and I’ll fly out here from Boston and kick your ass. Capisce?”

Jenkins just nodded jerkily. Another man in his position, and with his demonstrated attitude, might have gotten pissed and tried to bow up or otherwise get defiant. Jenkins, however, had seen Santelli in action, and knew where he stood with the Blackhearts. He’d overstepped himself, he knew it, and he was regretting it.

If he hadn’t been so pissed, Santelli could almost have pitied him. Jenkins was That Guy. He was the guy who never could quite seem to do the right thing.

But right then, as he left “Dynamic Defense Concepts” behind, he couldn’t quite find it in him to feel pity for the little scumbag.

***

Tom Burgess was playing cards with a skinny, sour-faced old man named Barry in the front room when Brannigan came up the steps. Burgess, tall and rangy, with his long, still-dark hair drawn back in a ponytail behind his neck, stood up as Brannigan walked in. Barry started to do the same.

“Sit down, Master Guns.” Brannigan waved him back down. “You shouldn’t be standing up for me.”

“Force of habit, Colonel.” Barry gave him a wrinkled grin. “After all, it ain’t every squad leader who gets to see one of his boots become a battalion commander.”

Burgess’ eyebrows rose. Even having been a part of Brannigan’s Blackhearts for a little while, he’d still only been on two jobs, only one of them overseas, so he was still getting to know all there was to know about his new teammates. And Barry hadn’t been all that forthcoming about the past, being far more interested in playing Spades.

In retrospect, it made some sense that Brannigan and several of the Old Fogies would know each other. After all, the Old Fogies were Ben Drake’s network, and Brannigan had known Ben Drake from his early days in the Marine Corps. They were all retirees, most of them old Staff and Senior NCOs, too old to go running and gunning—much, anyway; several of them had reaped their share of souls when Burgess had gone along with Roger Hancock, Mario Gomez, Carlo Santelli, “Herc” Javakhishvili, and Ignatius Kirk to rescue Sam Childress from the mercenaries who had snatched him out of the hospital on behalf of the Humanity Front.

The fact that he was there playing cards with Barry was a direct result of that rescue mission. And the state of several of those involved was a sobering thought.

Roger Hancock was dead. Kirk had just gotten out of his third surgery for the sucking chest wound he’d taken in the Argentina job. And Sam…

Burgess hadn’t known Childress before the rescue. And it was looking more and more like he never would; at least, he’d never know the man he’d been before he’d been shot in the spine in Transnistria.

“Is Sam awake?” Brannigan asked quietly.

Burgess nodded. “Herc’s with him. Barry and I were on front door duty.”

Brannigan nodded, visibly steeling himself before walking into the back rooms.

The house looked like a regular farmhouse on the outside, and even in the living room and kitchen. Only once a visitor got into the back rooms did its real purpose become evident—the farm had been converted into a secret hospital, well-equipped and staffed, effectively a black site for certain men who had been wounded in combat somewhere that American combatants weren’t supposed to be.

Burgess followed Brannigan toward the back as another of the Old Fogies, a burly man named Fred, who had been on the rescue op, came in from outside to join Barry. The Old Fogies had been running pretty continuous security on the hospital since Childress had been brought in, in no small part due to the fact that their guardianship in the civilian hospital where he’d been after Transnistria had been penetrated by the killers who had been sent after the stricken Blackheart. These old men were the kind who took such things personally.

Childress was sitting up a little, propped up by pillows and the tilt of the bed itself, when they came in. Paralyzed from the waist down, he couldn’t easily sit up under his own power. He’d briefly taken over as the Blackhearts remote intel specialist, rapidly teaching himself a lot of the cyber stuff on the fly. But that had been before he’d been snatched.

He looked over toward the door as Brannigan and Burgess entered, his face strangely vacant. His gawky beak of a nose was still a little crooked; it had been all but smashed flat when the Humanity Front’s mercs had worked him over. But that was far from the worst damage.

He frowned as he forced his eyes to focus, looking from Brannigan to Burgess. Burgess could almost see the gears struggling to turn as he tried to remember who he was looking at. Javakhishvili, long-haired, blunt-featured, and scruffy-looking as always, had looked away for a moment. He’d known Childress for longer; he’d been there when he’d taken the bullet that denied him the use of his legs, and he had tried his damnedest to help him along the long road of suffering that had followed.

Recognition finally dawned in Childress’ eyes. “Sir.” He started to stir, like he was about to try to stand up. “You came.” His words were slightly slurred, and they came slowly.

Brannigan was a professional; he kept most of the pain off his features as he took Childress’ hand. The two of them had been through a lot; Childress had been on the Khadarkh job and every mission since until Transnistria. He was an original Blackheart, and he had been one of Santelli’s problem children in the Marine Corps before that. He’d been a bit of an impulsive loudmouth; he’d rarely been wrong, but he’d lacked the judgement to know when to just keep his mouth shut, even when he had been right. He’d been a good man to have along, and he’d been taking care of his aunt with the money he’d earned with the Blackhearts.

Burgess knew enough of the story, having been guarding Childress off and on for months. He also knew that Brannigan had taken over making sure that Anna Childress was well taken care of, since Sam had been hit.

“How are you doing, Sam?” Brannigan asked gently.

“I’m…I’m all right sir. Getting a…a little stir-crazy in here. I…” He trailed off. “I do get headaches sometimes.”

That was an understatement. The brutal beating that he’d received at the mercs’ hands had cracked his skull, and he definitely had permanent brain damage because of it. It was clearly deeply painful for Javakhishvili to watch, and Burgess could see that it was bothering Brannigan a lot. The big man’s jaw worked, and he blinked a couple of times. He’d been by several times since Childress had woken up, but it never really got any easier.

“I wondered when you’d come.” Despite his slow and halting speech, there was hope in Childress’s voice. “When are we going to go back to work, sir?”

That was the worst part. Brannigan had come by only a couple weeks before, but Childress evidently didn’t remember it. His short-term memory was in bad shape. He’d even struggled to recognize Brannigan when he’d come in. It had been the same last time.

“Soon, Sam.” Brannigan’s voice had gotten a little thick. “Real soon. Now, I need to borrow Tom and Herc for a bit. That all right with you?”

Childress blinked a little, and he looked over as if just noticing Javakhishvili sitting there. He frowned a little again. It was clearly causing him a lot of effort to put things together in his head. “Yes, sir. Sure. Just…just don’t be too long before you come and see me again? I…” His voice faded away again, as if he’d lost his train of thought.

“I’ll be back soon, Sam,” Brannigan said. “I promise.” He caught Javakhishvili’s eye and tilted his head toward the door. He clearly didn’t want to make things harder for Childress by talking about another mission in front of him.

Javakhishvili patted Childress on the arm. “Take it easy, Sam.” Even after years in the Navy and as an American PMC contractor, he still retained a little bit of his Georgian accent from his formative years on the Baltic Sea coast. “We’ll be back soon.”

The three of them stepped out of the room and headed back to the front of the house, as one of the nurses slipped into Childress’ room behind them. Brannigan stopped just inside the living room, looking at the ceiling and taking a deep breath.

“At least he’s alive, Colonel,” Javakhishvili said. “He’s better off than Don, or Roger.”

“Yeah,” Brannigan said. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s still…damn, I hate to see him this way.”

“It’s rough,” Burgess said. “Hell, it hurts me, and I didn’t even know him before.”

Brannigan took another deep breath, then looked at each of them in turn. “Okay. Back to business. We’ve got a mission. Briefing is at the usual place, in…” He checked his watch. “Eighteen hours or so. You boys able to make that?”

Javakhishvili nodded, turning to Barry. “Hey, Barry. Are you guys going to be okay if Tom and I take off for a while?”

