Peter Nealen's Blog, page 28

Status Update

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So, a week and a half after Fury in the Gulf‘s release, I see I still have some learning to do when it comes to making Amazon’s algorithm sit up and do tricks.  Working on it.  There might be a new push just before launching the pre-order for Brannigan’s Blackhearts #2 – Burmese Crossfire next month.

As for Burmese Crossfire, it still has one editing pass to go, plus I have to get the preview for Enemy Unidentified done to put in the back.

As I’ve been thinking about Enemy Unidentified and the later books in the series, there might be some adjustment in the planned schedule.  There seems to be more of an arc forming in my head, contrary to the original idea for the series.  (I’ve already established some continuity with characters–no, not everybody’s going to survive–so this won’t be quite “’60s TV show episodic.”)

With the series sitting where it is, I’m adjusting to an every-sixty-days schedule for releases.  This will allow me to work on a couple of other projects, one of which has already been started.  Not going to say too much about ’em yet, since they won’t be launching for a little while (February at the earliest), but I will say that I’m going to be genre-jumping.  One’s military space opera, and the other will be heroic fantasy.  More to come later.

Now back to the word mines.  Thanksgiving weekend wasn’t especially productive, not that I’m complaining.

We Are Across the Line of Departure

Brannigan’s Blackhearts have commenced operations.  Fury in the Gulf went live at midnight last night.

Iranian Fanatics, American Hostages…And The Clock Is Ticking!

The tiny island kingdom of Khadarkh, strategically placed in the Persian Gulf, has swung back and forth between the Saudi and Iranian orbits for years. But when a mysterious force seizes control of the island, executes the tiny Khadarkhi Army, and takes any Americans they can find hostage, it appears that Khadarkh will be an Iranian puppet for the foreseeable future.

The politicians are afraid of risking the hostages. And as the Western powers dither, some people start to look for another solution. They find that solution in John Brannigan.

Brannigan already has a rep for pulling off the impossible, through a combination of audacity, ruthlessness, and ferocious loyalty to his men. His military service is over, but now he will pick up a rifle again, putting together a squad of mercenaries to land on Khadarkh and rescue the hostages, in a hail of bullets and swift, sharp violence.

Brannigan’s Blackhearts are about to strike.

“Fury in the Gulf” is the first in a new Action Adventure series by Peter Nealen.

“Peter writes brutal, believable action at a breakneck pace that will keep you turning pages.” – Larry Correia, NYT Bestselling Author.

“Fury in the Gulf” Pre-order

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Brannigan’s Blackhearts #1 – Fury in the Gulf is up for Kindle pre-order on Amazon.  (Paperback is still going to have to wait until release day.)

It’s actually been up for a couple of weeks now.  I haven’t said anything about it before now because I’ve been attempting to do something similar to what Chris Fox talks about in this video, attempting to get more organic growth and exposure with Amazon Marketing Services.  Of course, the whole Brannigan’s Bastards vs Brannigan’s Blackhearts fiasco put me back by a week, so I’m not seeing anything like the numbers Chris talks about in that video.  (Admittedly, I’m starting to wonder how much that works with Action Adventure vs Science Fiction & Fantasy.)

The tiny island kingdom of Khadarkh, strategically placed in the Persian Gulf, has swung back and forth between the Saudi and Iranian orbits for years. But when a mysterious force seizes control of the island, executes the tiny Khadarkhi Army, and takes any Americans they can find hostage, it appears that Khadarkh will be an Iranian puppet for the foreseeable future.

The politicians are afraid of risking the hostages. And as the Western powers dither, some people start to look for another solution. They find that solution in John Brannigan.

Brannigan already has a rep for pulling off the impossible, through a combination of audacity, ruthlessness, and ferocious loyalty to his men. His military service is over, but now he will pick up a rifle again, putting together a squad of mercenaries to land on Khadarkh and rescue the hostages, in a hail of bullets and swift, sharp violence.

Brannigan’s Blackhearts are about to strike.

It’s Official

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Change of Plans

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So, I’ve been working on setting up Fury in the Gulf, and have run into a couple of snags.  Part of the entire plan to begin with was to utilize Amazon Marketing Services extensively, and Facebook ads to a lesser extent, to spread the readership wider.  However, I seem to have run afoul of both entities’ ad guidelines in the process.

While the messages I’ve gotten have been extremely vague and non-commital, it appears that the title Brannigan’s Bastards isn’t passing one of their filters for “vulgar and/or profane language.”  Considering that it’s the series’ title, this presents a problem.

Now, I’ve got two possible courses of action here.  I can either say, “Screw it, drive on,” and try to continue the current, mostly word of mouth model, keeping everything as-is.  Or, I can attempt to re-brand the entire series, so that it gets past the filters and can actually get to readers who might not have heard of my stuff before.

Now, trying to think of a different title was a problem.  Part of the initial inspiration for Brannigan’s Bastards as a series title was the old Marine Black Sheep Squadron, which the pilots initially wanted to call “Boyington’s Bastards.”  There was also an old, WWII pulp adventure series entitled “The Rat Bastards.”  (Apparently, that would not be allowed today.)  “Misfits” would be a fitting replacement for “Bastards,” but “Brannigan’s Misfits” just doesn’t have the same punch.  “Mitchell’s Misfits” might work, but it would mean completely renaming the lead character.

