Peter Nealen's Blog, page 40

Audiobooks and Other Coming Attractions

So, there is indeed going to be an audiobook of Task Force Desperate.  I’ve reached an agreement with Wyntner Woody, and he is presently in the process of producing the book.  He nailed the tone in the audition, and the first fifteen minutes that he sent me was just as good, if not better.  I think you’re going to like this.  Hopefully we can make an arrangement to keep him working on the rest of the series.

We’ve even already got the cover art for the audiobook set up:

I’ve taken stock of a bunch of projects that are presently lined up.  I’ve got a lot of work to do.  I’ve got at least three (most likely more) more Praetorian novels in mind.  There’s a stand-alone pirate hunting story, partially inspired by Far Cry 3, just without the douchey affluent jackass trying to be meta about violence and gaming part.  Three more Jed Horn stories are lined up.  And I’ve had a sort of sword-and-sorcery story that’s been kicking around for about three or four years, that has now expanded into its own setting, with at least three stories set out in broad strokes there.  Finally, I’ve got a hard-SF story about technical failure and long odds 11 light years from home (without faster-than-light travel) that I mean to get to eventually.

Audiobooks Might Be On The Way

I’ve just posted Task Force Desperate on ACX for auditions to turn it into an audiobook. I don’t have the time or the setup to do it myself, so hopefully I can find a producer/narrator who is interested in giving it a shot for half the royalties. If anyone knows a vet who is working on getting into voice work who would be interested, please point them to TFD on ACX. If this works out, it will be out on Audible, Amazon, and iTunes. Fingers crossed.

Update: Realized it might help to include a link to ACX in case anyone is interested in trying out.  Go here and get set up if you’ve got an audio setup and time.  No guarantees I’ll accept, but what have you got to lose?

First Draft is Done

And, after 4,633 words worth of key-pounding today, I brought the first draft to a close.  It’s slightly longer than Alone and Unafraid, before editing, and my books tend to get slightly longer as editing goes on.

Whew.  A 123,455-word manuscript knocked out in sixty-five days.  I think I’m getting more practiced at this.

It’s still coming out on June 23rd.  For the Kindle readers, please go ahead and preorder (I’ll be getting the Nook and iBooks preorders up later; the manuscript has to be a bit further along before I can get it through the vetting process to get them on those platforms).  The reason I’m pushing the preorders is because they all hit at midnight the day it comes out.  That gives the book a good spike on Amazon’s stats, which gets it more visibility.  It’s one of the little tricks independent authors need to learn to actually get somewhere.

Now I’m going to go let my brain dribble out of my ear for a bit before I start editing…

Preorder is Up

Real life has intruded on the writing schedule lately, but the draft is still over 75,000 words.

Also, the Kindle Preorder is up on Amazon. Release date is now June 23.

He is called “El Duque.”

No one knows his real name. Only vague descriptions and fuzzy photos of him exist. What is known about him is that he is the up-and-coming power in the converging underworlds of guerrilla warfare, spies, terrorists, and organized crime. He is known to have ties with Islamist extremists, Communist guerrillas, drug cartels, gun runners…if it is involved in global chaos, he has a hand in it.

Now Praetorian Security has been contracted to hunt him down. Jeff Stone and his team pick up the scent in northern Mexico. But the closer they get, the more elusive El Duque seems to become.

Jeff and his compatriots have long since learned that in the shadowy world of modern conflict, little is ever exactly what it seems. But as the manhunt leads them into some of the darkest, most lawless corners of the Western Hemisphere, they come upon an explosive revelation that changes everything.

No one is coming out the other side of this mission the same.

The Special Operations contractors of Praetorian Security go to the darkest corners of the world, to face the worst that the underworld of modern conflict has to offer.

Preorder it here.

Snippet the 5th

A lone sheriff’s department vehicle showed up just ahead of the Harmon-Dominguez trucks. The firefight had been over for just over an hour. There were fire-trucks and ambulances just behind the sheriff’s vehicle. The deputy pulled up, got out, took a look around at us, walked over to the shattered cars and trucks full of bloating MS-13 corpses, and went back to his car without a word. The other first-responders went to deal with the overturned semi. The wrecker was half an hour behind the ambulances, who ended up just bagging up the bodies and driving away.

When the Harmon-Dominguez convoy finally got there, they slowed way down and hesitated for close to five minutes, hanging back a good hundred yards from the scene. When they finally crept forward to the crashed box truck, they were slow, hesitant, and gave off the appearance of staring fearfully at the sheriff’s department vehicle. I just shook my head.