“Finally get some peace and quiet around here,” Barry grumbled, without looking up from his cards. Fred had joined the Spades game. “Though I’m going to have to step up my Spades game; Fred’s harder to beat than Tom.”

“They’ll be fine,” Javakhishvili said. “Barry tries to be a hardass, but he’s a big teddy bear, and acts like Sam’s his son. We’ll see you there, Colonel.”

Enemy of My Enemy is out on December 18th on Kindle and Paperback.

The post Enemy of My Enemy Chapter 4 appeared first on American Praetorians.

An Interview with Ed Calderon

I’ve been following Ed Calderon for a few months now. This is the first real, in-depth interview I’ve seen with him. I’d love to sit down with him for a while, myself. Everyone needs to listen to this, as long as it is. He touches on the nature and worsening levels of the violence, outside influences, and the superstitions that fuel much of the cruelty.

A recent one-star review for Crimson Star, from a reader in the UK, denounced the situation I outlined in that book as “American conspiracy theory.” I’ve run into other people (Larry Correia, JL Curtis, and I had a long conversation with Peter Orullian at LTUE back in February that was a bit eye opening on this subject) who have no idea what’s happening south of the border, not really. They think that the most vicious irregular war on the face of the planet is just racist, xenophobic propaganda from Americans. Truth is, it’s worse than even most of those with an eye on the situation up north realize.

Ed Calderon was a cop in Tijuana, starting before Felipe Calderon declared war on the cartels. He’s seen the war up close for years, and now he trains people based on what he’s learned during the war.

A lot of what he talks about, I’ve found from other sources. Sometimes it’s good to get an insider perspective to confirm or deny such things, though. And Ed Calderon has that perspective. (I have heard about the Mesoamerican origin of La Santa Muerte, but Ed confirms it more authoritatively than I’ve found before.)

Listen closely to what he has to say. (I can’t say I agree with him entirely on some of his conclusions for a path forward near the end, but nobody agrees with anyone on everything.)

You can follow Ed Calderon at his website and social media. I’d recommend it, if you want to know more about what’s going on down south.

The post An Interview with Ed Calderon appeared first on American Praetorians.

Enemy of My Enemy Chapter 3

Carlo Santelli straightened up, wiping his hands on a rag, and eyed his handiwork with some satisfaction.

It had taken a lot to get this particular specimen finished. Finding parts for a ’67 Fury III had proved to be more difficult than he’d expected, but it had been worth it, especially since he already had a buyer for this particular car. And the man was eager enough for it that the price tag was going to more than pay for the parts, never mind the paint job.

He nodded with a sigh. This little side business had been working out better than he’d ever expected.

He’d needed to do something. It had been months since the Argentina mission, and while he and Melissa weren’t exactly hurting for money yet, he’d needed to keep his hands and his mind occupied. And not just because he missed the action.

If he was being honest, he wasn’t sure how much he really did miss the action, right then. He missed Roger Hancock more.

Roger had been short-tempered and volatile, but he’d been one hell of a professional soldier. He’d been one of the pillars of Brannigan’s Blackhearts. And only after his death did Carlo Santelli realize just how much they’d all depended on him.

Because now that Roger was dead, Carlo was the next in the chain of command. And he wasn’t sure he was up to the task.

It wasn’t that he doubted his capabilities. He’d made Sergeant Major in the Marine Corps and had done the job well for several years. He’d been Brannigan’s Sergeant Major, once upon a time, and that was why he’d been brought in in the first place. He had been one of the few men of his rank that the Colonel had trusted implicitly.

But command was another matter. He was getting older, and he was comfortable with the Sgt Major role. It was a support role. He had to worry about the men, their welfare, supply, and discipline. He didn’t have to make the big decisions. He didn’t have to be the one who made a call that might get another Blackheart killed. He just had to expedite and execute.

But if he was the second in command, he knew that that time when he was in charge of the whole team might come. It had already come for Roger once, when Brannigan had gotten shot up on the Tourmaline Delta platform. It was almost less a matter of “if” and more a matter of “when.”

He didn’t want a command. And he was dreading the call to go back out. Because if there was any lesson to be taken from the last several jobs the Blackhearts had taken, it was that any one of them could get his ticket punched at any time.

The door opened and Melissa stepped out into the garage, with Carlo Jr. on her hip. The little guy was growing fast, and he was already crawling around as fast as he could go, but she didn’t want him scrambling all over his father’s garage. “All done, baby?” she asked.

“All done,” he said. “Now I’ve gotta give Kramer a call.” He finished wiping his hands and tossed the rag on the workbench.

He was reaching for the phone when it rang. He hesitated, just for a moment, a bolt of adrenaline going through him. He could feel Melissa’s eyes on him as he picked up the phone.

It was Brannigan. He hesitated a moment more, then hit “Accept” and lifted the phone to his ear.

“Yes, sir.” He was proud that while his Boston accent might be as thick as ever, his voice was steady.

“We’ve got a potential job, Carlo,” Brannigan said. “No details over the phone, as per, but start getting the word out.”

Santelli didn’t think he’d hesitated that much, but Brannigan caught something. Maybe he’d let out a breath a little louder than he’d intended.

“What is it, Carlo?” When he didn’t answer right away, Brannigan pressed. “If something’s wrong, you need to let me know. I need you, Carlo.”

Santelli did sigh, then. He looked up at Melissa, who was watching him with concern in her eyes. But at the same time, he could see that she’d stand by him. How far they had come since just before Khadarkh, when he’d thought that their relationship was almost over. And he realized that he had Brannigan and the Blackhearts, in no small measure, to thank for that.

And those words are my kryptonite. I need you, Carlo. He’s got to know that I can’t walk away now. A lesser man would resent Brannigan for it. Santelli had known the Colonel for too long, though; he knew that that kind of petty manipulation was beneath him. He hadn’t said that to pluck at Santelli’s heartstrings and drag him along. He’d said it because he valued Santelli’s work, as well as his friendship, and he was worried that something was wrong.

“No, I’m fine, sir. I’ll start making calls.”

***

Joe Flanagan wasn’t comfortable. Social occasions were not comfortable places for him, and so he was leaning against the wall, a cup of coffee in his hand, watching the gathering.

Tall, rangy, with black hair and a thick but neatly-trimmed beard to match, he didn’t exactly fit in with a lot of the people there. Most of them were Rachel’s friends, after all. Few of his own, few as they were, would be coming to a pre-wedding party. He was only there because Rachel had begged him to come; she hadn’t been the one to put it on, and she hadn’t wanted to be there by herself.

Of course, she’d also had an ulterior motive, which was why she’d insisted that he had to invite Kevin Curtis.

Curtis was ordinarily the kind of man who would have been ecstatic at a gathering like this. A party with a three-to-one female-to-male ratio would be prime hunting territory to a tomcat like Curtis. But given that most of the women were, in fact, Rachel’s friends, and therefore not particularly interested in…short-term liaisons…

Curtis walked over, a beer in his hand, and found a spot next to Flanagan. The two of them could not have looked more different. Flanagan was tall, rangy, and tanned, with dark hair and beard and piercing gray eyes. Curtis was over a foot shorter, with close-cropped hair and ebony skin. Flanagan was muscular, in a country boy, fighter sort of way, but Curtis was a bodybuilder, and probably weighed close to what his much taller friend did. “Man, this is not my usual play. You’re lucky I like you, Joe.”

Flanagan glanced at the beer. “Where did you even find that? There’s no bar here.”

“And that’s another problem,” Curtis said, waving the bottle to encompass the room. “Why is there no bar? What kind of social occasion doesn’t have a bar?”

“In this case, a pre-wedding party,” Flanagan said dryly, “intended to give the families a chance to get acquainted before the wedding.”

Curtis frowned as he looked around. “Where’s your family?”