However, I had an idea.  Brannigan’s Blackhearts could still work, being close in sound, similar in meaning and punch, and wouldn’t require a great deal of tweaking in the files already set.  And, it’s something of a callback to an old 1st Recon Bn callsign from ’03-’04.

I’d like to hear your thoughts, readers.  How does Brannigan’s Blackhearts sound?

Action Adventure vs Techno-Thriller

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What’s the difference?

In reality, less than one might think.

In general, I think, the “Action Adventure” genre, as exemplified (and coined) by Don Pendleton’s Executioner series, which spawned multiple spinoffs and inspired others (there is actually a flashback in SOBs #3, Butchers of Eden, in which Col. Barrabas remembers a night fighting back to back in Vietnam with Sgt. Mack Bolan), has generally been looked down upon as cheap, poorly-done “pulp,” with even less merit than comic books.  “Techno-thrillers,” ostensibly started by Tom Clancy with The Hunt for Red October, are considered better quality and more realistic, though still sneered at by the literati (I had a high-school English teacher speak dismissively of Clancy as “pop-lit.”).

While the quality of the Gold Eagle (and Pinnacle before them) books was often wildly variable, I would argue that Action Adventure and the “Techno-Thriller” are the exact same genre.  Techno-Thrillers do tend to focus more on the “system,” i.e., the protagonists are usually active duty military and/or members of the intelligence community (and politicians, as well).  The stories usually classed as “Action Adventure” tend to star more of a rogues gallery of spies, mercenaries, soldiers, and vigilantes.  As I’ve found in my own work, using mercs tends to open up story possibilities, as the author–and the protagonist–can have fewer rules and less oversight to worry about.

While many have long sneered at the quality of the shorter, quicker-paced paperbacks of The Executioner or Phoenix Force, the length of the story and the prestige of the publisher/author have little to do with the realism or quality of the story within.  While the Action Adventure paperbacks had to keep a higher pace (I believe Gold Eagle had pretty stringent word-count limits), and therefore had less space for musing on the background, just what I’ve read of the SOBs series so far has shown a surprising level of insight into the geopolitics of the time they were written.  From the tribal mess of Africa to the repercussions of the Iranian Revolution, to the ethnic and sectarian divisions of Sri Lanka, real-world situations inform the action, and the situations are (at least in some cases) no more outlandish than Tom Clancy having the US mil defeat the People’s Liberation Army soundly in less than 96 hours through the Power Of Technology.

The mainstream Techno-Thrillers can also be pretty bad on the realism front.  One of the Clancy’s Ghost stories ended up tossed across the room when the former SEAL, ostensibly working as a paramilitary operations officer for the CIA, who had already gone into a PTSD fugue (forgetting where he was and what he was doing because he was sad about losing a buddy in action) during a firefight, no less than three times, proceeded to leap through the air, firing a suppressed Glock in each hand, with friendlies downrange.

When boiled down, the Techno-Thriller and the Action Adventure novel have more in common than they do differences.  The Action Adventure novel just generally has to be shorter and faster, but it can be just as realistic as its often more bloated cousin (or just as unrealistic, as the case may be).

“Fury in the Gulf” Is Coming

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We have a cover, and a release date.  Brannigan’s Bastards #1 – Fury in the Gulf, will be out November 15.

 

Iranian Fanatics, American Hostages…And The Clock Is Ticking!

The tiny island kingdom of Khadarkh, strategically placed in the Persian Gulf, has swung back and forth between the Saudi and Iranian orbits for years. But when a mysterious force seizes control of the island, executes the tiny Khadarkhi Army, and takes any Americans they can find hostage, it appears that Khadarkh will be an Iranian puppet for the foreseeable future.

The politicians are afraid of risking the hostages. And as the Western powers dither, some people start to look for another solution. They find that solution in John Brannigan.

Brannigan already has a rep for pulling off the impossible, through a combination of audacity, ruthlessness, and ferocious loyalty to his men. His military service is over, but now he will pick up a rifle again, putting together a squad of mercenaries to land on Khadarkh and rescue the hostages, in a hail of bullets and swift, sharp violence.

Brannigan’s Bastards are about to strike.

Kevin Granzow, the guy who did the new Kill Yuan cover, is doing the Brannigan’s Bastards covers.  As this series owes a bit to the old-school action adventure paperbacks of Gold Eagle and Pinnacle in the ’70s and ’80s, we’re going with a slightly similar style.

The Colonel Has A Plan Part 3

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They hadn’t gone far when Lewis was tugging on Brannigan’s sleeve.  “Sir, we just got a message from Team Two,” he yelled in the Colonel’s ear.  “They are mission complete, but are pinned down under fire, and cut off from the beach.”

Brannigan glanced forward, where the wounded Lance Corporal Clark was lying on the deck.  Time was short, but he had a responsibility to those boys down on the ground, too.  He started working his way forward, stepping over and past knees, boots, M27s, and two LSATs, carefully moving around Clark’s supine form, until he got to the cockpit.

