Peter Nealen's Blog, page 27
January 26, 2018
Why I Write Mercs
Mercenaries haven’t really been a staple of mainstream thrillers since the ’80s. Tom Clancy introduced Jack Ryan, an analyst, as the hero of his techno-thrillers, and it seemed to set the tone for much of the genre to come. Harold Coyle’s heroes were mostly tankers. Dale Brown’s were bomber pilots. As the GWOT got started, even the more shadowy operatives, like Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp and Brad Taylor’s Pike Logan were still directly operating within the government apparatus, if so black that they “didn’t exist.”
So, why did I go with mercenaries for the Praetorian series, Kill Yuan, and the Brannigan’s Blackhearts series? Well, I think that has several answers.
The most immediate one is flexibility. Anyone who’s done time in the military knows that your every move is closely scrutinized when in combat, and it’s just gotten worse with the advance of technology. You don’t get to pick your targets, and when you find actionable intel, it has to go up the chain for a decision, then back down to you, by which time the target might not be there anymore (true story). You could even know that that guy’s a bad guy, be poised and ready to move on him, and get told, “No.”
For the sake of authenticity, if my characters were still in the military, they’d have to abide by the rules, regulations, and ROE. Doable, but when you want to tell fast-paced adventure stories, it’s a restriction that can interfere with the story, and turn it from semi-plausible to, “There is no way in hell that would ever happen.” Having mercenaries as main characters gives the writer elbow-room, so to speak.
The other reason, I think, ties into the above, as well as the reason that mercs featured so heavily in ’70s and ’80s Action Adventure fiction. I think a lot of us GWOT vets got frustrated in much the same way many Vietnam vets did. Afghanistan is a never-ending quagmire where much of the time our guys have to stand by and watch either the Taliban retake the southern part of the country, or simply accept that their “allies” often are corrupt as hell, not to mention pederasts and sexual predators. Iraq is a fractured mess, largely dominated by the same Iranian government that was shipping EFPs across the border to kill Americans during the height of the war. It’s hard not to look at the GWOT as similarly mismanaged and abandoned as Vietnam was.
There were quite a few Vietnam vets who headed to Africa (most notably Rhodesia), to fight Communists in the ’70s and ’80s. Others, who didn’t go that far, vented their frustration by telling stories. Don Pendleton wasn’t a ‘Nam vet (WWII and Korea), but he started The Executioner series as a reaction to what had happened during and after Vietnam. Others joined in. I think we’re seeing more of the same now, with my own series, Jack Murphy’s Deckard series, Jack Silkstone’s PRIMAL series, the Black Powder-Red Earth graphic novel series, etc. We got tired of the BS in the mil, though we still might want a piece of the action. Which is why I often term my stuff, “Shooter Wish Fulfillment.”
January 24, 2018
The Unity Wars
A little while back, I mentioned that I had started work on a space opera epic. Well, there’s more to it than just writing books (though that’s the main effort). In true Galaxy’s Edge fashion, I’ve put together a website with some content to hopefully whet some people’s appetites leading up to when I start releasing books (hopefully in the summer).
I won’t be posting about it much on here; it’s its own thing. The books will be published under the pen name P.L. Nealen (because Amazon’s algorithm tends to market things differently for “new” authors in different genres). But if any of my current readers are also science fiction fans (particularly those disappointed in where Star Wars has gone), I’d welcome you over there.
Now back to the word mines with me. Got more Brannigan’s Blackhearts to work on, too.
January 22, 2018
More SOBs: Butchers of Eden and Show No Mercy
Been a bit behind on these posts; it’s been a busy couple months. While I don’t have the complete series, I have a good chunk of the Soldiers of Barrabas, and I’ve been working through them. While Stony Man was kind of my gateway drug to the Gold Eagle paperback scene, the SOBs series is generally, in my opinion, slightly better (in no small part because it becomes evident early on that none of the team members–except maybe Nile Barrabas himself–have plot armor). There are a number of influences in the Brannigan’s Blackhearts series, but the SOBs are a big one, in large part because I’ve adopted some of the storytelling tricks of a short, team-based, fast-paced action adventure story from them. (Introducing each of the team members in the first couple chapters as the team gets rounded up is one of the main points I’ve adopted, as opposed to the in media res, on-the-fly intros we got in the Praetorian series.)
So, let’s get started.
Butchers of Eden. The third book, it’s just as solid as the second. Barrabas is in Sri Lanka with his girlfriend (and sometime logistics enabler–she runs an import/export business that is also a front for a black-market empire) Erika Dykstra. This isn’t a mission; it’s a vacation. Erika and her brother Gunther have a branch in Sri Lanka, and they’re visiting their local manager, who happens to be an ethnic Tamil.
Now, this was written in 1984. This was the height of the violent insurgency on Sri Lanka, as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam sought to break away. In Colombo, in the south, that made Tamils targets, and Alan Philipson, taking another turn as “Jack Hild” used that to great effect in this book.
At least in Philipson’s volumes, there is a surprising amount of research for an ’80s pulp action adventure novel. In a brief rundown (explaining the outbreak of a police-enabled riot), he explains the cultural clash of Sinhalese and Tamil, making it clearer and deeper than just “The Tamil Tigers are fighting the government” in just a few words. From there, it’s off to the races.
Because the violence between Sinhalese and Tamil in Colombo is a cover for another operation, aimed at Barrabas himself. Carl Heiss, a corrupt, ex-CIA nemesis from The Barrabas Run, and Colonel Nguyen Son Ny, one of Heiss’ accomplices from the Vietnam days, have set an ambush for Barrabas, kidnapping Erika and holding her in a compound designed to be a death trap for any rescuer. Barrabas gets through to “The Fixer,” Walker Jessup, and Jessup gets the team together. Mayhem ensues.
The writing is polished, the gun porn is believable, we get to learn a bit more about a few of the SOBs, especially Beck, and we even get to see Jessup get out into the field. Given that Jessup weighs close to four hundred pounds, he enjoys the heat and humidity of Sri Lanka about as well as you might think. He’s also playing a double-sided game, and there is no more trust between him and Barrabas at the end than there was at the beginning.
Which brings us to Show No Mercy. I’m folding it in here because the less said about Show No Mercy, the better. It’s the first standalone by Robin Hardy (who was one of the three writers in The Barrabas Run), and I’m hoping that he gets better as time goes on.
Short rundown of the plot: a giant, charismatic drug dealer is setting up a brainwashed cult army in Honduras, aiming to take over the entirety of Central America. He’s getting HK G11s stolen and shipped in (the G11 was HK’s caseless rifle, and was considered The Future for many years, though it ultimately was too fussy a design to go anywhere and was abandoned before it could be adopted by any military). Needless to say, the SOBs get contracted to kill him.
The writing is choppy and amateurish. The plot as a whole had some potential, but Hardy’s writing butchers it. The gun porn is awful; the G11 gets mentioned a couple times, then promptly forgotten, and none of the rest is remotely accurate. The characterization is bland, at best.
Now, the back of Butchers of Eden advertises Gulag War as being the next in the series, SOBs #4. In actual fact, Gulag War ended up being #5, with Show No Mercy being released as #4. I suspect that Gulag War wasn’t quite ready in time, so Show No Mercy got rushed out in its place. I’m hoping that haste explains the shoddy craftsmanship in Show No Mercy, or else the series is going to end up more uneven than I’d hoped for, considering Hardy wrote quite a few of them.
January 15, 2018
It is Go Time
Brannigan’s Blackhearts #2 – Burmese Crossfire is now live! And it’s still $0.99 for a few more days (going up to $3.99 on the 20th). I approved the proof for the paperback on Saturday, so it’s available too (though still not linked to the Kindle page for some reason).
A Search And Destroy Mission…Deep In Hostile Territory
The Golden Triangle. One of the biggest heroin-producing regions in the world is also home to squabbling ethnic groups, clashing militarist paramilitaries, and Communist rebels.
Drugs are a means to an end. Drugs sell for money. Money buys guns and ammo. It’s how many of the small armies of the region have stayed afloat for so long. And now, another player is getting their hand in. Intelligence suggests that North Korea’s Bureau 39 is hiring out the Light Infantry Guide Bureau as advisors in return for heroin to sell on the black market.
It’s an unacceptable situation, but northern Burma is a long way from support. And the powers that be don’t want the signature on the ground that a full-scale operation might need. So, they’re turning to a man who can get it done on a shoestring, and have a hope of getting back out.
Brannigan’s Blackhearts are going in.
January 10, 2018
Burmese Crossfire Chapter 3
Well, there’s less than a week until Burmese Crossfire comes out. One last peek before it’s go time.
Joe Flanagan was not a man given to many words or noticeable outbursts of emotion. He was often best described as “laconic,” and he took some pride in that fact. He was a quiet man, often a gray man, passing unnoticed through the crowd, and he liked it that way. He and Brannigan were of similar temperaments in that respect, as both preferred the wilderness to the hustle and bustle of the city.
Right at the moment, though, Flanagan’s eyes were smoldering, and his jaw was tight under his thick, black beard. He was not a happy man.