Flanagan didn’t look at him, but just took a sip of his coffee. “Don’t have much anymore, Kev.”

Curtis leaned back slightly and stared at him. “You mean I’m it? That’s kinda sad, Joe.”

Flanagan snorted. “You’re telling me.”

“Now wait a minute…” But a slow smile was starting to spread across Flanagan’s bearded features. Curtis shook a finger at Flanagan. “Don’t you turn that around on me like that! I am the best friend you ever had!”

“That’s debatable.” Flanagan still didn’t look at Curtis, but he could still see his friend getting heated. His faint grin made his eyes crinkle as he took another drink. “I seem to recall all sorts of bar fights, late night rescues, and even almost getting stabbed by an irate Latina chick…”

“Details!” Curtis shot back. “Good friends go through tough things together!”

Flanagan looked down at him with a raised eyebrow. “Except that I don’t recall ever being the cause of any of those tough times.”

Curtis looked away, his face screwed up into a grimace, with a harrumph. “Well, you’re sure the cause of this particular tough time,” he muttered.

Flanagan openly chuckled at that. “You’re in a room that’s got way more women than men. Explain to me how that constitutes ‘tough times,’ oh Great Ladies’ Man.”

Curtis looked around the room with what might have been a look of discomfort and trepidation. “These aren’t my kind of ladies, man.” His voice was hushed. “Every one I’ve talked to has been…”

“Strangely wholesome?” Flanagan struggled to keep his expression bland and innocent. “Interested in something long-term, maybe marriage?”

Curtis stared at him in horror. “You knew about this?”

“Of course I friggin’ knew about it, dumbass. It was Rachel’s idea.”

“You…you’d do this to me?!” Curtis’ voice was starting to rise.

Flanagan leaned in, his grin turning wolfish. “Rachel thought that introducing you to some women who might be better for you than stabby Latina chicks might start you on the road to growing up and keeping out of trouble. Me?” He chuckled. “I just wanted to watch what happened.”

Curtis huffed, taking a long swig of his beer. “You are a bad friend, Joseph.”

Flanagan glared down at him with a raised eyebrow, and he winced. “Okay, I deserved that.”

“What is this? Humility from Kevin Curtis?” Flanagan’s glower eased and he downed the last of his coffee. “There might be hope for you yet.”

He had to admit, though, that right then he felt more kinship with his shorter companion than he might have thought, in that environment. Rachel’s family had pulled out all the stops, and there were probably a couple of hundred relations and friends of the family there. Far more people than he was usually used to or comfortable being around. And as he looked at the generally well-dressed, fresh-faced, slightly soft people chatting and mingling, all but ignoring him and Curtis where they leaned against the wall in the corner, he couldn’t help but compare them to his teammates. There was a gulf between him and these people that he wasn’t sure could ever be bridged.

Yes, his friends were rough men, and not always all that emotionally mature, as exemplified by his gambling, womanizing “brother from another mother” next to him. But they had seen things, gone through hardships together, that most of these people could barely imagine.

He caught Rachel watching the two of them, concern on her face. He gave her a faint smile, trying to reassure her that everything was fine. She returned it, with a touch of sadness. They’d talked about this, and she’d been so hopeful that he could mix with the rest of her family, not to mention her idea about trying to introduce Curtis to a woman who would be better for him than the booty calls he usually hung out with.

But sometimes the gulf is simply too wide to cross all at once. And Flanagan and Curtis had been on the other side of that gulf for a long time.

His phone suddenly vibrated in his pocket. Setting down his coffee cup, he pulled it out.

Curtis was looking over at him, his demeanor suddenly changed. “Who is it?” He sounded almost hopeful.

“It’s the Colonel,” Flanagan confirmed, as he started toward the exit.

“We’re saved!” Curtis exclaimed, looking up at the ceiling. “Thank you!”

Rachel watched the two men leave, her fiancé with his phone to his ear. Her eyes might have misted briefly, but then she turned back to her cousin, forcing a smile onto her face.

***

John Wade wasn’t sure whether he should be annoyed at the crowd of fat, useless people he was weaving his way through, or thoroughly appreciative of the cosplayer girls who were, in many cases, wearing next to nothing.

In the interests of not losing his mind and going completely postal, he decided that ogling the almost-naked girls was a much better option.

Besides, I’ve got a hell of a good chance of getting laid, given the quality of the opposition here.

Of course, he wasn’t at Max-Con for the people. Nor was Vincent Bianco, who had talked him into coming. Not that he’d had to talk too hard, after he’d shown Wade the score of Silver Age comics that he’d gotten there the year prior for a steal.

John Wade was a retired Ranger, and, anyone would agree, a hardass and intimidating as hell. Tall, fit, clean-shaven and with an icy blue stare that most people—even in the profession of applied violence—often found disconcerting. He was also a huge comic book nerd and collector, among other things.

He was pretty sure his collection was sitting at well over a million dollars’ worth. But there were still a lot of issues he wanted to get.

And that was just the comics. Action figures were a whole different ballgame.

Vinnie Bianco didn’t stand out quite as much in the con-goer crowd as Wade did, though that was really a relative sort of thing. Bianco stood even taller than Wade, and while he just looked big without being jacked, he was still packing a lot more muscle than most of the weebs and neckbeards that Wade was watching with distaste. His considerably younger-looking baby face and friendly manner, however, was far less stark than Wade’s bristling demeanor and “fuck off” glare.

Bianco had found something; Wade saw him stop, towering over most of the people around him, bending down over a booth about another hundred yards ahead. Wade started working his way over, weaving between a pair of young men arguing over what he could only assume were anime characters—the names sounded Japanese, but Wade couldn’t care less about most anime—and almost ran into one of the scantily-dressed cosplayers, who was getting a picture taken with a doughy, pale young man who looked like he wasn’t sure whether to be excited or to faint at being that close to an attractive young woman in a state of undress.

The woman looked up at him in momentary annoyance, but that changed as she got a better look. The pudgy fan momentarily forgotten, she swiveled her head to follow him as he went by. He locked eyes with her and smiled, getting a dazzlingly sexy smile in return. The pale kid who was trying to put an arm around her without getting smacked looked like he was about to object until Wade pinned him with a basilisk stare that had given superior officers pause. The kid might have been living in a fantasy world most of the time, but he was still grounded enough to know not to fuck with the big guy giving him that look.

He winked at the cosplay girl, and turned back to join Bianco, who hadn’t seen any of the byplay. Sure, he could have pushed things, probably even scored with her, but Wade was experienced enough with women not to press his luck under those circumstances. He’d planted the seed; if she was interested, he’d see her again. Most women he’d seen doing that sort of cosplay had been understandably standoffish, which was the other reason he wasn’t going to overtly hit on her. Got to play the right game.

“What’d you find, Vinnie?” He didn’t like raising his voice to be heard, but the dull roar of the crowds at the convention made it necessary.

Bianco grimaced, eyeing the plastic-wrapped issues laid out on the table. “Not what I was hoping for. This is all late 2010s stuff. It’s crap.”

Wade scanned the table. “Yeah, I don’t see anything I’d even be interested in, much less anything I’m looking for.”

“And what are you looking for?” Wade turned to find the girl he’d almost collided with at his elbow. She was looking up at him with her arms folded under her barely-covered breasts, her mouth quirked in a smile.

Jackpot. That was even quicker than I expected.

But before he could take advantage of the opening, he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket.

Not many people had his number. And those who did weren’t likely to be calling him just to chat.

He held up a finger for the girl to give him a moment and dug the phone out. It was Brannigan.

He thumped Bianco on the shoulder and showed him the phone, then turned to the girl. “Sorry,” he said. “As much as I’d love to continue this conversation, work just called. But I’d be more than happy to call you when I get back…”

She smiled again and reached for his phone. He handed it over. He’d call Brannigan back.