“We need to divert to Shilka Position Two,” he shouted to the pilot.  “Some of my boys are in trouble, and need some support.”

“This ain’t a gunship, sir, and we’ve got a casualty aboard,” the copilot protested.

“Don’t try to bullshit me, son,” Brannigan replied.  “We’ve got a minigun and a 240 mounted for a reason, and it’s more than that team on the ground has.  Take us in.”  He stayed where he was, but motioned for Lewis to hand him the handset, cursing the multiple tac frequencies that went along with combined arms warfare.  The recon teams were on one channel, the Battalion Combat Team was on another, and the birds were on a third.  And that was after he’d ranted and raved to simplify matters as much as possible.

Lewis handed him the handset and he flipped his right-hand Peltor headpiece out of the way, pressing the black plastic to his ear.  “Tiburon Two, this is Kodiak Six,” he called.

The answering radio call came after a moment’s delay.  He could hear the rattle of gunfire in the background.  “Kodiak Six, Tiburon Two,” Staff Sergeant Holmes replied.

“We are inbound to your position with air support, Tiburon Two,” Brannigan said.  “ETA two mikes.  Give me a sitrep and a position.  We’re going to lay waste, and I don’t want you boys getting burned down by accident.”

“Roger, Six,” Holmes answered.  The man’s voice was calm and professional, but there was an undercurrent of relief in it.  “We are five hundred meters east of the burning Shilka, and one hundred meters south of the coast road.  We are taking fire from dismounts and a pair of technicals that are still on the road, between us and our BLS.”  The Boat Landing Site would have been where their Zodiac was concealed.  “Our position is marked by IR strobes.”

The Ospreys were coming up on the beach fast.  Leaning forward and peering through the windscreen, Brannigan could just make out the strobes, along with the flickering muzzle flashes coming from the technicals ahead.  “Good copy, Tiburon Two,” he replied.  “We’ve got you.  Stand by.”

He pointed.  “Technicals and dismounts on the road,” he told the Osprey’s crew.  “The team is marked with strobes.  Kill everything that ain’t the team.”  He switched his personal radio to the air freq and repeated the instructions.  If the Vipers still had any 20mm left, this was the time.

The pilot acknowledged, and brought the Osprey into a wide, sweeping turn, aiming to come in on the road from the west.  Brannigan braced himself in the cockpit doorway, bending his knees to maintain his balance against the maneuver.  A moment later, the pilot leveled off, and bore down on the road and the dimly visible shapes of the Toyota pickup trucks, flame still stabbing from the machineguns mounted in the beds.

The underslung GAU-17 7.62mm minigun opened up with a deep, growling buzz.  What looked like a solid line of red light reached out from the Osprey’s underbelly and tore a ravening line of destruction down the coast road.  The closest technical exploded under the hammering impact of that stream of high-velocity metal.  A moment later, the second truck suffered the same fate.  The driver hadn’t had time to process the incoming threat enough to even attempt to evade.

Then they were past, and the pilot was pulling for some altitude.  The rain of death from the sky hadn’t ended, though, because Trash Hauler One-Two was coming in right behind, sowing more raving, fiery death among the men on foot who were now scattering and trying to find cover after their heavy support had suddenly blown up.

The Remington Vipers swooped in next, hammering away with their 20mms, doubtless cursing the Colonel, the Osprey drivers, and anyone else who had poached what they considered their rightful targets.  After another minute, there wasn’t much shooting going on, because there wasn’t much moving down there anymore.

“Tiburon Two, Kodiak Six,” Brannigan called.  “Status?”

“Kodiak Six, Tiburon Two,” Holmes answered.  “If there’s anybody still alive up there, they won’t be for much longer.  Targets are all down, burning, or suppressed.”

“Good copy.  We’ll run racetracks overhead until you boys can get to the beach and out on the water.  Any friendly casualties?”

“A couple of us got trimmed, Six, but we’ll live,” Holmes replied.  “Thanks for the assist.  We’ll see you back on ship.  We are Oscar Mike.”

“All of my boys come home, Tiburon Two,” Brannigan said.  “Them’s the rules.”

Below, the six Recon Marines got up and started moving toward the beach, dark figures encrusted with sand and dust, visible from above only by the flashing IR strobes on their shoulders.

 

It took a few minutes for the Marines to get to the beach, get their Zodiac turned around, and launch.  The Vipers, nearly out of ammo and getting low on fuel, headed back toward the Boxer.  Brannigan kept the Ospreys circling, determined to make sure that the Recon team got well offshore before the motorized column of government troops coming down the coast road could get too close.  Once the boat was a good hundred yards off the beach, he finally gave the signal for all aircraft to return to base.

He let out a deep breath.  That could have gone so much worse.

 

“This is a fucking disaster, Colonel.”

Brannigan sat back in his chair and eyed General Mark Van Zandt, whose angry face was filling the VTC screen.  Van Zandt was actually five years younger than Brannigan, but the two men had gone different routes.  Van Zandt had entered the Marine Corps as a 2nd Lieutenant.  Brannigan had been a Gunnery Sergeant before he’d gone to OCS.