He checked his watch again. He knew he was in the right place. The Vegas apartment complex hadn’t been hard to find. It had been a long drive to get there, and now Curtis was late. He would have let the man make his own way, but he’d been hiking in Utah, so he’d been close enough to swing through Vegas and pick the other man up on the way up to Colonel Brannigan’s place in Idaho. But they still had a long way to go, and here he was, sitting at the curb, and there was no sign of the little man.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Where the hell are you?” he typed.
Joe! Just in time! I need extract! I’m in the Blue Lagoon! Hurry!
“Son of a…” Flanagan had to fight the temptation to punch the steering wheel. “Leave it to him to go to a damned bar and get into trouble now of all times,” he muttered, as he put the truck in gear and headed down the street. Only having something of a working knowledge of Curtis’ favorite hangouts in Las Vegas gave him a general idea of where he was going, without looking at a map.
Ordinarily, it would seem to be too early for anyone to be in a bar, but it was Vegas, it was mid-afternoon, it was a weekend, and it was Curtis. The man had never seen a bar that he hadn’t wanted to go into, and Flanagan was pretty sure he knew just why the little man was in trouble, too.
He was fuming and ready for a fight when he stalked through the doors of the Blue Lagoon.
The place was dim, lit by blue neon lights set above the bar and in abstract patterns on the ceiling. The walls, ceiling, and most of the floor were black, except for the mirrors behind the bar, which just reflected the blue light even more. The atmosphere was somewhat relieved by the Nevada sunlight coming in the tinted windows at the front, but not by much.
It was easy enough to pick out where Curtis was, even though he couldn’t see the little man behind the knot of belligerents gathered around him. He could hear the gambler and erstwhile machinegunner’s slightly high-pitched voice clearly enough.
Say what he will about Kevin Curtis’ judgement, he could never accuse his old friend of being a coward.
“Oh, look at you, big man!” Curtis was saying. “Bow up all you want, it don’t matter to me. Or to her, apparently!”
The other man said something, probably intended to sound threatening.
“Oh, look at me, I’m so tough, in my Hard Rock Café t-shirt with the sleeves cut off,” Curtis mocked. Even without seeing him, Flanagan could picture Curtis puffing his chest out and pulling his chin in to ridicule the man. “Man, get outta here with that noise! If you were half the tough guy you think you are, she wouldn’t have needed to get to know me, now would she?’
Flanagan was halfway across the floor when the man raised a fist. “Try it, bitch!” Curtis called. “See what happens!”
The man let the punch fly. At the same moment, his half-dozen buddies also converged, fists flying.
Flanagan waded in.
Flanagan was not a fancy fighter. If asked what his preferred martial art was, he’d answer, “Brawling.” He made up for a lack of finesse with sheer ferocity and blunt-force trauma. He had said once, “I’m not a great grappler. But I can hit people.”
He grabbed the first man by the shoulder, spun him around, and landed a vicious uppercut to his chin, following it up with a fast one-two to his face, rocking his already rattled brains with the powerful punches. He kept his elbows in, putting his full weight behind each punch, driving his fists through the other man’s face. His opponent, already nearly unconscious from the first blow, crumpled.
A second man, realizing that they were suddenly under attack from a different quarter, turned and tried to grab him. Flanagan stomped down on the arch of the man’s foot at the same time he wrenched an arm free and smashed an elbow into his face. The man let go and reeled away, bleeding.
Curtis was giving as good as he was getting, too. He might have been short, but Curtis was a solid, rippling mass of ebony muscle, and he knew how to use it. Out of the corner of his eye, Flanagan saw the smaller man hammer a rapid series of punches into an attacker’s midsection, then rear back and hammer a headbutt into the face of another man who’d grabbed him from behind.
Another man, taller and leaner than either of the two that Flanagan had already laid out, stepped in, throwing a quick jab that got past his guard to strike his nose, making his eyes water. Two follow-up punches rocked him further, one of them opening up his cheekbone, and he felt blood trickling into his beard. He swung in reply, and the man blocked it with a forearm and hit him again.
It wasn’t the first time Flanagan had gotten hit. It hurt, and his head was starting to pound, but it just made him mad. Since he’d already been angry when he’d walked in the door, that was saying something.
Now, a lot of men get sloppy in a fight when they get mad. Flanagan didn’t. He just got more focused, more intent on hurting the guy who’d just pissed him off.
Shrugging off any further blows, Flanagan walked straight into the man, swinging. Haymakers weren’t his style; they were short, vicious, hooking punches. The man fended off the first two, then missed the right to his solar plexus. He bent nearly double, and couldn’t even try to block the left hook to his ear. His head snapped over and he stumbled, falling into the man who was presently trying to get away from Curtis’ hammering fists.
Suddenly, the fight was all but over. The attackers were staggering back, a girl was screaming, and the bartender was yelling about calling the cops. Flanagan grabbed Curtis by the shirt, caught a wild punch in a vise-like grip, and yelled in the smaller man’s face. “You wanted extract, it’s here!” he bellowed. “Let’s go, before your dumb ass lands us in jail!”
With a strength unsuspected by anyone looking at his wiry build, he propelled his old friend and teammate inexorably toward the door, his jaw set, one eye already starting to show the beginnings of a good shiner, blood running into his beard and down his neck. He shoved the door open with an energy that suggested he’d much rather kick it open, and hurtled Curtis out into the sunlight before following.
He didn’t say anything at first, but just jabbed a pointing finger at his truck as he stalked toward it, climbed in, and slammed the door. Curtis jumped into the passenger’s seat, already crowing.
“Now that was a bar fight!” he said, pumping a fist. “Ow.” He shook his hand. “I must have landed one of those punches wrong.”
Flanagan was furious as he started the truck and threw it into gear, pulling away from the curb. “Middle of the damned day,” he snarled, “we’ve got a meet with the Colonel tomorrow morning, and hours of driving to go before then, and you’ve got to go to a damned bar and get in a fight over a girl.” He spared his attention from the road just long enough to give Curtis a withering glare. “Let me guess; you just met her last night, or maybe the night before, but had to go ‘say your goodbyes?’”
“Brother, if you had seen this girl, or better yet, spent the quality time with her that I did, you’d risk being a little late to say goodbye to her, too,” Curtis countered. “She’s mind-blowing!”
“And apparently somebody else’s girlfriend,” Flanagan growled.
“Not my fault he can’t keep her interested,” Curtis replied.
Flanagan shook his head. “You can’t keep doing this, Kevin,” he said. “Sooner or later, you’re going to end up dead in a ditch, either shot by a jealous boyfriend—or husband—or stabbed by a Latina chick who finds out about your philandering.”
“I can think of worse ways to go than stabbed by a jealous Latina chick,” Curtis mused. “The sex beforehand would have been crazy wild.” He snapped his head around to stare accusingly at Flanagan. “Besides, who are you to give me advice about women? Mister ‘I’ve been single for I don’t remember how many months, because I let the greatest chick who would put up with my morose ass slip through my fingers and won’t let my good friend and buddy Kevin hook me up with a ravishing nymphomaniac?’”
“I’m the guy who just bailed you out of a six-on-one brawl, dumbass,” Flanagan growled in reply.
“And that is what friends do,” Curtis said. “Which is why I’ve been trying to hook you up for months, but noooo, you have to be Quiet Joe, Who Is No Fun.”
Flanagan, still fuming, just glared down the Nevada road as he turned north, toward Idaho and a meeting with Brannigan.
***
Brannigan watched the knot of screaming cars come around the second to last turn, tires squealing and engines roaring. From his vantage point on the top of the hill, he could see almost the last mile of the track, which twisted and turned through the hills for two and a half miles.
The blue car was in the lead, but the cherry-red one was close behind, hovering only inches from the left rear quarter-panel, pushing hard for the turn. The green and yellow cars were still hanging back, almost a full car length behind the red.
The blue car leaned into the curve, sticking close to the inside of the turn, taking it tight enough that the red car had to downshift and ease back to avoid a collision.
The driver of the red car wasn’t staying in second place, though. He suddenly swerved hard, going wide and cutting the turn as tightly as he could, throttling up with a roar to charge toward the spot just ahead of the blue. Tires squealed and smoke billowed from the track as he barely maintained control, plunging toward the last turn with every bit of speed he could squeeze out of the engine.
The red and blue cars were neck and neck as they hit the last turn, the red car still just barely on the outside, so close to the blue that Brannigan imagined they were almost touching. The turn was coming up fast, and the driver of the red car didn’t back off as they went into it.
As they hit the apex of the curve, both cars suddenly started to skid, their back wheels breaking free of the tarmac with the tightness of the turn. For a moment, it looked like they were both about to lose control and spin off into the embankment on the side of the track.
It apparently looked that way to the blue car’s driver, as well. He held on for a second, then abruptly slowed, fishtailing as he got his car back under control and ceding the lead to the driver of the red car.
That car almost spun out, and for a split second it was going around the curve sideways. But the driver compensated without losing more than a fraction of his speed, swung his rear back around, and gunned it for the finish line.
The green car had almost caught up in that moment’s hesitation as the red driver had gotten his car back under control, but was still half a length behind when the red car zoomed across the finish.
His face pensive, Brannigan started down the hill toward where the red car had finally slowed and stopped. The driver was climbing out, pulling his helmet off.
It took a couple of minutes to get down to the side of the track, but when Roger Hancock looked up to see Brannigan coming down toward the side of the track, a wide grin split his lean, sweat-sheened features. He left the congratulatory crowd behind and strode to meet the taller man, holding out his hand.