 

Enemy of My Enemy is up for Kindle preorder. It goes live on December 18.

The post Enemy of My Enemy Chapter 3 appeared first on American Praetorians.

Enemy of My Enemy Chapter 2

“Dad, we need to talk.”

John Brannigan looked up from his coffee cup and stared levelly at his son across the table. He wasn’t particularly surprised or perturbed by the words; he’d known they were coming for a while.

Hank Brannigan had been out of the Marine Corps for about two months. He’d spent most of it up here, at his father’s cabin, helping out where he could. He’d chopped wood, taken his turn at the cooking, and helped with several projects that Brannigan hadn’t been able to get to, mostly on account of their needing a second pair of hands. Brannigan had welcomed his son and asked few questions. He knew what it was like, taking his first steps into the civilian world after the Marine Corps, and also knew that Hank hadn’t parted with the military on necessarily the best of terms.

The younger man, lean and rangy, didn’t look much like the Marine officer he’d been only a few months before. He’d let his hair and his beard both grow, though the latter was considerably scruffier. The elder Brannigan could easily have grown a bristling spade of a beard, but Hank had gotten his hair from his mother’s side, and his maternal grandfather had gone clean shaven all his life for a reason.

Brannigan had a good idea that he knew what Hank wanted to talk about. It was a conversation that had been in abeyance since he’d gotten shot up on the Tourmaline-Delta platform. Hank had been a commissioned officer then, and while he’d guessed a few things, he hadn’t wanted to put himself into the position of knowing that his old man was quite possibly running highly illegal mercenary operations in his retirement.

But Hank didn’t work for Uncle Sam anymore, and from what Brannigan knew about his son’s last tour, there was no putting off the conversation anymore.

“About what?” He cradled his coffee cup in his hands as he leaned on the hand-made table in the middle of the cabin’s main room. The fire behind him crackled, though it wasn’t that necessary, given the time of year.

Hank looked up at him with a furrowed brow, but Brannigan just watched him levelly. He had a pretty good idea where this was going, but he wasn’t going to make it easy. He’d been in the business for too long.

Hank sighed when Brannigan didn’t say anything more. “About work.”

“Young man with your qualifications should be able to get all sorts of work.” Brannigan took another sip of the scalding coffee. “Or are you asking about mine?”

“Yours.”

Brannigan had to nod. At least Hank hadn’t tried beating around the bush. That was good. John Brannigan had spent twenty-three years in the Marine Corps, a good chunk of that as an officer. He’d seen good officers and bad, and he’d seen the Marine Corps turn from emphasizing “leadership” to “management,” resulting in an officer corps that he increasingly thought of as little more than politicians in uniform. He was glad that Hank hadn’t picked up too many bad habits along those lines, though he was sure that there were some that had been unavoidable.

“What about it?”

“I know what you’re doing.” When Brannigan raised an eyebrow, Hank shrugged a little. “Okay, I don’t know details. You’ve been too damned tight-lipped for that, and so has everyone else I know who might have any idea about where you’re disappearing to every few months. But I’ve known the broad strokes ever since you wound up shot to shit a while back. I’m not blind. I can put two and two together. You’re doing gunfighter work, somewhere. And I want in.”

Brannigan just studied him coldly as he took another drink. “And why should I read you in?”

Hank blinked. “Why not? I’m a combat vet, I’ve been a platoon commander and a company XO. You said yourself that I could get all kinds of work with my background and credentials.”

“You’re still wet behind the ears to the crew I work with,” Brannigan said bluntly. “Especially with all your experience being with shiny stuff on your collar.”

“You were an officer,” Hank protested. But when Brannigan just raised a sardonic eyebrow, he grimaced. “Yeah, I know.”

He looked down at the table. “Truth is, I’ve been regretting taking that route for the last three years. Ever since my first platoon.” At his father’s sarcastic snort, he nodded, hanging his head a little. “I know, I know; you warned me. But I still hoped I could do better. I thought that I could leave the bullshit aside and actually lead like you taught me an officer is supposed to. But it doesn’t really work that way, does it?”

“Not anymore.” Brannigan kept his voice level, though some of the old resentment flared in his chest. He’d been where Hank was. Only he’d been fighting that uphill fight for a lot longer, until he’d finally lost.

Hank nodded again, tight-lipped. “Hell, they didn’t even need me that much. My platoon sergeant could have run the platoon without me.”

“Which is the whole point, and always has been.” His father leaned back in his chair. “The platoon commander isn’t there to command, son. He’s there to learn from the squad leaders and platoon sergeant, so that he’s not completely useless when he really does need to make decisions later on. Which is why I told you to enlist, first.”

Hank slumped a little. He couldn’t deny it; that had been something of a heated conversation at the time, with Rebecca trying to play peacemaker. Hank had finally insisted on going straight to OCS, and he had been quietly eating crow ever since.

“Fine. You’re right. I’m not asking for a leadership position, anyway. I’m not stupid. I’ll be a private, or whatever your equivalent is.” He spread his hands. “What the hell else am I going to do, Dad? I got out because I was facing a three-year desk job if I stayed in. They were going to send me to a staff billet.”

“As per.” Brannigan was remorseless. “They aren’t interested in what you want to do. They are concerned with the needs of the Corps, both kinetic and bureaucratic.” He put the cup down and leaned back in his chair, folding his arms and staring his son down. “You weren’t planning on joining up with my crew when you got out, were you?”

“Not precisely…okay, it was first on the list.” Hank couldn’t quite meet his father’s eyes. “There were other possibilities, but I was really hoping…”

Brannigan sighed deeply. The truth was the small team of mercenaries that called itself Brannigan’s Blackhearts probably could use another hand. They’d taken a beating over the last few missions. Don Hart had been killed in Chad, Sam Childress was still alive after being rescued from the Humanity Front, but would never fight again, Roger Hancock had been killed in Argentina, and he had no idea if Ignatius Kirk would be back after recovering from the sucking chest wound he’d taken on the same op. The team was getting a bit thin again.

And he knew that, despite their disagreement on OCS—which Hank seemed to have conceded, finally—he’d raised Hank well enough that he should at least be a dependable new guy. He might have picked up some bad habits that needed correcting, but Brannigan was confident that Santelli and Wade, at the least, would gladly square him away.

On the other hand, he had to face the fact that he really wasn’t entirely comfortable with having his own flesh and blood going out with them. Not that he was worried about favoritism; he knew that Hank wasn’t, either. He’d be harder on Hank than on any of the others, and not just because he was his son. Hank had more to prove and less experience, which made him something of a liability. A relative liability, perhaps, but a liability, nonetheless.

No, it was something much more primal than that. John Brannigan wasn’t worried about risking his own hide out there. It was something he’d been doing for the better part of three decades by then. And with Rebecca gone and Hank full-grown, if he bought the farm, he wasn’t too worried about it.

But Hank was his son, his only remaining family. Yes, he’d been in combat. Yes, he was a grown man and could make his own decisions. But if he went down on a mission with the Blackhearts, if Brannigan had to bury his own son because he’d led him to his death…

Before he could make a decision either way, the phone rang.

He turned a baleful eye on the infernal device. He’d moved up into the hills after Rebecca’s death because he really didn’t feel the desire to be a part of the modern world any longer. Only Hector Chavez’s appeal, which had led to the job on Khadarkh, had brought him back in any capacity. Unfortunately, that had included getting a cell phone again. It didn’t work all that well that far back into the boondocks, but his “business partners” had ensured that a repeater had been installed that meant he got signal. Only a handful of people had the number, but that was enough.

He scooped it up. “Yeah.”