“You gave me orders to secure the hostages and get them out of the country, sir,” Brannigan said evenly.  “I accomplished the mission, with only three Marines wounded, and only one of those seriously.  So, kindly explain to me how this is a ‘disaster.’”

“Your men killed over two hundred National Army troops, Colonel,” Van Zandt snarled.  “Government troops were strictly off-limits in the Rules of Engagement.  President Haroun has already lodged formal diplomatic protests, and is bringing a complaint to the United Nations.  And with that many corpses to show, it’s not something we can pass off as GaM propaganda.”

“ROE included ‘hostile act/hostile intent,’ sir,” Brannigan pointed out.  “And those government troops were engaged in direct support of the Gama’a al-Mujahidin forces.  And you know it just as well as I do.”  He stabbed a finger at the screen, momentarily failing to give a damn that it could be construed as insubordination.  “The only reason for those Shilkas to have been sited where they were was to shoot down any force attempting to rescue the hostages.  And if that wasn’t enough, have President Haroun explain why there was at least a company of government troops in the exact same village where the hostages were being held, apparently doing nothing until we moved in to rescue those hostages, at which point they opened fire on us.”

“The word we are getting from the President’s office is that they were moving into position to attempt a rescue at dawn,” Van Zandt said.  When Brannigan raised an incredulous eyebrow, the General’s expression didn’t change.  “This has created a major diplomatic incident, Colonel.  I’ll be honest with you.  The fact that you succeeded in rescuing the hostages intact is the only reason that Washington is not demanding that you be relieved for cause.”

That, and the fact that the MEU’s cruise is almost over, and it would be much less hassle to just let us head home and shit-can me afterward.  He also didn’t really buy the “major diplomatic incident” nonsense, either.  Haroun was a big fish in a very, very small pond, nothing more.  This was just the excuse being used by people who simply wanted him gone.

“I can’t guarantee that there won’t be later legal repercussions, Colonel,” Van Zandt said officiously.  “But I’ve been assured that you will be allowed to retire, after you have handed command over to Colonel Linkous.”

They don’t want it to go public.  A court-martial would turn into a circus.  I’ve got too many witnesses, too many Marines who saw what was really happening on the ground, who saw the National Army defending the GaM terrorists on the ground.  The narrative would fall apart if they let us have our day in court.

Brannigan briefly considered fighting it, demanding a court-martial.  It was his right, after all, under the UCMJ.  Sure, it would turn into a shit-show.  He had too many political enemies, especially among several younger men with stars on their collars.  But he suddenly found that he was tired.  Until one more thought occurred to him.

“Fine, sir, I get the message,” he said.  “But I’ll only go quietly under one condition.”

“You’re not exactly in a position to make demands, Brannigan,” Van Zandt warned.

“Bullshit,” Brannigan snapped.  “You just said it yourself, Headquarters Marine Corps doesn’t want this to really go public.”  Which probably wasn’t entirely fair.  It was more likely Congress that didn’t want it to go public.  There were still a few warriors left at HQMC.  “So fine.  I’ll retire.  On the condition that none of my Marines gets scapegoated for dead National Army troops defending GaM terrorists.”

Van Zandt glared at him for a moment.  “That’s a rather nasty veiled accusation, Brannigan,” he said.

“Oh, was it too veiled?” Brannigan replied, finally losing his patience.  “Fine.  I’ll make it explicit.  I will not be party to scapegoating enlisted men and junior officers ‘for the reputation of the Corps.’  If there has to be a sacrificial lamb, it’s going to be me, because I gave the orders, and I led the assault on the ground.  Is that explicit enough?”

Van Zandt stared at him from the screen for a moment, before finally putting his head in his hand.  “Damn it, Brannigan, why do you have to be so difficult about this?”

Because you gave me a mission along with ROEs that made that mission impossible, sir.

“I mean, seriously?” Van Zandt continued, jerking his head up to glare out of the screen.  “What the hell were you doing on the ground in the first place?  That’s not the place for a MEU commander.”

“Do you remember the OCS motto, sir?” Brannigan asked.  He knew Van Zandt had been an ROTC cadet, rather than an Annapolis ring-knocker.  “It says, ‘Lead By Example.’  Tell me, how the hell was I supposed to do that from an air-conditioned COC, fifty miles from the action?”

“I am well aware of your complaints about recent Marine Corps leadership procedures,” Van Zandt said tiredly, “which is another reason you’re being allowed to retire, instead of turning this into a media circus.”  He sighed.  “Fine.  We’ll concoct some story about bad intel, unfortunate accidents, etc., etc.  State’s going to hate it, but we’ll make it work.  Is that enough?  Will that get you to agree to retire, and end this quietly?”  And get out of my hair?  The last was unspoken, but Brannigan picked up on it anyway.

For a long moment, Brannigan just stared at the image of his superior officer.  He and Van Zandt had known each other for a long time, and while they had never been friends, they had never exactly been enemies, either.  It still remained that Van Zandt was a careerist, always keeping his own reputation and advancement in mind, while Brannigan was still in uniform for the same reason that he had signed up twenty-three years before.  He was a warrior.  Always had been, always would be.  He ultimately cared far less about his own career than he did about the fight, and his Marines.