Hancock, like most of the rest of the team that had dubbed itself “Brannigan’s Blackhearts,” stood almost a head shorter than their towering commander. Still lean and hard, his thinning hair close-cropped, Hancock kept himself in shape through extreme sports in the same way that Brannigan did by trekking, hunting, and working around his cabin. He clasped Brannigan’s big, calloused hand, turning the handshake into a one-armed bear hug. “Good to see you, John,” he said, still a little out of breath from the adrenaline dump of the race’s finish. “Didn’t expect you to come down here. We got a job?”
“We might have a job,” Brannigan told him. “It’s not a done deal yet; I want to run it by the whole team first. It’s…complicated.” He looked down at the former Gunnery Sergeant. “I really came down here because Tammy told me that you’d be down here this morning when I called the house yesterday, and, well, I think you and I need to have a chat.”
Hancock sobered, and then nodded, running a hand over his stubbled scalp. Together, the two men moved up the hill, farther from the crowd and the track.
Brannigan took a deep breath. “Look, Roger,” he said, “I understand why you’ve got your little hobbies. I do. But I just watched you almost wipe out back there. Sure, you recovered. You got it back under control. But it ain’t always going to work out that way.
“I can’t tell you what to do with your free time. But you’re not going to be any use to me, or to the team, if you’re either in the hospital with a flayed chest and a dozen broken bones, or worse, dead.” He sighed. “You’re the second most senior man I’ve got. And Santelli’s a good right-hand man, but he’s not a leader. You are. If I go down, the boys are going to need you. I’m not telling you to quit. I’m just telling you that if you want to stay on the recall roster, you need to throttle back a little. You got me?”
There might have been a flicker of resentment in Hancock’s eyes, and Brannigan would fully understand if there was. Both of them were grown men, both retirees from the military. No man likes to be lectured. And Brannigan had no desire to lecture. But what he’d seen on that track worried him.
If Hancock’s features had tightened at Brannigan’s words, he didn’t otherwise react, except to nod. “Okay, John. Message received.” He ran a hand over his face and sighed. “You really think I’m going to be your replacement if things go south?”
“I could always pick Curtis…” Brannigan said with a raised eyebrow.
Hancock chuckled, the tension broken. “I’d almost pay money just to see Joe’s reaction,” he said. “Again, message received. Where and when?”
“Same place as we debriefed, tomorrow morning,” Brannigan said. “I don’t want a lot of listening ears around for this one.”
“I’ll be there,” Hancock said. “Just let me get finished up here and I’ll be on my way.”
***
Sam Childress lunged for the phone as soon as it started ringing. He was sitting in his aunt’s trailer, and he nearly barked his long shins on the furniture getting to the phone.
Childress was a long-limbed, gangly-looking young man, with a flyaway shock of dark hair, a slightly receding chin, and a beak of a nose. He’d never be called handsome, and he tended to look awkward and clumsy, even though anyone who really knew him knew better.
He looked at the number on the phone and let out a loud sigh of relief before answering. “Yes, Sergeant Major,” he said.
“I told you to stop calling me that, Sam,” Santelli said on the other end of the line. “Besides, getting all formal ain’t gonna make me forget the way you mouthed off to First Sergeant Morris.”
“Morris had it coming,” Childress said as he sat back down on the loveseat. “He was a tool.”
“That he was,” Santelli agreed. “And telling him that still wasn’t your job. It was mine.”
“Have we got a job?” Childress asked, unable to keep the note of hope out of his voice.
“We have a meeting,” Santelli said. “Brannigan wants to talk to the team about something. He wouldn’t say what, not over the phone.”
“Oh,” Childress said, feeling something close to a moment of panic. “Okay. Uh…” He took the phone away from his ear again and glanced at it, as if to make sure someone else wasn’t calling.
“Sam,” Santelli said, his voice with that low note of warning in it that Childress was all too familiar with. “You’re not broke again, are you?”
“Uh, not exactly,” Childress replied.
“Define ‘not exactly,’” Santelli pressed him.
“I’ve still got a couple hundred left,” Childress said, nervously running his hand through his hair, glad for a moment that Santelli couldn’t see him doing it.
“What the hell did you buy?” Santelli exploded. “You’re not a private anymore, Sam! You should know better than to blow your paychecks on cars and strippers!”
“It wasn’t that!” Childress protested. “My aunt’s been sick. She’s had bills piling up. I, uh…I might have paid all her bills for her.” He swallowed. “I hadn’t thought there were that many. There wasn’t much left of the pay from the…uh…the other job…when everything was said and done.” He’d almost said, “the Khadarkh job,” but caught himself at the last instant. He realized that saying that name over the phone might not be the best idea. “I was actually waiting on a call from Julie Keating at the temp work office when you called,” he admitted.
Santelli didn’t say anything at first, and Childress started to get nervous again. “Well, that’s certainly a noble enough reason to go broke, Sam,” Santelli said finally. “Where’s the nearest airport? I’ll get your tickets for you.”
“I, uh,” Childress started to protest. He was torn. He needed work soon, and he didn’t like the fact that this was just a “meeting.” He needed a job, not a “maybe.”
“We’ll take care of you, Sam,” Santelli said. “If this doesn’t pan out, I’ll get you some money for a couple days until you can work something out with the gorgeous Miss Keating, okay?”
“She’s engaged, SMaj,” Childress pointed out.
“Holy hell, Childress!” Santelli exploded. “Just get me the name of the damned airport, and get your ass over there!”
Somewhat chastened, Childress told him. After a moment’s arrangement of final details, Santelli hung up. Childress got up and went looking for his gear.
He hoped that it was a job. He’d been dreading dragging back into that office and facing Julie Keating again, asking the woman who was miles out of his league if she could find him another job moving parts or whatever at $10 per hour.
***
Juan Villareal was dragging as he walked out into the hospital parking lot. It was late afternoon, but he’d been inside since the first call at 0230 that morning. A multi-car pileup on the freeway, followed by a bad house fire, had kept him and the other ER doctors hopping for hours. One of the victims of the vehicle accident hadn’t made it. The rest would be okay, provided everything went smoothly.
He stopped at his car and stared down at the door for a moment. Now that he was out of the hospital, all the adrenaline-fueled energy was draining away, and he was seriously considering just climbing into the back seat and going to sleep. That was when his phone rang.
At first, he just stared uncomprehendingly at the screen. He’d been expecting it to be another emergency call, and when it wasn’t, it was taking his mind a moment to register what exactly he was looking at. Then he recognized the contact, and almost wished it was another emergency call. He answered it and brought the phone to his ear. “Yeah.”
“You all right, Doc?” Brannigan asked. “You sound like hell.”
“Long night, long day,” Villareal said. “Let me guess, you’ve got more work.”
“I might,” Brannigan corrected. “It’s tricky. I’d like all hands on deck to discuss it.”
Villareal said nothing for a moment, but just sat there staring into space, at an infinite nothing somewhere past his car.
“Doc?” Brannigan asked. “You still there?”
“I’m here,” Villareal answered.
“Look, I know you’re not entirely on board with this little operation,” Brannigan said. “I’d at least like you to come out; if you’re not in, I’d like your input on who to get to replace you as medic. Fair enough?”
Villareal checked his watch. What day was it? Thursday. That was right. He had Friday and Saturday off this week. “Okay, fair enough,” he said. “Let me get my shit together, and I’ll be out late tonight or early tomorrow.”
“Sounds good, Doc,” Brannigan said. “See you then. Give me a call when you land; if you can’t get me, call Carlo.”
“Roger,” Villareal said. He unlocked his car and got in as he hung up.
He still sat there for a moment, still just staring at nothing. He was conflicted. He’d developed a strong loyalty to John Brannigan a decade before, and he’d developed a bond with the rest of “Brannigan’s Blackhearts,” as well. It’s hard not to, when you’ve survived a high-risk mission like the hostage rescue on Khadarkh. But the thought of going back out…
Many years before, in Afghanistan, Doc Villareal had returned fire to cover a wounded Marine in a firefight near a little village called Zarghun. In the aftermath, they’d found three dead Pashtun children, none older than maybe eight years old, in the reeds where he’d dumped half a mag. There had been no weapons or ammunition anywhere near the corpses, though there’d been empty shell casings in the mud.
The sight of those dead kids had haunted Villareal ever since. It had driven him to try to turn his back on the battlefield, to pursue a career in medicine, earning his MD in near-record time and swearing he would never pick up a weapon again.
He’d been on Khadarkh as a non-combatant, carrying only his medical supplies, and coming along with the rest of the mercenaries as a doctor, and only a doctor.
He’d also very nearly gotten them all killed. One of the Iranian commandos that they’d shot getting into the Citadel had still been alive, and Villareal had felt duty-bound to try to treat him. He’d been hauled off and the Iranian shot dead before the wounded man could get the pin out of the grenade he’d been carrying. That had rattled Villareal almost as much as the dead Afghan kids had. More than ever, he doubted that he belonged anywhere near a battlefield.
But he owed Brannigan, he knew that. And he owed the rest something, too. He couldn’t just turn his back on them. At the very least, he’d talk to Brannigan and find them a new doc. One not quite as scarred and emotionally damaged as he was.