We’d been contracted because some of the people Renton works with thought that Harmon-Dominguez was a front company for Mexican cartel interests. They wanted some inside reconnaissance, and we were it. And maybe my perception was colored by that knowledge. But these guys just seemed extra nervous around law enforcement, as they carefully backed up to Harold’s truck and opened the back doors of the new box truck.

Of course, if the sheriff’s deputies noticed, they didn’t budge out of their white-and-green car to do anything about it.

It took a while to get the cargo transferred. Harold got in the new box truck, but the original driver stayed with the wreck to get it towed away. The rest of us were already in the two new trucks that had come to pick us up.

Harold came over to my vehicle. “Okay, we’re loaded back up,” he said. “We can get back on track now. We’ll have to move quickly to make up lost time.”

I just shook my head. “No, we’re going back to Tucson,” I said. “After what just happened, we need to reset.”

He got a little bit of that panicked look in his eyes. “We can’t afford the time,” he said.

“I don’t care,” I replied. “We just got fucking ambushed. Your schedule is dead. We were hired to ensure your safety, and that’s what we’re going to do. We’ve got to take the time to re-examine our plan, possibly re-route, and take additional measures to lower our profile and harden ourselves as a target.”

Harold was fidgeting now. “I’m telling you, we have a very strict time-schedule!” he insisted. “We have to get back on track!”

“Better that it gets there intact than doesn’t get there at all because it got intercepted by MS-13, now isn’t it?” I asked. I motioned toward the border to the south. “If you are really that intent on going, go. You won’t have an escort, though, because we’ll quit before we’ll half-ass security for the sake of your timeline.”

That made him look positively sick. The prospect scared him badly enough that he seemed to crumple right in front of my eyes. He slumped back to the box truck without another word.

Of course, I was bluffing. I just had to delay our departure to the south until we could get our toys from The Ranch, and link up with Renton.

I made eye contact with Jim, who would be leading the way back north, and nodded. He waved, and we started back to Tucson.

The drive was short and quiet. Larry and I were thinking over the implications of what had just happened, and we didn’t know the Harmon-Dominguez driver who’d brought the truck down, so there wasn’t much conversation. He didn’t need to know any more than Harold could tell him.

When we got to the Harmon-Dominguez warehouse on the north side of Tucson, we pulled our trucks up and retreated into the little side office we’d annexed as a “security office.” We didn’t do much more than re-stock ammunition and recharge radio batteries; there wasn’t much to do right away. We did spread out the map and start looking for other options route-wise; the I-19 to Nogales was apparently compromised. Unfortunately, there wasn’t another legal crossing short of Yuma, and going the sneaky way wasn’t going to go over well with Harmon-Dominguez.

We’d been there all of about two hours when my phone rang. It was Clyde. “Jeff, we just touched down in Tucson. Got all your goodies. We’ll be by the private aviation terminal when you’re ready.”

“Good deal,” I replied. “Hang tight for the moment. The Godfather’s on the way and we’ve still got to figure out just how things have changed and how we’re going to handle this.”

“I’ll be here,” he answered. I dropped the phone on the table and went back to the maps and imagery.

Snippet 4

As soon as he hung up, I dialed The Ranch. Clyde answered after only three rings. “Get Package Fifty heading to Tucson, Clyde,” I told him. “Most ricky-tick.”

“It’ll be on the way within the hour,” he replied. I hung up and pocketed the phone, walking back toward the overturned box truck. Nick and Jack were standing near the front, shotguns slung in front of them and eyes out.

Nick was another former Marine, though you probably wouldn’t be able to tell looking at him now; burly and shaggy-haired, his beard was down almost to his collar. He looked more like a lumberjack than a clean-cut, poster Marine anymore. Nick and I had never been in the same platoon as Marines, but we’d been to hell and back more than once as Praetorians.

Jack was new to the team, though he’d cut his teeth with Praetorian the year before, on Caleb’s team. He’d gotten shot, rotated home, and cross-decked to my team when we started training up again. He was a skinny, unremarkable-looking former SF dude, sandy-haired and soft-spoken, but he meshed with the team pretty well, and was a hell of a shot.

Harold was still on the phone, looking less and less happy. The sirens were still wailing in the distance, but looking around, I saw no flashing lights or any sign that the cops were getting any closer. That merited a frown.