But along with that warrior ethos came a strict sense of honor, one that he had felt was rarer and rarer in the modern officer corps.  And the idea of concocting such a lie to cover the corrupt President Haroun’s ass for supporting terrorists stuck in his craw.

But at this point, what am I going to do about it?  If I go public, they’ll do whatever they need to do to shut me down.  Either way, my career is over.

“Fine, sir, you win,” he said heavily.  “Once we return Stateside, and I pass command on, I’ll retire.  No news conferences, no trial, no memoirs.  I’ll quietly disappear, and the diplomats can sweep all of this under the rug, where it won’t interfere with their neat, tidy theories about who are the good guys and who are the bad guys in this part of the world.”

Van Zandt didn’t comment on Brannigan’s final, bitter pronouncement.  He had what he needed.  “Glad to hear it, Colonel,” he said brusquely.  “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry that it had to come to this.”

No, you’re not.  The VTC ended.

Brannigan sat back in the chair and stared at the overhead for a moment.  Just like that, twenty-three years was coming to an end.

Now what the hell am I going to do with myself?

***

Thus ends Brannigan’s Bastards #0 – The Colonel Has A Plan.  The story will continue in Brannigan’s Bastards #1 – Fury in the Gulf, coming to Kindle and Paperback in November.

Soldiers of Barrabas #2 The Plains of Fire

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This was my first SOBs novel.  And at the time, I was simply interested in the premise.  Iran goes nuclear.  It was a pretty high-profile concern a few years ago, and has been simmering in the background ever since.  There was even a documentary made about it, Iranium.  With Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an avowed “Twelver” as President of Iran, the likelihood of Iranian nukes soon being used against the US and Israel seemed to be pretty high.  So imagine my curiosity when I found out that an obscure, 1984 Gold Eagle pulp mercenary story had been written about just that: stopping Iran from launching a nuclear attack.

Somewhat to my surprise, it turned out to be a tight, fast-paced, actually reasonably realistic action story.  There isn’t a lot of intrigue involved; it’s mainly just getting the mission, getting in, doing the mission despite setbacks, and getting out.

Now, I’d read a couple of newer Stony Man titles before this, and immediately found that SOBs, rather than the “pseudo-SOF” setup of Stony Man, was a bit more on the grittier side of the spectrum.  While it’s not as evident as it turned out to be in the first book, travel and logistics being facilitated through the global underground was still very much a factor in The Plains of Fire.  The SOBs are supposed to be a dirty-tricks squad, deniably contracted by Walker Jessup, the mammoth CIA officer and “fixer” first introduced in Vietnam in The Barrabas Run.  While he gets the funding from an unnamed Senator (who appears to be getting set up to be a villain farther along in the series), all of the prep, insert, and extract has to be done under the radar.

The actual operation is fairly straightforward, with most of the obstacles simply being resistance from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, here mostly referred to by their Persian name, the Pasdaran.  The Iranian commander, Razod, does throw a bit of a wrench in the works, though I won’t say exactly how.  It’s not a twist that you won’t see coming, but the writer (Jack Hild on the cover, but Jack Hild was a house name who never actually existed; Alan Philipson actually wrote this one) does a good job of leveraging it as the fog of war making a relatively straightforward op far more complicated.

While everyone made it out of Africa in The Barrabas Run, the SOBs are not quite so lucky in this one.  While every Stony Man title I’ve read has had the same team of characters, it’s already evident this early in the series that nobody except maybe Barrabas himself is safe.

The gun porn this time around is far better than in The Barrabas Run.  None of the bizarre nonexistent firearms or calibers are present, though it might initially seem so; the Iranians are using HK 32 rifles.  On some research, while often considered to be a myth, there actually were some HK 32s, G3s chambered for 7.62×39, built.  The SOBs are carrying a combination of suppressed Uzis, XM-177s, M79s, and M21s.

Overall, it’s fast, furious, packed with action that never gets cartoony, and bears a striking resemblance in many ways to similar tales that might have been written only a couple of years ago, even though it’s 33 years old.

The Colonel Has A Plan Part 2

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“Sir?  We just got a message from Team One.  ‘Macallan.’”  Corporal Jamie Lewis stopped and listened.  It had to be rough, trying to hear the radio over the noise of the Osprey’s idling props.  “Wait,” he said.  “There’s Team Three.  ‘Buffalo Trace.’”

Brannigan resisted the urge to grin.  Leave it to Marines to make all of their brevity codes the names of either alcohol, sports teams, or porn stars.  “Any word from Team Two?”

“No, sir,” Lewis replied, the handset pressed against his ear.  “Still nothing.”

Brannigan nodded, and thought for a moment.  Staff Sergeant Holmes would do the job if he could.  But the enemy was also undoubtedly alerted now, with two of the Shilkas having gone up in smoke.  “Screw it,” he decided.  He reached forward, tapped the pilot on the shoulder, and gave him a thumbs-up.  Then he keyed his own radio, which was on the Battalion Tac channel.