“We need to meet.” Mark Van Zandt didn’t comment on Brannigan’s brusqueness. Van Zandt was used to it; neither man could be said to really like the other, though they had managed to put bygones in the past and develop a solid professional relationship. Van Zandt had been Brannigan’s superior officer once upon a time, and had, in fact, been the one to supervise his forcible retirement. Now both of them were technically in the “private sector,” though still doing much the same thing, if in a much more shadowy and riskier sort of way.

“Understood.” It was just about that time, anyway. Brannigan had developed something of a sixth sense for when work was going to be coming their way. This had been one of the longest stretches yet between missions, but there was enough chaos out in the world that the Blackhearts particular services were usually in some demand. “The usual place?”

“Negative,” Van Zandt replied. “We’ve got some other factors in play. Meet us at Kowacs’ Bar and Grill in Alexandria, Thursday night at seven.”

Brannigan grimaced. Alexandria, Virginia was not exactly his favorite stomping ground. For one thing, it was far, far too close to the Beltway. But the job was the job, and he’d been enjoying life in the mountains for several months. It was time to pay his dues.

Someday I’ll actually retire.

“Understood. I’ll be there.”

“See you then.” Without any further pleasantries, Van Zandt hung up.

“That sounded like a job.” Hank made the observation quietly, almost hesitantly. At least he wasn’t too eager or wheedling. Not that his father would have ever tolerated wheedling when he’d been a kid, never mind as a grown man and a former Marine officer.

“Maybe.” Brannigan dropped the phone back on the table. He took a deep breath, eyeing his son. “I’m not going to make a decision on this right now. I’ve got to go get on a plane. I’ll run it past Carlo and Joe. We’ll make the decision together, before you go anywhere with us.”

“What about Roger?” The question alone told Brannigan that Hank had figured out a lot. But not everything.

“Roger’s dead, Hank.”

The words were like a bomb dropping on the room. Hank stared at him for a moment, then swallowed, hard. He’d known Hancock as a kid; Roger Hancock had been one of Brannigan’s platoon sergeants when he’d been a company commander, and they’d been friends even back then. To hear that one of his heroes had been killed, and he had never heard a word about it, was a shock.

“That’s the life, son,” Brannigan said quietly. “No big funeral, no obituary, sometimes no grave for family and friends to put flowers on. Just one day you’re there, the next, you just don’t come back. You disappear into a shallow grave in some foreign hellhole, where nobody except us will ever know. Roger wasn’t the first, either.”

Hank stared down at the table for a moment, processing it. “Who else?”

Brannigan stood up. “If Carlo and Joe decide you should come on board, then we’ll talk about it. Right now, I’ve got to get a flight east.”

***

Kowacs’ Bar and Grill was about what he’d expected. Being in Alexandria, it was quite a bit more upscale than he would have considered standard for a “bar and grill,” but there weren’t many country sort of places in northern Virginia, and those that were tended to be kitschy and forced. He was just as glad that Van Zandt hadn’t wanted to meet in what he’d consider a high-class restaurant. Booths and tables were softly lit by hanging frosted chandeliers, the shadows made somewhat darker by the dark walnut and the even darker rugs underfoot.

He was dressed in simple business casual, but he still stood out. At six foot four and well over two hundred pounds of muscle, not to mention his salt-and-pepper hair and handlebar mustache, he filled the button-up shirt in a way that most men in the area didn’t. He could feel the glances from men and women alike as he walked toward the back, where Van Zandt was waiting.

Four people were already waiting in the booth at the back. Van Zandt and Chavez were familiar faces, Van Zandt still trim, clean-shaven, and wearing a jacket and tie. Chavez was a little more rotund, his hairline still receding, and dressed similarly. Chavez had been a hell of a Marine officer before his heart had betrayed him, and he would have made a better general than Van Zandt, in Brannigan’s opinion.

Behind Van Zandt, Brannigan saw a face less familiar, but one he’d met before. Clayton Abernathy was somewhere in his seventies, if he was gauging the man’s age right, though his steely eyes were still bright and missed nothing. He didn’t know exactly what Abernathy’s deal was; he clearly had resources and his finger on the pulse of global events. Whether he was working within the intelligence community or on more of a “private” basis, Brannigan had not been able to figure out, and Abernathy himself had been remarkably close-mouthed about it on the few times they’d met.

The fourth man was considerably younger than the other three. Brannigan had never seen him before. He was dressed in similar business casual but was considerably softer in appearance than the other three. He also didn’t look particularly comfortable.

Brannigan pulled a chair away from a nearby table and swung it around to the end of the booth before sitting down. He didn’t exactly have his back to the wall, but he was sideways to the door, and could see most of the rest of one side of the restaurant. And he trusted Hector, at least, to be watching the rest.

“Okay, Mark,” he said, with a nod to Abernathy and Chavez, who both returned it gravely, “what’s the job?”

“You need to see this first.” Van Zandt motioned to the younger man across the table. The newcomer looked uncertain, sizing Brannigan up, but when Abernathy shot him a hard look, he pulled a tablet out of the attaché case next to him, unlocked it, tapped a couple of icons, and slid it across to Brannigan.

Brannigan picked it up, seeing that the young man had brought up a video. With a glance at Abernathy and Van Zandt, who were both watching him with stony faces, he shrugged and pressed “Play.”

The sound was turned down, and he didn’t recognize the emblem that came up on the screen, but it clearly belonged to some Islamist group. A crossed sword and Kalashnikov were cradled in a crescent moon, with Arabic writing around them. Then the picture shifted to a night-vision image of what looked an awful lot like a Coalition FOB under assault.

Tracers zipped across the screen and muzzle flashes flickered in the dark. A series of explosions lit the night, noticeably inside the FOB’s perimeter. Something was burning fiercely, lighting up the walls from within under a billowing plume of smoke.

Subtitles appeared underneath. Brannigan only skimmed them. He already knew the rough outline of what they would say. Punishing the infidels…Allah’s will…blah, blah, etc., etc.

He looked up at Van Zandt and Abernathy. “Where and how bad?”

“Paktika,” Abernathy said flatly. “And it was pretty bad. Not as bad as Aswad al Islam is trying to make it sound, but they still managed to kill about sixty men and women before they were driven off by danger close airstrikes out of Bagram. They still did enough damage that the FOB had to be abandoned. Which was the whole point, anyway, if we’re taking Chechen Islamist propaganda at face value.”

“These were Chechens?” Brannigan asked, looking down at the screen. He squinted. One of the assaulters looked awfully well-equipped.

“Most of Aswad al Islam is.” The young man’s voice was high-pitched and nasal. Brannigan couldn’t help but think that it fit his appearance. “They’re followers of Abu Mokhtar al Shishani.”

“You said that name as if I’m supposed to know who it is.” Brannigan fixed him with an icy stare. “I have a hard time keeping track of all the kunyahs floating around the jihadi world.”

“He’s the newest up-and-coming Chechen Salafist warlord.” Van Zandt stepped in before the young man could get over his hesitation. “He came out of nowhere a couple of years ago, and since then, he’s led some of the nastiest attacks against Russian interests inside and outside of Chechnya. He’s on the edge of becoming the next Osama Bin Laden, and rumor has it that that’s exactly his goal.

“Nobody knows for sure how large Aswad al Islam really is. What we do know is that they’ve got some serious resources, and that nothing recruits like success. If the indicators we’ve been getting are accurate, it looks like they could supplant Al Qaeda like ISIS never managed to. And now they’ve openly declared war on the US.” He pointed to the tablet. “That was the opening salvo. I know you skimmed the propaganda, but at the end, they promise more to come.”

“And that’s what has Washington and Moscow talking.” The young man leaned forward on his elbows on the table, apparently getting over some of his trepidation at being surrounded by so many older, more experienced men. “This group has spread like wildfire, and now the Russians are desperate enough that they’re willing to work with us to try to counter them.”