“What the fuck is taking those boys so long?” I asked.

Jack snorted. “This is No-Man’s Land, dude. Nobody’s going to raise a finger south of Tucson until they know that no cartels are involved.” He spat on the ground, still watching the horizon with a squint. “They’ll make noise to reassure the locals, but that’s where it’ll end if they get a whiff that narcos are within a mile of the shooting. The Gila Bend Massacre made sure of that.”

I grunted. The Gila Bend killings had been gruesome. A celebrity Sheriff had been visiting the little town with his family and sizable entourage. Sicarios had attacked with overwhelming firepower, slaughtering the sheriff, his family, and everybody else nearby. The Sheriff’s head, along with his wife’s and his chief deputies’, had been left on the streets of Phoenix two days later.

It had been meant as a message, and it was received, loud and clear. The cartels owned southern Arizona, and since the Border Patrol had been drawn down to next to nothing after the collapse of the dollar, local law enforcement was on its own trying to combat that fact. After Gila Bend, they quit trying. Better to stay alive.

I walked over to Harold, who was staring at his phone as if it had personally betrayed him. As I did so, Eric came around from the side of the wrecked semi. There was blood on his hands. He met my eyes and just shook his head.

Motherfuckers. I felt a reflexive flash of hatred for the tattooed scumbags who’d kicked this off. The only thing that poor bastard had done was drive down the fucking road ahead of us.

“Harold,” I said. I only had to say it once this time; he broke his reverie and looked up at me. There was something close to panic in his eyes. “Are there recovery vehicles coming from Tucson?”

“What?” He seemed surprised; I don’t think he was expecting the question. He was focused on his previous conversation.

“Recovery vehicles,” I said. “Something to pick up the cargo, replacement trucks or SUVs for the two I’ve got back there shot to shit.”

“Oh, yes,” he said, starting to fiddle with his phone again. “I should get a couple of trucks on the way.” I rolled my eyes. The guy was a nice enough guy, but he was fucking lost most of the damned time.

“What is the cargo, anyway?” I asked. He looked up at me, startled.

“That’s proprietary,” he protested. “You know that.”

I took a step closer to him. “It was proprietary,” I said. “When this was simple business, it wasn’t our business to know what we were escorting.” That wasn’t strictly accurate, but Harold didn’t know that Renton had hired us on the sly for this job; he didn’t even know Renton existed. For all I knew, he had no idea that his bosses were possibly doing business for international criminal organizations. “But now, we’re not even into Mexico yet, and MS-13 has killed a trucker and tried to kill us to get at it. So I’m making it our business.”

His eyes went wide at the mention of MS-13. Their reputation was well-known. “I…I don’t know why they’d be after this,” he stammered. “I mean…I don’t know how they could know what it is…”

“What. Is. It?” I asked, slowly and inexorably.

He dithered. I got the distinct impression he was scared stiff of the consequences of telling somebody he wasn’t authorized to tell. But I can be fairly intimidating when I put my mind to it, and with the collection of smashed cars and corpses behind me, it was working.

“It’s money,” he said, finally. “Money for a deal that Harmon-Dominguez is acting as an intermediary for down in Mazatlan.”

“What, wire transfers don’t do the trick anymore?” I asked. I knew the answer; Harmon-Dominguez, or whoever was employing them for this, didn’t necessarily want any records of the transfer. Which meant Renton’s suspicions were bearing fruit already.

“Get those vehicles down here as quickly as possible,” I said curtly, as I turned aside. “I don’t want to be stuck out here in the open any longer than absolutely necessary.”

The sirens in the distance trailed off. Either the cops had decided discretion was the better part of valor, or somebody had made a phone call. Maybe both. I didn’t like either option; it meant things had deteriorated further than I’d thought. Fear, corruption, or a combination of both don’t bode well for a healthy society.

I’d spent a good deal of my adult life in deteriorating societies overseas. It was even more disheartening to see the same thing happening at home.

Snippet 3

I topped off my 870’s tube as I walked toward the lead box truck, where it was lying on its side in the median. Harold Juarez, the senior Harmon-Dominguez rep on this little convoy, had crawled out once the shooting stopped, and was already on his phone. The driver was shakily pulling himself out.

I went to help the driver get down off the sideways cab. Harold was standing in front of the truck, talking earnestly and quickly. I’ll admit I took the opportunity to listen in, as I helped the driver down to the ground. The poor guy was shaking, and looked a little sick. Good thing he’d had the transmission between him and the shooting; he really wouldn’t have liked what had happened only two lanes away. I steered him away from the carnage as I got him down.