***
David Aziz was restless. He’d never have expected it, and certainly never would admit it, but sitting at his desk grading papers was not what he wanted to be doing. Not even remotely.
He was staring at the screen in front of him, but he wasn’t seeing the banal, overly-academic, long-winded paper that some faceless, pompous nineteen-year-old had sent him. He was seeing burning AMX-10P armored personnel carriers, seeing the titanic explosion of twelve ballistic missiles detonating in a chain, the fireball boiling up from the walls of the Citadel on Khadarkh. He was seeing the last moments of the terrorist named Abu Sayf, as he had gunned the man down in the skeleton of an incomplete building, even as Khadarkh City descended into fire and violence below them.
He pushed back from the desk. “Fuck!” Standing, he started to pace his office.
If David Aziz had one outstanding character flaw—and he had many—it was that he always had to see himself—and, by extension, try to get everyone else to see him—as simply “too cool.” He approached everything in life with a certain disdain, though his reasons for such disdain tended to change fluidly. His disdain for academia stemmed from his veteran status and his time as an infantryman. His disdain for mercenary work stemmed from his credentials in academia. David Aziz had to see himself as better than other people, so he did, even though he had to be a bit hypocritical in order to do so.
He didn’t want to admit to himself that he missed the action. Hell, he’d come within a hair’s breadth of abandoning his teammates on Khadarkh and making a run back to Dubai. Faced with having to go back into Khadarkh City alone, knowing that Abu Sayf had been in there, he’d nearly lost his nerve.
He tried to focus on that, to convince himself that he couldn’t be distracted from his work as a professor by something so knuckle-dragger-ish as wishing he was back in combat. He was above such things, or so he told himself. He didn’t really miss the imminent danger of violent, painful death. A man would have to be crazy to miss that.
But he did miss it, and he couldn’t get his mind off it. Hadn’t been able to since returning from Khadarkh, months before.
It was something else that he’d never admit to himself, but he knew that he hadn’t been the best performer on that mission. He’d almost broken and fled, and he’d cut corners and seen to his own needs at the expense of the rest of the team a few times. He’d never been selfish all that consciously; he’d been thoughtless more than anything else. Deep down, he knew it. And, equally deep down, he knew that he wanted another chance. He wanted a chance to do better. To show Flanagan and Curtis, and even Brannigan, that he was just as good as they were.
His phone ringing broke him out of his reverie. He stepped to the desk and looked down. It was Santelli.
He scooped it up. “Professor Aziz,” he answered. He couldn’t help that bit of pomposity.
“Aziz, Santelli,” the former Sergeant Major said, his voice entirely businesslike. None of the rest of the Blackhearts were all that chummy with Aziz. He could be somewhat off-putting at times. “We’ve got a meeting about a possible job. Same place as the debrief last time, tomorrow morning.”
“I don’t know,” Aziz said, affecting boredom even as his heart turned over and a strange feeling worked its way into his stomach. “I’ve got a lot on my plate here.”
“I’m just passing the word, Aziz,” Santelli said, sounding like he couldn’t be less interested in trying to talk the other man into coming. “Either you’re there or you’re not. Big boy rules.”
That stated indifference decided Aziz right away. He’d be there, if only because Santelli didn’t think enough of him to try to convince him. “I’ll be there,” he said.
“Fine. See you then.” Santelli hung up.
Aziz slapped his laptop shut and headed for the door. He could be at the airport in an hour.
January 2, 2018
The Guns of Brannigan’s Blackhearts (So Far)
Realized that I could have done this for Fury in the Gulf, but didn’t. So, with the release of Burmese Crossfire now less than two weeks away, here’s a little gratuitous gun porn covering both of the first two novels in the Brannigan’s Blackhearts series.
Chinese Type 03
Commander Esfandiari’s troops in Fury in the Gulf use Chinese Type 03 rifles. The ones they use are the export variant, chambered in 5.56.
Russian Makarov
Both the Iranians and the Blackhearts use 9mm Makarovs for sidearms on Khadarkh.
AK-12
The Blackhearts go ashore with top-of-the-line Russian AK-12s, in 5.45. (As shown on the cover.)
PKP Pecheneg
Curtis, being Mr. Machinegunner, carries a PKP Pecheneg on Khadarkh, in 7.62×54.
Type 88
The North Korean advisors in Burma carry Type 88 rifles, an indigenous North Korean AK variant.
Type 73 light machine gun
The Nork advisors also have a couple Type 73s, another indigenous North Korean design.
Type 56
The Kokang Army uses various AK clones, the most common of which is the Chinese Type 56.
HK G3
Since it is commonly used by the Burmese Army, the Blackhearts go in with HK G3s.
Rheinmetall MG3
With a bit more numbers, two of the Blackhearts go into Burma carrying MG3s for fire support.
So, there’s a bit of a look at some of the things that go bang in the Brannigan’s Blackhearts series so far. Hope everyone’s enjoying Fury in the Gulf, and if you’ve finished, please consider going on Amazon and leaving a review.
Meanwhile, don’t forget that Burmese Crossfire is still only $0.99 for pre-order. It’ll go up to $3.99 on the 20th.
December 28, 2017
Burmese Crossfire Chapter 2
The paperback proof is here, the Kindle pre-order is up ($0.99 until Jan 20, when it goes up to $3.99), and here is Chapter 2 to whet more appetites.
The unimaginatively-named “Road-House” lay just off the highway, about twenty miles from the nearest town. It didn’t get a lot of traffic, except for the occasional motorist stopping in to grab something to eat, either at the gas station attached to the “Road-House” or at the restaurant and bar itself.
John Brannigan nearly filled the doorway as he stepped inside. Six-foot-four, broad-shouldered, he retained the leanness and power of a man much younger than his nearly fifty years. His hair was going gray, as was the thick handlebar mustache he’d grown since he’d retired—not entirely willingly—from the Marine Corps, some years before. Deep lines surrounded his icy eyes as he swept the interior of the restaurant with a practiced, professional gaze. This was a man who had never stepped into a room without knowing the layout, who was in it, and how to get out.
It wasn’t that he was paranoid. It was simply a fact that twenty-three years as a Marine, both enlisted and commissioned, had hard-wired certain habits into him. And his most recent work hadn’t served to dull those habits any, either.
Hector Chavez was waiting by the bar, sitting on a stool with one elbow on the bar and the other hand on his knee, so that he needed only turn his head to see the door. He grinned a little as he hitched himself off the stool and stepped toward Brannigan, holding out his hand.
“Good to see you again, John.” Chavez was getting a little heavy, his gray hair thinning. He still moved well, for a man whose heart didn’t quite work right anymore.
Brannigan shook the other man’s hand. Chavez’ ticker might need a pacemaker, but his grip was still strong. “Did you let Mama Taft intimidate you last time, Hector?” he asked, with a half-smile.
Chavez chuckled. “No, though that is certainly an intimidating woman.” He sobered. “I just figured that establishing a pattern of life might not be the best idea. If we keep meeting in the same diner, with different clients, somebody might start to think that you’re working as some kind of consultant. And then they might start wondering what kind of consulting a man like you does.”
Brannigan nodded. The reasoning was sound. The last job that Chavez had brought him, his first as a mercenary, had been high-risk and highly illegal. That it had been the right thing to do wouldn’t matter if the wrong people got wind of it.
He looked around for his new client, but Chavez appeared to be alone. Noticing the look, Chavez inclined his head toward the back of the restaurant and said, “Come on. And John? Try to keep an open mind, all right?”
Brannigan frowned at that, but said nothing as he followed Chavez toward the back. It was the middle of the afternoon, so the restaurant was pretty empty. An older couple was sitting at one of the polished wooden tables against the front wall, and there was a single man sitting at the opposite end of the bar from where Chavez had been, but otherwise the rustic-looking place was deserted.
They passed through the doorway leading to the back room, which was similarly empty except for more tables, a few booths, and a bussing area. There was a man sitting alone at a table in the center of the room, who looked up as Chavez and Brannigan walked in.
Brannigan’s mouth thinned as he recognized him. Aside from the fact that he was presently dressed in a polo shirt and jeans, instead of MARPAT camouflage utilities, General Mark Van Zandt didn’t appear to have changed a bit since Brannigan had last seen him.
He’d last seen Van Zandt via a VTC from the USS Boxer, as the General was informing him that, due to his disregard for the restrictive Rules of Engagement in East Africa, a disregard that had been necessitated by the situation he and his Marines had found on the ground, he would be “allowed” to retire, rather than be court-martialed for getting into a firefight with the local army’s soldiers. That those soldiers had been actively defending the terrorists that were holding the hostages Brannigan and his Marines had been tasked to rescue hadn’t mattered to the politicians or the Marine Corps. Needless to say, there was not a little bitterness there.
Van Zandt stood up as they approached, somewhat to Brannigan’s surprise. He’d long considered the man a typical careerist officer, by which he meant a politician, more than willing to lord his position over subordinates and step on anyone and everyone for the sake of his own advancement. He hadn’t expected even so much a mark of respect as standing from the man, especially after their last interaction.
“John,” Van Zandt said in greeting, holding out his hand.