“They must be almighty desperate for that to happen,” Brannigan muttered.

“They are,” Abernathy said. “And if our intel is accurate, we know why.”

“We have reliable reports that there are anywhere from four to five Russian ‘suitcase nukes’ in the wind somewhere in Central Asia. And the same reporting suggests that they are heading for Chechnya and Abu Mokhtar al Shishani’s people.” Brannigan had already pegged the younger man as an intel weenie, and the way he said it only confirmed his assessment.

“Great.” Brannigan looked from Van Zandt to Chavez. “So, this is a nuke hunt?”

“Not quite.” Van Zandt’s face was immobile, but he was clearly a bit uncomfortable.

As Brannigan turned narrowed eyes on his former superior, now facilitator, Abernathy spoke up. “My boys are going after the nukes. If you’re up to it, you guys get the dicier mission.”

“What dicier mission?”

“As Mr. Grundy said,” Van Zandt said, “Abu Mokhtar is unusually well-funded. He’s been able to buy a lot of success lately. Word is that he’s got a lot of the local authorities in the Caucasus and most of his other operational areas bought and paid for. Furthermore, as you probably saw in the video, his fighters are extremely well-equipped for jihadis. Nobody knows for sure how much he’s worth, but he’s got very deep pockets.

“The Russians have fingered one of his cash stores, in Azerbaijan. And they want our help to go get it.”

“Why?” Brannigan leaned back in his chair. It creaked as he folded his arms across his chest. “It’s in their backyard. Or are they finally admitting that their military is barely on the level of the US National Guard?”

“They’re selling it as a gesture of détente.” Abernathy’s tone said just what he thought about that. “Though I think they want to bring us in mainly so that the finger isn’t pointed at them if a Russian nuke goes off. ‘Hey, we tried, and you know we tried.’” He spread his hands. “Certain people think this is an opportunity, not only to put the hurt on some terrorists, but also to get some inside information on Russian ops.

“However, some of those same people really don’t like the idea of US SOF working in Azerbaijan with only Russian support.”

“Which is where we come in.” Brannigan let his voice turn grim, his expression getting slightly thunderous. “We’re deniable, and therefore expendable.”

“Not so much,” Abernathy said, before Van Zandt could interject. “There will be assets in Georgia on alert, ready to pull you out if things get too pear-shaped.”

Brannigan stroked his mustache as he thought about it. It wasn’t quite the longest odds he’d ever faced; after all, they’d had zero backup on Khadarkh. But it was still one hell of a risk.

On the other hand, risk was what the Blackhearts thrived on, and there hadn’t been work for months. The Humanity Front had gone quiet; even their ‘legitimate’ business was scaled back, and from what he’d been hearing, they’d done a fantastic job of compartmentalizing their terror campaign from the rest of it. Money laundering works, sometimes.

“Let me run this by the boys,” he said. “I think we’ve been on the bench long enough that we’ll probably go for it, as long as we’ve got a way out. Hurting terrorists is hurting terrorists, even if we’ve got to be buddy-buddy with some Russki thugs to do it. But I’ll warn you; the bill’s going to be steep.”

Van Zandt looked slightly pained. The kid Abernathy had called Grundy frowned, as if just then realizing that this was mercenary work he was involved with. Abernathy’s eyes crinkled knowingly. And Hector Chavez, who hadn’t said a word, just looked at Van Zandt and smiled tightly as if to say, I told you.

Brannigan looked over as Abernathy waved the waiter over. He was hungry. The call could wait until after dinner.

Enemy of My Enemy is currently up for Kindle Preorder. It goes live on Dec. 18.

The post Enemy of My Enemy Chapter 2 appeared first on American Praetorians.

Enemy of My Enemy Chapter 1

Night was falling fast over the rugged hills as Shamil Mashadov took a knee under the short, scrubby pine and looked back at his little strike force.

The fifty men were strung along the side of the mountain behind him, following the narrow goat path in single file. They blended in well, especially as the light failed. Much of that was thanks to the brand-new camouflage that the Emir had gotten them; the pixelated tan and green was every bit as effective as the American OCP, particularly amid the scrub and short trees of Paktika Province.

Most of the men behind him, except for Dilawar Safi, his Pashtun guide, were fellow Chechens, warriors of the Aswad al Islam. They were a long way from home, but what they would do tonight would be worth it.

Turning back toward their objective, he lowered the night vision goggles mounted to his helmet and scanned the valley below. The Americans had said that they would be gone from this part of Afghanistan months before, but, infuriatingly, they still had yet to withdraw.

Tonight, Mashadov and his brothers would teach the infidels that they should have fled long ago.

He lifted the encrypted Russian radio to his lips. “Timur, are you in position?”

It took a moment for Timur Kurbanov to answer. “Yes, brother. The mortars will be set up in another few minutes, and the machineguns are in place and ready.”

“Good. We will be in position to attack in twenty minutes.” Mashadov glanced at Dilawar. The Pashtuns—most jihadis, for that matter—were not very good at timing. Insh’Allah, the attack would go through, when Allah willed that it would go through. But Mashadov had been trained in the Russian-aligned Kadyrovtsy. Ramzan Kadyrov, like his father before him, might have been a traitor to the Faith and the true Chechen nation, but his friendship with Moscow had gotten them training and experience that they might otherwise not have had. And every man in Mashadov’s strike force had either been in the Kadyrovsty or had been trained by those who had. Which made them more coordinated than many of the Chechens fighting the Jihad abroad.

Of course, Abu Mokhtar’s vision and resources had facilitated even more training, as well getting them the top-of-the-line equipment they were using.

He stuffed the radio back into his load bearing vest and hefted the brand-new AK-203, lifting it to his shoulder and peering through the Elcan scope at the FOB below. It wouldn’t take his hardened mountain fighters long to get close to the HESCO barriers that formed the outer perimeter.

The Americans weren’t showing visible lights; the FOB was an only barely visible mass of blocks through the optic. But when he flipped his NVGs back down again, he could see considerably more.

Thanks to twenty years of war and ready access to the Internet, Mashadov knew quite well what he was looking at. He knew that the points of light surrounding the perimeter were the infrared chemlights hanging on the outer concertina wire, marking it for American infantry soldiers on night vision. He knew that the IR illuminators that the Americans were using from the guard posts would point him right to their positions. And he knew how to pick out the faint glow of the generator that was powering the Americans’ operations center.

He could call that in to Kurbanov. But Kurbanov had his own observers, who knew how to pinpoint the right targets before they started dropping mortars on the infidels.

The mortars were just supposed to keep the Americans’ heads down while Mashadov and his men closed the distance, anyway. This was going to be a much more personal fight.

If it had been anywhere but Afghanistan, that might have been strange. Mashadov had fought with the jihad in Syria and, though it had gone unremarked by most of the outside world, in Yemen. He had developed an antipathy for the Arabs there that was mirrored by his Pashtun brother only a few meters away. The Arabs didn’t like to get in close to fight. The Pashtuns, however…they were a different matter.

Turning back to the column behind him, he pointed down the slope toward the low ground leading almost right up to the HESCO barrier wall. Then with a “follow me” gesture, he started down the hillside.

The scrub provided some concealment as they moved. The Chechen fighters slipped from bush to tree to boulder as they worked their way down the rocky slope, covered in tough grass. Their gear was all carefully secured, and they made no noise as they moved.

***

What the fuck am I doing here?

It wasn’t the first time Specialist Colin Owens had asked himself that question. Or even the hundredth time. He’d lost track around the end of his first year in the Army.

He couldn’t say that he was a proud member of the E4 mafia. Owens wasn’t really proud of anything about being in the Army. He was doing his time until he could get out, grow his hair long, and do absolutely nothing if he felt like it. He hated the Army, hated his life, and really, really hated Afghanistan.