“All Kodiak units, this is Kodiak Six,” he called.  “Crazy Horse.  I say again, Crazy Horse.”  The odds of anyone listening in on a SINCGARS channel, out in the middle of the Red Sea, were minimal, but Brannigan hadn’t gotten to where he was by being sloppy.  He’d use the brevity codes as they’d planned.  They used less time, anyway.  In planning, he’d set codes for each contingency; “Crazy Horse” meant that the two outer AA sites had been neutralized, and the center one was either still active or unknown.  The pilots knew the course to fly in that case.

Seconds later, the Osprey pilot was pulling up and away from the Boxer, the LHA’s lights dwindling behind and below them in the early morning darkness on the sea.  The rotors took a moment to transition from vertical to forward flight, and then they were howling across the water, heading toward the dark line of the coast ahead.

The ten Ospreys formed up in a flying wedge, heading for the coast.  They weren’t moving as fast as they could have; the Osprey’s cruising speed is around 240 knots, and the raid force was holding to about 160.  That was so that they didn’t outrun the six AH-1Z Vipers that were going to provide the bulk of their air support.  The Ospreys had GAU-17 miniguns slung underneath them, but Brannigan wanted the heavier rockets and 20mm cannons the Vipers could provide.

It still only took moments before they were “feet dry” over the shore, roaring over the Coast Road.  Brannigan looked out one of the side portholes and saw the blazing pyre on the shoreline that only minutes before had been a ZSU-23-4.  “Good job, boys,” he muttered, too quietly for any of the Marines around him to hear over the racket of the Osprey’s engines.

The crew chief got his attention.  “Five minutes!” he yelled in the Colonel’s ear.  Brannigan nodded, turning back toward the rear of the aircraft.

“Five minutes!” he bellowed, holding up one gloved hand, his fingers spread.  He started working his way back toward the ramp.

“One minute!”  The ramp started to lower.  In his NVGs, he could see the dark dots of the acacia trees flying by underneath them, seemingly close enough to reach out and touch.  They were coming in low and fast, just as he’d asked the pilots.  The Ospreys were beginning to slow, and the Vipers darted ahead.  Faint flashes lit up the desert as the attack helicopters made their first runs on the targets picked out as probable defensive positions the day before.

“Thirty seconds!”  The first tin-roofed cinder-block houses were beginning to flash past beneath them, now less than fifty feet under the Osprey’s belly.  Out over the ramp, Brannigan could see the dark, ominous shapes of Dash Seven, Eight, Nine, and Ten spreading out, moving to the cordon positions around the village.

Then they were on target.

The target compound consisted of little more than a long, two-story, cinder-block building set inside a six-foot outer stone wall.  Three of the ten Ospreys swooped in on the compound; Brannigan’s bird headed to the roof, while the other two hovered over the courtyard, throwing fast-ropes off their ramps.

Brannigan, true to his word, was the first man off.  The Osprey had not actually set down on the roof, so he had a three-foot drop, but he landed smoothly, without embarrassing himself by sprawling on the roof, bending his knees to cushion the impact.  All the gear made him top-heavy, but he’d concentrated.  It wouldn’t do for the boys to see the Old Man do a face-plant right off the bird. Brannigan stepped out of the way of the ramp, bringing his M4 up.

Just as he did, the GaM react force apparently decided that that was a good time to run to the roof to try to repel the attackers.

Half a dozen men in white cotton trousers and sleeveless shirts, equipped with an assortment of old, ratty AK chest rigs alongside a few newer setups, carrying an equally rag-tag collection of G3s, AKs, and an RPG, ran onto the flat roof, coming out of the single door that led below.

Brannigan didn’t hesitate, but snapped his rifle up, put the IR laser on the first man’s chest, and squeezed the trigger.  The AK-wielding terrorist, who was gawking at the massive tilt-rotor hovering just overhead, its twin propellers limned with static discharge in the dust, took the first round standing up.  He was apparently too surprised to even realize he’d been shot.

Brannigan’s next five rounds, which walked up the man’s chest and into his skull in the space of less than a second, laid him out.  His rifle’s suppressor hid the muzzle flash, and reduced the reports to muted pops, all but completely drowned out by the Osprey’s roar.

Brannigan pressed forward, leaning into his rifle, swiftly transitioning to the man with the RPG, knowing the threat that he posed to the bird and every Marine in the two companies on the raid.  Another series of four fast shots smashed the man off his feet, the last one going through his eyeball from about ten feet.

By then, the first infantry Marines off the bird behind Colonel Brannigan had cut down the others in a crackling storm of fire.

With Santelli, being the last man, having just jumped off the bird, the pilot pulled pitch and headed for a holding pattern above.  Brannigan waved briefly, then got to work.

Though there wasn’t much for him to do, not at that point.  The village wasn’t appreciably different from the models they’d built based on the overhead imagery, and the companies, platoons, and squads all had their jobs to do.  As Brannigan stepped out of the way, two squads from First Platoon, Charlie Company, flowed through the door, stepping over the bodies along the way.  At least one corpse got an insurance round to the head as the Marines went past.

With the other squad spreading out on the roof, including the four machine gunners from Weapons Company, Brannigan moved to join Santelli and Lewis near the center of the roof.  Now came the hard part.  He had to hold what he had and coordinate the rest of the raid, as much as it needed to be coordinated.