Brannigan shot Chavez a brief look that promised words later, then shook the proffered hand. He might not like Van Zandt, but he’d be damned if he let himself sink to the level of answering discourtesy with discourtesy, and when the man was actually being courteous…
“Mark,” he replied evenly. “What are you doing here?”
“Please, have a seat,” Van Zandt said. He was clearly uncomfortable. Chavez pulled up a chair and sat down, and Brannigan warily followed suit.
“Mark came to me about two days ago,” Chavez said. “He was specifically looking for you.”
Brannigan hadn’t taken his eyes off Van Zandt. “And why might that be, Mark?” he asked, his voice low and dangerous. “I’m sure this isn’t a social call.”
“It isn’t,” Van Zandt replied, “though not for the reasons you might be thinking. For one thing, I’m retired now, just like you.” When Brannigan’s eyes narrowed, Van Zandt actually flushed, apparently realizing that it had been the wrong choice of words. Brannigan took some pride in being a fair man, but he hadn’t quite realized just how raw this particular wound still was.
“Look, I was just the messenger last time, John,” he said.
“Sure you were,” Brannigan rumbled, recognizing the play for what it was. Van Zandt wanted something. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been trying to play nice. “So, whose messenger boy are you this time?”
“Okay, look,” Van Zandt said, leaning forward and putting his elbows on the table, apparently deciding to go for broke and get his cards on the table, “I know that you led the operation on Khadarkh a few months ago. Some of my people interviewed the hostages, and some of them described you pretty accurately. Don’t worry,” he said, putting his hands up as Brannigan tensed, ever so much, “I’m not here to arrest you or press charges or anything like that. Once again, success is your best defense, and on top of the intel about the Saudi missiles that you passed to Hector, you’re golden. Even if I wanted to—which I don’t—there are some very important people who would put the kibosh on any attempt to come down on you for that operation.”
“Okay,” Brannigan said, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms, corded with muscle from living and working outside most of the last three years, “then what do you want?”
Van Zandt took a deep breath. “What do you know about a North Korean desk called ‘Bureau 39?’”
Brannigan frowned, searching his memory. “Don’t they have something to do with organized crime?” he asked.
Van Zandt and Chavez both nodded. “Though in their case,” Chavez put in, “’having something to do with’ means that they’re an official, state-sponsored criminal organization.”
“Their mandate appears to be to help fund the DPRK through the global criminal underworld,” Van Zandt elaborated. “Drugs, smuggling, weapons, shady real-estate deals, money laundering, human trafficking, illegal mining…you name it, Bureau 39 has a hand in it somewhere. They’ve been very active in Africa, right alongside the Chinese. It’s estimated that millions upon millions of dollars get funneled to Pyongyang every year by Bureau 39 activities.”
“Figures,” Brannigan said. “Never was a Communist born who wasn’t also a gangster.”
“As with any underworld operation,” Van Zandt continued as he nodded his agreement, “their precise activities are hard to track. It’s not like these people make quarterly earnings statements. But considering how deep in that criminal underworld they are, drugs are pretty high on their list of revenue streams, and being based in Asia, that means we’ve long suspected they have dealings in the Golden Triangle.”
Brannigan nodded. The Golden Triangle was in the highlands along the borders of Burma, Thailand, and Laos, and was one of the world’s foremost opium poppy producing regions, only possibly surpassed by southern Afghanistan. “Stands to reason,” he agreed.
“Well, we have reason to believe that their involvement has been stepped up a notch,” Van Zandt said, pulling a tablet out of the briefcase next to his chair. He tapped it, then swung it around and slid it across the table to Brannigan. “This happened six days ago, along the Thai/Burmese border, about six miles from Wiang Phang Kham.”
Brannigan took the tablet and studied the photo. It didn’t take an expert to recognize the aftermath of an ambush. Two five-ton trucks had been reduced to burned-out skeletons, a third was shot to hell, and there were bloody, motionless bodies strewn around what looked very much like the craters from mortar strikes. He looked up at Van Zandt. “What makes you think this was the Norks?” he asked. “As I recall, there have been all kinds of clashes along that border, between the Thais and the various drug lords and warlords in Burma.”
“There have been,” Van Zandt agreed, “though never quite this intense, not recently. And we would simply have assumed that it was some of the United Wa State Army having a bit of a dispute with the Thai Rangers over border crossing bribes, except for the next pictures. Keep scrolling.”
Brannigan did, as Van Zandt continued to explain. “The Thais had ISR up, but there was a fair bit of low cloud cover that day, so they didn’t see much of the actual ambush. But the clouds were starting to lift shortly after, and they managed to get those next photos.”
Brannigan zoomed in the image, though that just made the figures more blurred and pixelated. But whoever those three were, they weren’t wearing the same uniforms as the rest of the fighters around them. Details were blurry, but the unidentified figures’ clothes and equipment were a different shade of green, and appeared that they might have a camouflage pattern, as opposed to the surrounding Wa fighters’ plain olive drab.
He looked up again. “You think these are your North Koreans?”
Van Zandt nodded. “And we’ve got other reasons to think so,” he said. “Keep scrolling.”
The next images were obviously in a different area. They showed what looked very much like a forward operating base, though not one built according to the usual Western “Big Box FOB” model. It looked more like a Special Force camp from Vietnam. There were definitely bunkers among what looked like tents, and there might be camouflaged fighting positions surrounding the encampment. Again, the detail was not superb, but the rough outline was there.
There were also figures in the next image, apparently taken outside one of the tents, and zoomed in. Once again, the imagery was blurry and indistinct, showing little detail, but the color of the uniforms was identical to the figures in the photos taken leaving the ambush site on the Thai border.
“That camp is up north, deep in Shan State in Burma,” Van Zandt explained. “It’s actually in the Kokang region, a part of Shan State inhabited by the ethnic-Chinese Kokang. The Kokang Army, which is pretty staunchly Communist, has been fighting the Burmese government off and on for years. Can’t entirely blame them; the Burmese haven’t exactly been kind to the ethnic minorities in their country. The Karen are the obvious example. But the Kokangs are also hip-deep in the opium and heroin trades, sending shipments north into Yunnan Province in China, and, apparently, southeast to Thailand.
“Between that imagery and some of our SIGINT, we are fairly certain that there is a detachment of North Korean Light Infantry Guide Bureau troops in that camp, under the auspices of Bureau 39. We think that they’re advising the narco-militias in northern Burma on infantry tactics and training, in return for a cut of the drug profits.”
Brannigan sat back again and ran a broad hand over his mustache. “I think I see where this is going,” he said dryly.
“North Korea is getting to be of considerable concern,” Van Zandt forged ahead. “Their continued nuclear threats and ballistic missile tests have a lot of people very worried, and for good reason. Sanctions aren’t doing the trick. They’re supposed to be the Hermit Kingdom, completely cut off from the rest of the world, but they’ve got enough resources to continue pushing ahead with a nuclear program. And this kind of operation is why.” He took a deep breath. “We want to hire you and your team to go in and eliminate that North Korean contingent. I know what you’re going to say,” he continued, holding up a hand. “’Why not send Delta, or DEVGRU?’ I know. Under the circumstances, I’d agree, except for one thing. Nobody’s willing to risk the exposure of a US SOF team that deep inside Burma, that close to the Chinese border. The Chinese would throw a fit, and, like it or not, US SOF has a bigger footprint than we’d like to wish it did. The op to kill Bin Laden had a lot of greased palms and diplomatic groundwork behind it, and we’d never get the Chinese to sign off on an op that close to their territory.”
“So, you want me and my boys to do it, because we’d be plausibly deniable,” Brannigan said flatly. “And expendable.”
“Deniable, yes,” Van Zandt sighed. “Expendable…not if I can help it.” He sighed again, glancing down at the table in front of him. Brannigan honestly wasn’t sure if it was an act or not. “Look, I’m not going to pretend that this is going to be a milk run. That would be an insult to your intelligence if I even tried. Hell, if I thought it would be a walk in the park, I probably wouldn’t even have come to you. But you rather amply demonstrated a few months ago that you still have a knack for wreaking destruction disproportionate to the numbers at your command.”
Brannigan eyed the man with some distaste. “So what you’re saying is that the same qualities that made you and your fellow generals run me out of the Marine Corps are now what make my services valuable.”
Van Zandt’s lips thinned, and he swallowed. “Yes, I guess that is what I’m saying,” he replied grudgingly. “I won’t lie, John. I think you’re a bull in a china shop. I think that you made an exceptional NCO, but some of the subtleties of officer-level leadership were always lost on you. But I don’t need an officer for this. I need a team leader, and that’s what you’re best at.”
Brannigan said nothing at first, only staring at the other man coldly. Chavez’ gaze was similarly riveted on Van Zandt, and was no friendlier. “Well, that’s a hell of a way to convince a man to go clean out a snake pit nobody else wants to go near,” Brannigan said dryly.
He honestly wasn’t sure what to think. He knew that his dislike for Van Zandt was coloring his judgment regarding the job. And the all-too fresh memory of the sense of betrayal about the way his Marine Corps career had ended wasn’t helping matters, either.