We were supposed to be out of this shithole country months ago! Why am I still on midnight guard duty, on a fucking FOB in the middle of the mountains? At most, I should be sitting in a transient tent in Bagram, waiting to go home.

He kept his thoughts to himself, even though he was pretty sure that Private Ortiz, his partner on watch that night, was of a similar mind. But Sergeant Merrill, their “Baboon Sausage,” as Specialist Newkirk called their Platoon Sergeant, had a nasty habit of sneaking around the perimeter when their platoon was on security, and he really didn’t want another ass-chewing for shamming, even if it was only talk.

So, he held his peace, wished for a cigarette, and stared at his sector, wondering how many minutes he had left before their relief got there. Which would probably be late. As usual.

As much as he hated the Army and everything about it, though, Owens wasn’t so lost in his hate and discontent that he was completely ignoring the landscape around him. While they’d been shut up in FOB Mayne since they’d gotten there, and they hadn’t been patrolling the area or interacting with the local populace much, they’d still been rocketed a couple of times over just the last week. Both times, the guard posts had reported people watching from the nearby ridgelines both before and during the attacks. Probably spotters. And despite himself, Owens didn’t want to be the guy who missed a spotter and failed to warn the rest of the unit that they were about to get hit, just because he hated his life.

That was how he came to be looking at an open spot between a pair of distant pines just as a figure dashed from shadow to shadow across the grassy slope.

Owens blinked, squinting through his NVGs. The moonless Paktika night was so dark that he couldn’t be entirely sure that he’d actually seen anything, even in the bright grayscale image projected by his dual-tube NVGs. It might have been his imagination. But he remembered the rockets coming in a few nights before, and so he decided not to take chances.

He picked up his rifle from where it was leaning against the sandbags, lifted it to his shoulder, then flipped on the IR illuminator and shone it toward the trees where he thought he’d seen the movement. “Hey, Ortiz,” he said, without taking his eyes off the slope, “Get on the radio and call Sarn’t Merrill.”

***

Mashadov cursed as he saw the cone of infrared light stab over his head, illuminating the tree where Musa Anzorov had just taken cover. The Americans had seen something. They might have just lost the element of surprise.

Looking down the slope, he tried to judge how far they had still to go. He was crouched behind a boulder, less than half a kilometer from the wire, but that was still a long distance to cover under fire. And the mortars were not supposed to start firing for another ten minutes.

Yet Allah is beneficent. Even as Mashadov braced himself to charge the American perimeter, a series of distant pops sounded, as the mortars started firing early.

The shells whistled down toward the American camp, and everything turned to pandemonium.

A series of bright flashes and earthshaking whumps marked the rounds’ impacts. A siren started to sound in the middle of the camp, and that was Mashadov’s cue.

Even as the mortars were joined by flickering streams of green tracers plunging down from strobing muzzle flashes up on the hills to the south, Mashadov rose from behind his tree and with a screamed, “Allahu Akhbar!” he plunged down the remaining slope toward the camp and the exterior wire.

If his plan had simply been to charge the FOB under cover of the mortar and machinegun fire, it would have ended messily and very quickly. But Mashadov was a thinker, and while he was perhaps slightly handicapped by his ideology, he hadn’t let that influence his tactics as much as the hated Arabs had. He had a plan to get past the wire and over the wall.

He and the dozen or so men who made up his assault element threw themselves down behind cover a few meters short of the wire. He quickly got down behind his rifle and aimed in at the guard post above and to his left. The others would be aimed in alternately at the others.

So far, none of his assaulting fighters had fired a shot. So long as the mortars and the machineguns kept the Americans’ attention occupied, they should have no warning about where the real attack was coming from, until it was too late.

Dzhamal Dudaev and Khanpasha Ismailov ran past him, lugging the satchel charges that had been carefully prepared days before. Dropping down on their bellies, they crawled the last few meters to the coiled concertina wire, which wasn’t nearly as deeply emplaced as it should have been. Where there should have been two or three ranks of triple-strand wire, there was only a single coil, stretched out around the base.

At least Mashadov could be reasonably certain there wouldn’t be mines. If it had been a Russian base, there would be.

Dudaev and Ismailov shoved their charges under the concertina wire. They’d brought poles to push them farther if need be, but with the Americans all either taking cover from the falling mortar rounds or focused on the machinegun nests higher up on the mountainside above them, they had been able to crawl right up to the wire. The charges slid underneath, and then they were reaching for the igniters.

***

Owens was trying to keep his head down as the mortars continued to rock the base, and machinegun fire hammered at the tops of the HESCOs to only a few feet away. This is way worse than the last time. Fuck this place, man. Fuck the Army. Fuck all this noise.

He never did know what made him turn back to the M240B mounted at the firing port. It was currently pointed away from the incoming fire, and there were plenty of pressing reasons to worry more about the actual falling mortar rounds than a possible—but so far invisible—threat outside the perimeter. But something prompted him to turn his attention back to his sector. Maybe it was simply the nagging worry that Merrill would somehow catch him out looking the wrong way.

He raised himself up just far enough to peer over the lip of the sandbagged plywood shack that served as a guard post. He remembered the movement he’d seen, or thought he’d seen, but figured that the attack was coming from off to the south. Just a look, to cover my ass.

But that look showed him two figures in the prone down by the wire, barely fifty yards outside the guard post.

Oh, fuck.

Owens might have been a shammer who hated his life, but he was still smart enough to know what was going on. The mortars and machinegun fire were just intended to keep their heads down. This wasn’t simple harassing fire like the last couple of times they’d gotten rocketed.

While Owens might say that he wished he were dead about ten times a day, in reality, he really was attached to his own personal hide. He wanted to live to see the States again, not die in the middle of the night in fucking Paktika Province, Afghanistan.

Besides, American casualties in A-stan had been down to almost nothing for a couple of years. It would be embarrassing to be one of the first new ones.

“Contact!” he roared at Ortiz, while he grabbed the 240 and heaved it up, tucking the buttstock into his shoulder. Or he tried to roar. His voice cracked halfway through, and it was more of a cross between a scream and a squawk. But if his call was borderline incoherent and embarrassingly high-pitched, at least the stuttering roar of the gun as he slewed it to the side and opened fire on the two figures down by the wire got the message across.

Red tracers hammered into the dirt and the two men down on their bellies by the wire. The nearest IR chemlight swung wildly as bullets nipped through the concertina wire, and then was obscured by the cloud of dust kicked up by the long, thunderous burst of gunfire.

***

Mashadov flinched as the bullets chopped into Dudaev and Ismailov. They jerked and went limp. Dudaev might have tried to crawl backward, but quickly spasmed, the red tracers skipping into his body, and then he stretched out and went still, as the dust kicked up by the impacts clouded the two shahidi’s bodies.

Mashadov bit back the scream of hatred that he wanted to fling at the infidels. He had better than simply words to throw at them.

He signaled to Mokhmad Khizriev, off to his right. Khizriev rose up from behind his boulder, his RPG-26 already in his shoulder.

The bang of the PG round leaving its tube might have given away the true direction of the attack, except that another salvo of mortar rounds landed with a rippling roll of thunder at the same moment that the warhead slammed across the short gap and into the side of the guard post.

Owens hardly felt anything as the warhead vented its explosive fury on the interior of the guard post. There was a flash, a heavy thud that almost went unremarked in the cacophony of gunfire and explosions outside, and black smoke and dust billowed out of every opening before the plywood started to burn.

Then Mashadov and his fighters were up and moving.

He crossed to the bodies at the wire. Both men were dead; there was no way they could have survived almost point-blank machinegun fire. They had died shahidi, martyrs for the jihad. He would mourn them later.