Not for the first time, he regretted not being down below, in the stack, especially as the booms of flashbangs rattled the building, followed by the rapid snaps of suppressed M27s, and the muffled shouts of, “Clear!”  But that wasn’t his job anymore, as much as it pained him.  It hadn’t been for a long time.  So he concentrated on doing his job, standing up to get a better view of the overall situation, ready to drop flat if a sniper took a shot at him.

The village was in chaos.  Several fires were burning from the Viper strikes, and there was shouting and weapons fire coming from all directions.  In the distance, the Ospreys circled, mostly above the still-prowling Vipers.  The attack helos were still staying low, searching for something, anything, to shoot.

Marine Viper pilots are almost as aggressive as the infantrymen.

A sudden storm of unsuppressed fire roared out from the southeast edge of town.  It sounded like rifles and at least one machinegun.  A Viper immediately buzzed over, but hung back until somebody down below called it in.  A moment later, the hammering of the helo’s 20mm silenced the machinegun, though sporadic rifle fire continued for nearly a minute before being drowned by a ripping, crackling snarl of suppressed Marine rifle fire.

“Kodiak Six, this is Kokanee Two-Five,” the familiar voice of Staff Sergeant Claude Desmond came over the radio.

“Send it, Kokanee Two-Five,” Brannigan replied immediately.

“Six, we’ve just cleared out a pocket of resistance in a house on the southern edge of the village,” Desmond reported.  “Be advised, they were all wearing National Army uniforms, and carrying what looks like issued weapons.  And they had a radio.”

“Do you know if they got a message off?” Brannigan asked, and wanted to kick himself as soon as the words left his mouth.  Of course they got a damned message off.  They had plenty of time.

“Unknown, Six, but my guess would be that it’s likely,” Desmond replied diplomatically.

“Copy,” Brannigan said, keeping the frustration out of his voice.  “Any survivors?”

“Negative, Six,” was the unsympathetic reply.  “All gomers KIA.”

“Roger.”  He glanced back toward the door leading down into the target building.  Hopefully First Platoon found the hostages soon.  While he had every confidence that his Marines would be able to fight off the best that the National Army could send at them, he wanted to get the hostages out and get back to the Boxer.  That was the mission.  A lot of the grunts, particularly the younger guys, would be disappointed at missing a fight that big, but they didn’t know how far Brannigan had already stuck his neck out just to get them this far.

He scanned around again, looking for any sign of a counterattack forming that he might have to divert men to deal with.  As he did, he stopped suddenly, his gaze fixed on the hills to the south of the village.  He reached up and twisted his radio knob to the air freq.

“Remington Four-Three, Kodiak Six,” he called, addressing the lead Viper pilot.  “Can you make a pass over that hill to the south of the ville, the tallest point?  Tell me if you see anything?”

“Roger, Kodiak Six,” the pilot replied, “no problem.”  A moment later, one of the AH-1Zs banked sharply away from the village and climbed a couple hundred feet, heading for the looming, black hulk of the hill.

A moment later, two things happened at once.  A bullet snapped past Brannigan’s head, close enough that he could feel the shockwave on his cheek, even as he instinctively ducked, dropping to a low knee on the roof.  At the same instant, something streaked up from that same hill, toward Remington Four-Three.

“Kodiak Six, Remington Four-Three!” the pilot barked over the radio.  “Be advised, we have just taken RPG fire from that hill!  Count at least fifty foot-mobiles, and what looks like a camp on the far side of the hill.”

Brannigan’s mouth thinned into a tight smile.  Unless they had more surprises up their sleeves, fifty men on foot were going to be easy prey for his Marines, provided the air support left any of them for the grunts.

“Remington Four-Three, Kodiak Six.  You are weapons hot,” he sent, though he knew he really shouldn’t have to.  They’d taken fire, and therefore were entirely justified in returning it.

The Viper pilot didn’t bother to reply.  His only acknowledgement was the ripping roar of his 20mm, brilliant tracers stabbing down at the darkened hillside.  A moment later, his Dash-Two, Remington Four-Four, swooped in low for another gun run, sowing devastation among the fighters now scattering across the hillside.

But whoever had taken a shot at Brannigan wasn’t among them.  He suddenly felt a vicious blow to the side of his helmet, and ducked lower.  “Sniper!” he bellowed, making sure all the Marines on the roof could hear him.  “Everybody get your asses down!”

He quickly high-crawled to the edge of the roof, intending to get an eye over the parapet and try to localize the sniper, either to take a shot himself, or call in air.  The Vipers had to be getting close to the end of their ammo, but the Ospreys’ GAUs hadn’t fired a round yet.  Two of the machinegunners were already hosing down likely hiding places in the nearby buildings, replying to the sniper fire with ripping roars of fire from their LSATs.

Before Brannigan could reach the edge of the roof, Santelli was hitting him on the leg.  “Sergeant Vasquez has secured the hostages!” the Sergeant Major yelled.  “He’s coming up for pickup!”

As Brannigan turned to acknowledge, the first of the First Platoon Marines came out of the door and back onto the rooftop.

And the sniper got lucky.

The Marine—Brannigan couldn’t quite see who it was—staggered as the crack of the shot sounded nearby, barely audible in a momentary pause in the machinegun fire.  Then he dropped to the roof.