That didn’t change the very real concerns about the mission itself. Assaulting the Citadel on Khadarkh, a small island in the middle of the Persian Gulf, had been one thing. Extract had been a matter of getting back out to sea. Sure, they’d been outnumbered and outgunned, but they’d fought through with a combination of high explosives and sheer ferocity. He wondered if any of the Iranian commandos had ever made it back to Iran, particularly after Flanagan had blown up the Saudi Dongfeng-3 ballistic missiles that had been staged in the Citadel’s outer courtyard.
Going into northern Burma was something else altogether. Insert and extract would both be vastly more complicated than on Khadarkh. The closest they could consider “friendly” territory would be Thailand, which would be at least a hundred miles away, over steep mountains and thick jungle.
Yet at the same time, the challenge appealed to him. And after years of fighting Arabs, Afghans, and various poorly-trained, rag-tag Islamic militias in Africa, the North Koreans were an enemy that not a few warriors quietly wished they could test themselves against. That it would be shutting down a Communist-run criminal enterprise, specializing in trafficking human misery for the sake of aggrandizing a tyrant and funding his nuclear weapons program was another appeal. There wasn’t a lot of gray area when it came to fighting Communists in Brannigan’s mind, least of all North Koreans.
Of course, that was all assuming that Van Zandt was on the level. He hadn’t identified who he was working for, but Brannigan had his suspicions. If this was a setup…but Chavez was apparently confident that the story was real. Brannigan might not trust Van Zandt an inch, but he trusted Hector Chavez. The man had earned that trust a long time before.
“I’m not going to say yes,” he said, “not yet. I’ll have to run this past the boys first. But if we do decide to take the job, just understand that it’s going to cost.”
“There are going to be certain limits,” Van Zandt began, but Chavez cut him off.
“Don’t even try it, Mark,” Chavez snapped. “We discussed this.”
“Them’s the terms, Mark,” Brannigan said calmly. “I’ll take the imagery and what you told me, run it past my men, and if we decide to take the job, then you pay our price, or there’s no job. Take it or leave it.”
Van Zandt looked like he’d swallowed something sour. But he finally nodded. “This is too important to quibble over price tags,” he said. “Unless it gets really unreasonable.”
“Don’t worry,” Brannigan said as he stood up, blanking the tablet and slipping it under his arm. “We don’t do fancy parties to tell politicians how important we are. We just go in, do the killing that needs to get done, and get out. As long as we get the necessary gear, and we get paid, that’s all we need.”
Without waiting for Van Zandt’s reply to his barb, he turned on his heel and walked out. Neither man tried to follow him.
***
Carlo Santelli was a happy man.
It might have seemed a little strange to him, at first. He’d thought, before Khadarkh, that he’d been getting bored, and worse, that Melissa had been getting tired of him. After all, she was younger than he was, and was still a stunningly pretty woman. He was a short, stout, pugnacious guy from the old neighborhood in Boston, with a lifetime of soldiering and fighting showing in a downright ugly face with a crooked nose. He’d expected to return from the Persian Gulf with a fat paycheck to find an empty house.
But she’d stayed, and had welcomed him home with a warmth that he honestly hadn’t expected. And in the months since, he’d found that both of them had really started making an effort to do more together.
He’d been frankly horrified to discover that she’d never learned to fish, and had immediately taken it upon himself to teach her. She was only three years younger than he, but she’d been a city girl all her life. Of course, Santelli had been a city boy, too, but his father had always taken his kids out fishing on weekends during the summer, mostly out on the ocean. He had a lot of fond—and some not-so-fond—memories of fishing off the pier on Castle Island.
He hadn’t wanted to take Melissa to a crowded pier for her first fishing trip, though. And since he didn’t own a boat, that had meant a charter. Fortunately, the money from the Khadarkh job was in no danger of running out just yet; Santelli had been raised to be frugal. It went along with his generally straightforward manner and work ethic.
Right at the moment, he was leaning over the rail of the boat with a net, getting ready to snare the bluefish that Melissa was almost finished reeling in. She was almost jumping up and down with excitement, and Santelli couldn’t help but smile at the sight. She’d been hesitant about the trip in the first place, but as soon as the bluefish had grabbed her hook and started its run, she’d been as hooked as the fish.
“Don’t lose it, baby!” she screamed.
“I’m not gonna lose it,” Carlo told her, even as he scooped the bluefish out of the water. “He’s hooked good, he ain’t gettin’ away.” He pulled himself and the net back over the rail, and drew the fish out by the gills. “Congratulations, baby,” he said. “Your first bluefish.”
Melissa clapped her hands and hugged him, fish and all, just as the cell phone in his pocket vibrated, and rang with, “Take Me Out To The Ballgame.”
Santelli carefully extricated himself from Melissa’s arms and handed her the fish as he drew the phone out. Her face clouded a little as she saw it, and the ringtone registered. “Again?” she whispered.
“Don’t worry, honey, it’ll be fine,” he said. He answered the call and put the phone to his ear. “Talk to me, John.”
“I need you to get the boys together, Carlo,” Brannigan said. A year ago, this conversation wouldn’t have been possible; becoming a mercenary commander had meant that Brannigan had needed to finally get a cell phone again, for the first time in over three years. “We might have a job.”
“You don’t sound convinced,” Santelli noted.
“I’m not,” Brannigan answered. “Which is why we’re going to get the boys together and discuss this before I tell Van Zandt yes or no.”
“Van Zandt?” Santelli was almost speechless. “General Van Zandt?”
“The same,” Brannigan said grimly. “He says he’s retired; that he’s not a General anymore.”
“You think he’s cross-decked?” Santelli asked carefully.
“He’s cross-decked to somewhere,” Brannigan replied. “I’ll get Flanagan, Curtis, and Villareal. Can you contact Childress and Aziz, and get out to our usual spot in thirty-six hours?”
“Consider it done, sir,” Santelli said.
“Thanks, Carlo. And tell Melissa I’m sorry.”
“We’ll be fine, John,” Santelli assured him, and hung up.
Melissa was holding her catch, trying to admire it, but her eyes had kept straying to Santelli during the entirety of the conversation. She slipped under his arm as he shoved the phone back in his pocket.
“I’d hoped that the last job was enough,” she said quietly. “I realized while you were gone how much we were taking things for granted, but wasn’t the pay enough to keep you here, with your retirement?”
Santelli sighed as he gave her a squeeze. He kissed her. “It’s not just about the pay, baby,” he admitted. “John Brannigan won my loyalty a lot of years ago, and those boys need me as much as they need him. It wouldn’t feel right, letting them go without me.”
She looked down at the deck for a moment, biting her lip. Then she nodded, brushed a single tear off her cheek, and touched his own, before she kissed him back. “I guess I always knew that,” she said. “I just miss you when you’re gone. I like having you home.”
“I might not even be gone for long, honey,” Santelli assured her. “John doesn’t sound sure about this job. It might only be a trip out west to see the boys.”
He wasn’t sure, though. If he knew one thing about John Brannigan, it was that the man belonged in a fight, and if there was one to be had, he’d probably be heading into it, sooner or later.
And Carlo Santelli would be damned if he let his old CO go running into Hell without him.
December 20, 2017
Busy, Busy
I know, I haven’t been posting here much. Need to get on that. Probably need to do some scheduling.
But I’ve been busy. Very. I’ve got another new series in the works, and it’s more than a little different from anything I’ve done before. I’ve played around with military action adventure, horror/fantasy, and heroic fantasy (though y’all haven’t seen that much of that yet). But this is going to be science fiction.
Now, the funny part is that I originally started tinkering with writing, back in high school, with science fiction. I still have notebooks (somewhere) of notes, starmaps, and starship diagrams from those days. I had an entire sweeping timeline of wars between alien empires and human-alien alliances. It was, to borrow a turn of phrase from Nick Cole and Jason Anspach, WingCommanderNotWingCommander with a leavening of StarWarsNotStarWars. In fact, Task Force Desperate started out as a mil-fic backstory leading into the “21st Century Chaos” that was part of the backstory of what that epic evolved into. (It isn’t anymore; the Praetorian Series became very much its own thing.)
What I’m working on now isn’t that particular epic. It’s much more “The Clone Wars meets The Horus Heresy with a leavening of Hammer’s Slammers and Lensmen.” It’s proving a bit more difficult than Brannigan’s Blackhearts; I’ve got to figure out more on the fly–there’s less that I can simply draw on from either quick research or personal experience. Still, it’s coming along, and the wider series is getting quite a bit of an arc (several arcs, actually). I’m pretty stoked about it, though it won’t be out for a few months (I’m planning on stacking the first several books before releasing the first, and I’ve got more Brannigan’s Blackhearts to write in between). There will be a website for the series, with background notes, some free fiction, and even concept drawings and suchlike. It’s not ready to go yet, but I’ll be spreading it around once it is.
The other thing about this series, since I’m genre-jumping, is that it won’t be released under my usual name. David J. West, with his “James Alderdice” pseudonym has had some success in getting to an audience that he wouldn’t have otherwise. Pen names are a long-standing tradition in pulp fiction (which, let’s face it, is what I write, regardless), and the way Amazon’s algorithm works, they are a useful tool. In the interests of that algorithm, I won’t say what the pen name is going to be just yet, but I will eventually.
Back to the word mines.
December 15, 2017
“Burmese Crossfire” Chapter 1
Roi Tri Somboon Sirpreecha was nervous.