Mashadov was more concerned with the breaching charges. They had wire cutters if they needed them, but the charges would be faster.

It took him a moment to realize that one of the dead men had pulled the igniter on his charge. Smoke was rising from the fuse.

“Back!” he screamed. “Get back!” His boots skidded on the grass and rocky soil as he spun around and almost fell in his haste to get away from the live charge. He got ten meters away and threw himself flat, covering his head with his hands.

Not everyone made it. One of his fighters was still too close when the breaching charge went off with a short flash and a loud bang, and went sprawling. He fell on his face and did not move.

Mashadov picked himself up and turned back toward the wall and the smoking gap in the wire, where rocks and dirt were still falling. With another roared, “Allahu Akhbar!” he surged to his feet and ran toward the HESCO barriers.

The Chechens flowed through the breach in the wire, firing from the hip and stitching bullets along the top of the double wall of HESCO barriers.

Then they were climbing the barriers, slinging rifles and grabbing the wire lip to pull themselves up, leaping down into the heart of the infidels’ camp.

***

Staff Sergeant Merrill almost didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late.

He’d heard the boom of the breaching charge going off, but it hadn’t really registered as the mortars had kept howling down out of the night to slam into the south side of the FOB. Only when a bullet snapped past his head, noticeably coming from the east did he figure out that something more was going on.

He turned in time to see dark figures piling over the wall on the east side, and smoke still pouring from the burning guard post. “Contact, east!” he bellowed, but his words were snatched away by the next salvo of mortar impacts, one round landing close enough to knock him off his feet.

More rounds cracked overhead as fragmentation and debris pattered down on him. He rolled over and groped for his rifle in the dust and smoke, hardly noticing that his NVGs had been knocked away from his eyes. His fingers closed around the handguards and he dragged it to him, rolling onto his back and only then realizing that he couldn’t see. Fortunately, his NVGs were still intact, and worked when he wrenched them back down in front of his eyes.

He got the tubes aligned just in time to see a figure looming over him. At first, he thought it might be another American; the high-cut helmet, night vision goggles, and streamlined gear, complete with integrated kneepads in the trousers. Only the Kalashnikov variant in the man’s hands revealed that he wasn’t an American.

Then the AK boomed, and Merrill saw nothing more, ever again.

Enemy of My Enemy is up for Kindle Preorder now. It will be out December 18.

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The Guns of “Enemy of My Enemy”

It is that time again. Brannigan’s Blackhearts  is back with Enemy of My Enemy, so that means a guns post. And since this one goes down in Azerbaijan, there’s a lot of Eastern Bloc weapons. (Also, because of the difficulty in finding good, royalty-free images of some of these guns, I’ll be embedding videos about them for the most part.)

Shamil Mashadov and his Aswad al Islam brethren are armed with AK-203s in the beginning. The 200 series AKs are improvements on the 100 series, the 203 being specifically chambered in 7.62x39mm, and currently entering service with the Indian Army. Apparently, the Russian Army decided to forego the 200 series in favor of the AK-12 and AK-15, which are somewhat more expensive.

They’re also carrying RPG-26s to use on the guard towers around their target.

Specialist Owens is manning an M240B in one of those guard towers.

Once the Blackhearts get on the ground, the weapons the Spetsnaz loan them–at least to begin with–are bog-standard AK-103s. The Spetsnaz don’t use them, but since the Blackhearts are–as always–supposed to be deniable, they get the 103s. Like the improved 203 that the Chechens use, the 103 is chambered in 7.62×39. This is a longer video, 

For the final phase of the mission, most of the Blackhearts are carrying AS Val integrally suppressed assault rifles. Chambered in 9x39mm, the Val was introduced for Spetsnaz use in 1987, and has seen use up to the present. It is reportedly (it’s not exported, so I don’t know if there are even any working samples in the West) reliable and quite accurate.

In addition to the AS Val rifles, the Blackhearts get two VSS Vintorez 9x39mm sniper rifles.  Derived from the Val, the Vintorez shares quite a few parts with it.

The Spetsnaz troops, as mentioned above, aren’t using regular AKs. They are mostly armed with the A-545, the service version of the AEK-971. Equipped with a counterbalance system, it’s expensive, but it’s very controllable in automatic fire.

Enemy of My Enemy is now available for Kindle preorder, and will release on December 18!

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The Brannigan’s Blackhearts Revamp

Some of you have already noticed the new covers for the Brannigan’s Blackhearts series in the sidebar. While I know a few have been getting close to despair that the series was ever going to continue, never fear. The facelift (to include descriptions on the Amazon pages) was all I was waiting for–well, that and the need to get some serious work done on Maelstrom Rising. Now that the cover revamp is done, I can get back to work on Enemy of My Enemy. In fact, I already have. It’s coming along nicely, and is already up for preorder. It’ll be out in December.

A new terror mastermind is on the rise…

…And the Blackhearts might have a chance to stop him

But is the opportunity a trap?

Abu Mokhtar al Shishani wants to be the next Osama bin Laden.  And if he takes delivery of the five former Soviet backpack nukes making their way across Central Asia, he just might accomplish that goal.

But no one knows where the nukes are.

The Russians have located the money that al Shishani intends to buy the nukes with. And since they have a mutual enemy, they’ve approached the US for help to seize it. The cache is in Azerbaijan, and they don’t want a large Russian footprint on the operation.

Enter Brannigan’s Blackhearts.

It’s going to be a difficult mission already.

But the Chechens and the Azeris might be the least of their worries…

The Azeri-Armenian war over Nagorno-Kharabakh (which Mike Kupari and I already featured in a story) flared up well after I started this book, but the locations in Azerbaijan are some distance away from the Kharabakh region. It’s a small country, and it still would affect the events a little, but then, this is also a more fictional universe than either American Praetorians or Maelstrom Rising, so it isn’t necessarily going to be that “ripped from the headlines” topical.

I should be able to start working Brannigan’s Blackhearts titles into the rotation a bit more regularly now. Getting the cover revamp done all at once was a bit of a hurdle, but now that it’s done, only one at a time will be a lot easier. There will be plenty more merc stories yet.

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Fortress Doctrine is In Effect

The U.S. teeters on the precipice…

…Chaos reigns, as enemies foreign and domestic circle like sharks.

Can any part of the Republic be saved?

Hank and his section have been reconstituted in the aftermath of the coastal fighting that has seen many—though not all—of the Chinese invaders beaten back. The plot to control the West Coast ports and a good deal of the infrastructure has failed.

But the lights are still off.

And desperation is spreading like wildfire.

America—what remains of it—has been hurt. Badly. And the Triarii are at the forefront of the efforts to try to stabilize the situation. Because the US will need some kind of stability before the external enemies that have nearly brought it to its knees can be confronted.

Fortress Doctrine is in effect.

But the Triarii are spread as thin as their allies. Hank will have to adapt quickly to a new form of warfare.

And outmaneuver enemies he doesn’t even know exist yet…

Some of you are probably already aware, as the Kindle version would have downloaded during the night. But Fortress Doctrine is live today, on Kindle and paperback.

Research for this one got into some stuff that I hadn’t done a deep-dive into since The Devil You Don’t Know. Mexico hasn’t gotten any better since then; in fact, it appears to have gotten slight more out of control. While the events of Fortress Doctrine are somewhat on the periphery of the major existing cartels and the government’s corruption (AMLO gets weirder by the day, it seems), there’s a lot going on that’s fairly true to life. (Larry Correia, Jim Curtis, and I had a conversation with Peter Orullian about it at LTUE back in February that was rather eye-opening for him. Too few people understand what’s going on down there, and the implications it has for our own national security. Unfortunately, a great deal of this ignorance is deliberate.)

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