“Get down!” Brannigan bellowed at the Marines coming up the stairs.  “Sniper!”

He wanted to run to help the Marine, and spared half a second to pray, sincerely and intensely, that the man wasn’t dead.  But the best thing he could do at that point was do what he could to eliminate that sniper.  Because now he had a direction.

Easing his NVGs above the parapet that encircled the roof, he scanned the surrounding village.  The shot had come from the southwest, not the hill to the south, which the Vipers were still working over in a snarling storm of fire, dust, and smoke.  And the nearest high ground to the southwest was a good klick away.  It was possible, but he doubted any of the local shooters were that good.  So he turned his attention to the buildings, looking for the ones that his machingunners hadn’t already worked over.

There.  Just before another bullet cracked overhead, he caught the flash in the darkened window of a taller building, right on the outskirts of the village.  His M4 might reach that far, but he doubted it, especially in the dark.  And he doubted that the M27s would do much better.  The LSATs could hit it, but he had a better idea.  He was still on the air frequency, so he keyed the radio.

“Remington Four-One, Kodiak Six,” he called.  “I have a target.”  He spared a glance at the compass affixed to his watchband.  “From my position, one-nine-seven degrees, eight hundred meters, three-story building.”

“Good copy, Kodiak Six,” the pilot chirped.  Whoever was flying Four-One sounded like a high-school kid.  “We’ll take care of it.”

With a deep, snarling buzz, the two Vipers banked in and proceeded to pound away at the target building with the last of their rockets, following up with 20mm gun runs.  By the time the second run had finished, the entire front of the building had collapsed in a cloud of dust, obscuring the wreckage in the darkness.

There was no more sniper fire.

“Kodiak Six, this is Trash Hauler One-One,” the lead Osprey pilot called.  “Be advised, we are seeing lights on the coast road, moving this direction.  A lot of them.  They are still at least ten klicks away, but it looks like reinforcements are inbound.”

“Roger that, Trash Hauler One-One,” Brannigan replied.  He turned back toward the door leading down inside the building.

The Marines were mostly still down in the stairwell.  The downed Marine’s squad leader and the corpsman were crouched over him, as Brannigan ran, crouched over in case there were any more snipers hiding out there in the dark, to join them.  The fallen Marine was still conscious, though his plate carrier had been pulled most of the way off and half of his combat shirt cut away.  His side was drenched in blood, showing black in the pale image of the NVGs.

“How is he?” he asked.

“He’s hit bad, sir,” the corpsman replied.  “Took the round right under the armpit.  I don’t think it hit his heart or lungs, but we need to get him back to the ship and a surgeon fast.  There’s only so much I can do out here.  I’ve got a chest seal on the wound, and I’ve got a needle-D prepped and ready but we really need to get him back to the hospital.”

Brannigan nodded, and looked at the squad leader, Sergeant Teague, even as Staff Sergeant Collier came out of the stairwell, along with Lieutenant Bradley.  Some of the SNCOs might have been chafing a bit at how “hands on” their officers were acting, but part of that was Brannigan’s influence.  He’d be damned if he’d pass on “managerial” officers to other units.  His men were going to be leaders, damn it.  And, so far, he’d mostly succeeded.  He’d ridden his officers hard to win their Marines’ respect, rather than simply demand it.

“Status, Lieutenant Bradley?” he asked.

“We have the hostages, sir,” the lieutenant replied, taking a knee next to Teague.  “All accounted for.  No hostile prisoners, though.”

“Just as well,” Brannigan said.  He was going to have enough to deal with in the aftermath of this op without having to explain local detainees aboard the Boxer.  “Bring ‘em up, but make sure they stay low.  That sniper still might have buddies out there.”  Backing away, he switched back to the tac frequency.  “All Kodiak units, Kodiak Six.  Glenlivet, I say again, Glenlivet.”  The Colonel could use whisky names for brevities, too.  “Glenlivet” was the code for, “Mission accomplished, move to LZs to load up and head for the barn.”

He switched back to the air frequency.  “Trash Haulers, we will be ready for pickup in two mikes.  Remingtons, keep the bad guys busy for us, will you?”

“Roger that, Kodiak Six,” Remington Four-One replied.

Almost like clockwork, the Ospreys swooped in, twisting their props skyward to hover just over their designated Landing Zones.  Brannigan stepped over to help get the wounded Marine onto the bird, followed by the hostages.

It’s gone so smoothly so far.  Please, Lord, get us off this coast before anything worse goes wrong.

John Brannigan had been a warrior for far too long to expect anything to go entirely according to plan.

He stayed where he was on the roof, battered by the Osprey’s brutal downward rotor wash, sandblasted by the grit the props were whipping off the roof, until he could see the other birds pulling for the sky.  The roof was empty by then, except for himself and the hovering Osprey.  With a brief, curt nod, he jumped up onto the ramp, getting one boot up onto the non-skid and hauling himself up the rest of the way.  He gave the crew chief, now stationed at the ramp, a thumbs-up.  Last man.  The chief spoke into the intercom, and the Osprey began to climb, up and away from the now burning, bullet-riddled ruin of the village.