It had been a whole fifteen days since he had reported to his post as the youngest, least-experienced platoon commander in the Thanan Phran, the Thai Rangers. It hadn’t been an easy fifteen days, either. While the Royal Thai Army provided the Thanan Phran with its officer and NCO corps, many of the men had their own ideas about discipline and responsibility. He’d long heard that many of the Rangers had been criminals, pardoned of their crimes for joining up, but he hadn’t realized just how shadowy the interior workings of the Thanan Phran could be until he’d caught one of his more experienced and respected Rangers brazenly stealing from one of the villagers when they’d passed through Ban Pha Hi on patrol.
When he’d confronted the man, he’d found himself half-surrounded by suddenly surly Rangers, all with weapons close at hand. He’d held his ground, backed up by Sip Ek Klahan Phonarthit, and the Rangers had slowly backed down. The culprit, Kamun Amsir, had finally handed the stolen food back to the bent old woman, giving the Roi Tri a smile that promised that he would learn how the Thanan Phran worked, or he wouldn’t be around for long.
Now he was chivvying his platoon into trucks to head for the same village, based on reports from the Border Patrol Police that the sensors they had emplaced along the border, with the Americans’ help, had picked up a sizeable group moving toward the border, through the jungle. They weren’t going to the border crossing in Wiang Phang Kham, either. Which meant they were probably drug smugglers.
The United Wa State Army had been running ya ba, methamphetamine pills, into Thailand for years, along with the heroin that the Golden Triangle was world-renowned for. A good part of why the Thanan Phran was on the border was to intercept the UWSA drug shipments.
Of course, Somboon was increasingly aware that some of his Thanan Phran were probably complicit in the same trade. It had been a problem for some time, and had led to some tensions between the Rangers and the BPP. He had his eyes on Kamun. The man seemed like the type.
With the last of the Rangers in the trucks, Somboon climbed into the passenger’s seat of the lead five-ton and waved down the road. The driver, a dwarfish little man with more lines on his face than should have been possible for a twenty-eight-year-old, put the truck in gear with a loud grinding noise, then started it lurching down the road. They had at least one mountain to get over before they got close to Ban Pha Hi, where they could dismount and continue on foot.
It was a misty morning, and the road leading up the ridge was damp. Moisture dripped from the trees, and the driver soon had the windshield wipers going almost constantly. It wasn’t raining, not quite, but the constant mist was soaking into Somboon’s camouflage uniform through the open window.
“We have ISR overhead,” the BPP outpost informed him over the radio strapped into a pouch on his vest. Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance was an American term that had become synonymous with drone coverage. The BPP had a whole bevy of new toys they’d gotten from the Americans, and they were all eager to play with them, the drones not least of all. Somboon craned his neck to look out the window, but couldn’t see anything through the mist or the trees. The buzz of the drone’s motors, if they were even close enough to hear, were also drowned out by the coughing rumble of the truck’s diesel.
He momentarily wondered just what the drone operators thought they were going to see. If he couldn’t see the sky through the fog, how were they supposed to see the ground?
He didn’t waste much mental energy on the question. Maybe they had some kind of science-fictional thermal sights on the drone that could see through the mist. He had more pressing worries, like the thugs mixed into his unit in the backs of the trucks.
The terrain on the Thai-Myanmar border was rough, to say the least. Thick jungle covered every inch of ground in dense vegetation; even the grass was chest-high and hard to wade through where there weren’t trees. As if that wasn’t enough, the highlands were characterized by lots of nearly-sheer slopes, making movement even more difficult.
That should have made it easier to interdict the UWSA drug traffickers trying to come across the border. But the terrain was just as hard on the Thais as it was on the Wa, and the ever-present temptation to just take the bribe and let this shipment through was hard to resist.
Somboon mused on this as the trucks trundled up to the 1149, the road that paralleled the border for miles. It was, simply, the easiest route to any of the border posts, and had the added advantage of having a good view over the border into Myanmar along several stretches. If worst came to worst, they would be able to intercept the traffickers as they crossed the road. It would certainly be easier than thrashing through the dripping jungle after them.
They reached the highway, which was barely wide enough for one vehicle in places, and began the long, winding route toward Ban Pha Hi. The movement and the vibration of the truck was starting to lull Somboon, and he was glad of the slight chill of the mist coming through the window. It helped keep him awake.
“ISR has no visibility,” the radio squawked. “The ground sensors are still showing movement, now only about four hundred meters from the border. They have slowed. Estimate they will reach the border in another hour.”
Of course the drone cannot see through this. Why did you even bother to launch it? Somboon stifled a yawn and checked his HK33. He had to be alert, and not only for the Wa.
The road rose and fell with the ridgeline, overshadowed by towering trees on the left and a tall, red-dirt embankment on the right, the Myanmar side. The embankment was heavily overgrown, and wet leaves and fronds brushed the roof of the truck and the canvas canopy over the troop compartment in the back. The embankment formed a wall that made Somboon feel like there was a barrier between him and the Wa, keeping the enemy farther away, the threat less immediate. He leaned back from a branch that tried to whip through the open window, momentarily letting his worries be limited to not getting slapped in the face by a soaked tree branch. The border crossers were far ahead, anyway.
The embankment fell away to the right, and Somboon could see down the mist-shrouded slopes into Myanmar. Many of the men still referred to the neighboring country as Burma, but Somboon took the dignity of his position as an officer seriously. The official name of the violence-wracked nation to the northwest was Myanmar, so he would call it Myanmar.
He checked the map. They were still over a kilometer from Ban Pha Hi, but he suddenly realized that it made no sense to drive all the way to the village, dismount, and then climb back up to where they were. This was the spot that had the best view of the projected crossing point, so they would probably end up here, anyway.
“Stop the trucks,” he ordered. “We will dismount here and deploy along the road to be ready for the drug traffickers when they come up that slope.” It would be easy. While there was a lot of grass and brush in front of them, they had the high ground, and the forest had cleared away for several hundred meters down the slope. There was no way the Wa were going to be able to get past them.
***
Chungwi Park Byeong-Ho squatted on the edge of the rice paddy, bracing his elbows on his knees, and peered through the binoculars. “They are stopping,” he announced in Mandarin, which had become their lingua franca for this operation. Park’s Mandarin was not great, but he could make himself understood, and he could understand what had been said. Many of his men were not so fluent, which was why he and Jeon Gyeong, his second in command, did most of the talking, either with the Wa or the Kokangs.
“The lead scouts are already well within small arms range of the road.” Gao Bo was a dumpy-looking man, though he still stood somewhat taller than Park. He grinned a gap-toothed, stained grin. “We can attack them now.”
“Wait,” Park said emotionlessly. “Remember the lessons we have taught you. There is a reason you have the mortars up here.”
If anything, Gao’s grin widened. “Yes,” he agreed. “But at the same time, it seems like a waste. We could simply buy the Rangers off, just like last time.”
“Why let them in for a cut that some ‘principled’ officer might decide not to take, when you can simply kill them and get through?” Park countered. “Let this serve as an object lesson. If the Thai Rangers want to live, they look the other way. You are now in charge of the traffic across the border. Not them.”
“And if the Royal Thai Army decides to retaliate?” Gao was momentarily pensive. Park knew he had reason to be. The Thais got a lot of support from the Americans, and had a good claim to being one of the best-equipped, best-trained militaries in Southeast Asia. They were a threat not to be taken lightly.
“The Thai Army has other concerns than one platoon of dead Rangers,” Park said smoothly. It irritated him to be acting as a diplomat as well as a soldier. He knew it was a vital part of his mission, and he was as devoted as any other soldier would be in his position. Decades of training and indoctrination had ensured that. Sometimes duty to the Supreme Leader and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea demanded difficult things of a man. “And the truce with the Rangers has never been all that solid, has it? I recall that it was the Rangers who forced Khun Sa back into the hills, were they not?” Khun Sa had been a Shan warlord, not Wa, but the message was clear enough.
“That is true,” Gao agreed. “So, when do we strike?”
Park peered through the binoculars again. The Ranger trucks had stopped, and the camouflage-clad riflemen were piling out of the canvas-shrouded beds. “Now,” he said, “while they are still bunched up.”
Gao barked a command in Mandarin, and over the crest of the hill behind them, under Kim Ha-Jun’s watchful eye, the mixed mortar crews of Wa and Kokang hastily snatched up 60mm mortar rounds and held them over the mouths of the Type 93 mortars. For reasons of stealth, they had not been able to register the mortars, but Park was confident in Kim’s calculations. The man had been a mortarman for years, and knew the 60mm weapons inside and out.
Kim barked an order, and the mortarmen dropped the rounds, ducking their heads below the tops of the mortar tubes, just as they had trained to do.
The mortars fired with a rapid series of coughing bangs, the shells hurtling skyward over the ridge and the valley beyond. Even from a distance, as he got back behind the binoculars, Park could hear the faint whistle of their passage through the air.
***
Somboon had never heard that sound, even in training. He’d been around mortar fire, on ranges, but he had never heard the quavering whisper of the shells hissing through the air above him, dropping toward his head. He looked up as he swung down to the ground, momentarily confused. He’d heard the distant pops of the mortars, but the significance of the sound hadn’t quite registered.
It never would. Even as some of the more experienced Rangers dove for cover, the first rounds impacted in thunderous gouts of smoke, mud, shredded vegetation, and splintered tree branches. The mortars were off, just slightly; they impacted in a roughly slanted pattern across the road, only two of them landing on target. The rest spent their fury in the grass and bushes of the open meadow on the Myanmar side of the border, or in the trees on the forested Thai side.
Of the two that hit the road, one struck barely half a meter in front of the front fender of Somboon’s truck. He had just shut the cab’s door behind him. There was nothing but air between him and the mortar’s detonation. The concussion pulped his internal organs, at the same time that the fragments flayed the flesh off his shattered bones. There was very little left of Roi Tri Somboon Sirpreecha to hit the roadway, even as the truck’s engine compartment was smashed to wreckage by the blast, the windshield shattering under overpressure and flying shrapnel. The damaged engine seized, and the truck started to burn.
***
Park called out adjustments to Kim, who passed them along to the mortarmen. It took a few moments to dial the mortars, then the next volley was soaring skyward with another hoarse chorus of bangs.
The rounds impacted in a ragged pattern along the road, which was already somewhat obscured by smoke from the burning truck. Black smoke, red mud, and other debris fountained skyward as the mortar rounds struck and detonated, cratering the road and setting at least one more truck on fire. Then Gao was on his radio, ordering the “scouts” forward. They had planned on only using the two barrages of mortar fire, then sending the foot soldiers in.
The UWSA soldiers had been creeping up the slope for over an hour, moving slowly and carefully, dressed in green fatigues and skillfully camouflaged. The UWSA didn’t know precisely what the sensors the Thais had placed along the border were capable of, but they had relied on the drug mules in the rear to occupy most of the BPP’s and Rangers’ attention. So far, it appeared to have worked.
Even as the debris from the mortar barrage pattered down to the ground, the fighters were getting to their feet and rushing up the slope toward the road, firing their Type 56s and Type 81s from the hip. A pair of RPKs opened up from the flanks, raking the edge of the road to cover the attack. From below the crest of the ridge, they did not have the fields of fire they might have, but they were hammering at what they could see, and the already shell-shocked and demoralized Rangers weren’t returning fire.
The leftmost RPK fell silent first. The assault force moved up onto the slightly higher ground, up on top of the same embankment that had felt like an impenetrable wall to Somboon not long before. Thrashing through the thick vegetation, they fired down on the road from the high ground, raking the surviving Rangers with full-auto fire. The right flank of the assaulters moved a little more cautiously as they neared the road, no longer rushing but advancing carefully, firing long bursts at anything that moved.
Park watched the massacre through the binoculars, his face impassive. He was trying to think of pointers he could give the UWSA soldiers afterward. That was why he was there, after all.
The roar and crackle of small arms fire up on the ridge continued for several minutes before dying away to the odd single shot, as the UWSA soldiers finished off the last few wounded Rangers. Park stood up and stretched.
Gao joined him. The taller man looked grim, and Park did not think that the expression had much to do with pity for the Thais who had been slaughtered up on the opposite ridge. Gao was a soldier, even though he was often also a gangster. In fact, he was directly going against the decrees of the United Wa State Party by even being involved in the drug trade at all, though there was a great deal of “condemn in public, profit in private” hypocrisy going on there. The dynamics of the Golden Triangle were murky and fluid, at best; a tangle of drug money, ethnic conflict, Communism, anti-Communism, and the machinations of multiple factions ranging from the People’s Republic of China, to the Myanmar government, to the Thais themselves.
Gao was worried about the backlash from this incident. Park knew it from talking to the man; though he had been careful to avoid too much personal rapport with a group and a militia that had been explicitly anti-Communist in the past, his mission required him to form some sort of bond with the Wa as well as the Kokang. The primary mission might be with the Communist, ethnic-Chinese Kokang in the north, but to use the pipelines into Thailand had required making liaison with the Wa narcotics traffickers.
“Come,” Park said. “I want to get a better look at the kill zone. I might have advice for the next time.”
Gao said nothing, but followed Park as the Chungwi started down the hill.
***
The road was a bloody mess of bodies and burning vehicles.
None of the Thai Rangers had been left alive. The UWSA soldiers had been thorough, though there was still the distant possibility that some of the Thais had escaped into the jungle to the southeast. Park was relatively unconcerned. By the time any possible survivors got word of the massacre back to their headquarters, the Wa and Kokang drug traffickers would be well on their way, and none of the Thais had seen him or his men.
The road was heavily cratered by the mortar strikes, and two of the three five-ton trucks were burning. The third was sitting on its rims, its tires shredded, its windows shattered, steam billowing from its ruptured radiator. The windows of the cab were spattered with blood; the driver had been shot dead while he sat behind the wheel.
“You see?” Park said to Gao. “You no longer have to give up any of the people’s resources to the Thai parasites. More of the money from the drugs can be put toward defending the United Wa State against the paramilitaries and the government troops.”
Gao looked at him, then nodded. While the Communist propaganda was likely falling on deaf ears, the money would be enough of an incentive for him to agree.
Looking down the slope, he could see the actual traffickers, the “mules” with their backpacks full of heroin and ya ba, trudging up the slope. The vegetation and the steepness of the ridge made it rough going, but they were mountain people, and they pushed on.
“Once they are across,” Park said as he turned to Gao. “We should disperse. There will be a response to this attack, and my men and I especially should not be in the vicinity when it gets here. Our continued support in the people’s struggle is greatly dependent on secrecy.”
“You will go back to Kokang?” Gao asked. There was a note of dissatisfaction in his voice, and well there might be. Park and the Kokang Army commander, Cao, had talked him into lending his support for the attack, making the case that it would both allow him to pocket the bribes that would otherwise have been meant for the Thai border guards, terrorize them into leaving the drug corridors alone for a while, and would get his men valuable combat experience with little risk. But now that the attack had gone off without a hitch, he was fully aware that his “allies” were going to disappear into the northern hills, near the Chinese border, leaving him and his United Wa State Army troops to face any retaliation from the Royal Thai Army alone.
“Yes,” Park replied. “It is safer that way. You have nothing to fear, commander,” he continued, trying to sound reassuring. “The Thais will be reticent to cross the border. They are even now trying to build better relations with the Burmese. They will try to coordinate the response with the Burmese government, which will gain you time to disperse your men. After all, do your own superiors in the UWSP know about this operation?”
Gao shook his head. The drug operation was entirely on the side, officially unknown by the United Wa State Party, which had come out to condemn the drug trade in the United Wa State. Of course, there were a few in the Party who knew; Gao knew that they did, since he paid them.
“Then, as long as your men are disciplined enough, or isolated enough, there will be no targets for the imperialists and their puppets to pursue,” Park said. “This is only the beginning, commander. In time, you will be able to make the United Wa State truly secure, despite the short-sighted panderers in the Party who would compromise with the Burmese who oppressed you for so long.”
Park didn’t think about the words. He’d learned many years ago not to. They were the Party Line, and the Party was always right.
Finally, Gao nodded, his gaze far away. After a moment, he nodded again, more surely this time. He was probably imagining what he could do with the money he hadn’t had to pay the Thais with.
Park stifled his disgust. Gao was a thug, despite his patriotic words about fighting for the Wa and the other ethnic Chinese in northern Burma. The UWSA got plenty of support from the Chinese, under the table. Gao was in the narcotics trade simply because he wanted more.
But that was often the price of doing the people’s work, Park mused. A true member of the Party couldn’t let outdated things like scruples interfere.
Turning his back on the devastation along the road, Park started back down the slope, to join up with Kim and the rest of the small contingent he’d brought south. It was time to get back to their base of operations.
November 29, 2017
Signed Copies of “Fury in the Gulf!”
So, this box came today. Little earlier than expected, given Createspace’s lead times these days, but who’s complaining? Signed copies of Brannigan’s Blackhearts #1 – Fury in the Gulf are now available in the store, at americanpraetorians.com
![[image error]](https://americanpraetorians.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/mackenzieslcu.jpg){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://americanpraetorians.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/eso_-_milky_way.jpg){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://americanpraetorians.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/img_0304.jpg){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://americanpraetorians.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/img_1066.jpg){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://americanpraetorians.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/burmesecrossfire_detail.jpg){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://americanpraetorians.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/qbz03_automatic_rifle_20170902.jpg){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://americanpraetorians.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/9-d0bcd0bc_d0bfd0b8d181d182d0bed0bbd0b5d182_d0bcd0b0d0bad0b0d180d0bed0b2d0b0_d181_d0bfd0b0d182d180d0bed0bdd0b0d0bcd0b8.jpg){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://americanpraetorians.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/ak12_4.jpg){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://americanpraetorians.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/pkp_pecheneg_machine_gun_-_raceofheroes-part2-17.jpg){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://americanpraetorians.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/10af378572285a08199a58345c23fa5d.jpg){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://americanpraetorians.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/follbb2.jpg){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://americanpraetorians.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/type_56_rifle.jpg){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://americanpraetorians.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/dcb_shooting_g3_pictures.jpg){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://americanpraetorians.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/bundeswehrmg3.jpg){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://americanpraetorians.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/pexels-photo-265152.jpeg){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://americanpraetorians.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/burmesecrossfire_elc.jpg){kind=link}
![[image error]](https://americanpraetorians.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/img_1037.jpg){kind=link}