“I know,” Harold was saying. “What you don’t understand is that it isn’t just the office that’s going to be pissed if this shipment’s late. We’re talking about Alonzo Reyes here.”

That made me take notice. Alonzo Reyes. This job just got a hell of a lot more interesting. Renton hadn’t been blowing smoke, after all.

I got the driver sitting down against the truck and checked him for injuries. He was shaken up, that was all. Harold was still talking, urgently demanding a replacement truck be brought down from Tucson as soon as possible. In the short time I’d dealt with him, Harold had been a friendly, personable sort, but had always seemed nervous, especially when anything threatened to disrupt the schedule. Now I had some idea why.

“Harold,” I called. He didn’t notice, but kept talking. “Harold!” He looked up. “Are you all right?” I asked. “Are you hurt?”

He stared at me for a second, as if it took a moment for the question to sink in. “Yes, yes, I’m fine,” he said. “I’m trying to get a replacement truck down here so we can get back on the road.”

“Not going to be that easy,” I said. The sirens were already starting to sound in the distance. “Local law’s on the way, and I’ve got two security vehicles totaled. We won’t be back on the road for a little while. At least a day, maybe two, depending on how the sheriff’s feeling.”

He didn’t like that. But I didn’t give him a chance to retort, as I walked back to my Expedition, pulling my own phone out. Before I dialed, I joined Larry, who was examining the bodies in the Crown Vic.

“Look at that,” he said, pointing to the tattoos adorning a limp arm. “Seen those before?”

I nodded. “Mara Salvatrucha.” MS-13. One of the most vicious street gangs in the Western Hemisphere, the gang had been founded by refugees from the El Salvadoran civil war living in Los Angeles. They’d gone from a vicious street gang to a trans-national criminal syndicate in their own right, with a reputation for ferocity that came near to rivaling the paramilitary Los Zetas in Mexico. We’d crossed paths with them briefly the last time we’d worked the border. “Question is, are they here on their own initiative, or are they hiring out again?” MS-13 had acted as mercenaries for other cartels off and on through the years.

“What were they doing here in the first place, and why were they after us?” Larry asked.

“We’ll find out pretty soon,” I replied, as I hit speed dial and raised the phone to my ear. “Harold just invoked the name of Alonzo Reyes.”

The phone rang once. Renton’s voice was complete deadpan as he said, “Talk to me.”

“Alonzo Reyes,” I said. Alonzo Reyes was one of the names we’d been instructed to keep an ear open for before we started this job. In the military we would have called him a Person of Interest.

I filled Renton in on the ambush and Harold’s phone conversation. He didn’t interrupt, but just listened.

Renton was a spook, and not in a “works for Langley” sort of way. He did, once upon a time, but those days were past, and he pretty much lived “in the cold” anymore. He’d gone underground years ago, only cropping up, to my knowledge, the year before, when he contacted us about The Project. He worked for a quiet network of military and intelligence professionals that was, apparently, trying to act to stem the tide of chaos and terrorism from outside and inside the system.

We were an instrument to generally be used outside the system.

When I finished, he was quiet for a short moment, as if thinking over what I’d told him. He wasn’t terribly forthcoming when he did speak, however. “Where are you now?”

“About three miles south of Green Valley,” I said.

“Don’t go far,” he said. “Juarez will probably want to push as soon as possible, but I need you to stall him. I’m on my way.”

“Do I need to get a mission package coming south?” I asked.

No hesitation. “Yes. Expedite it. I’ll see you in a few hours.”

Cover Reveal

Here’s a first look at the cover and I’m partway through Chapter 7.  Visit my website to read that back cover blurb.

They’re Back!

That’s right, all three shirt colors have been restocked, in large.  There are only eight shirts per color so get yours while they last!

Another Snippet for You

“The hit came only a few miles outside of Green Valley. We’d been hanging back behind a pair of Old Dominion semis, pacing them. As the semis rolled past the rest area outside of Green Valley, one of the two pickups we’d seen earlier darted out and T-boned the trailing truck.

The truck jack-knifed across the road, the trailer swinging around to block both lanes as the driver struggled to maintain control, doubtless rattled by the impact. Smoke rose from sqealing tires, and it looked for a second like he was going to be able to hold it, but then the right side tires came off the pavement and the truck rolled on its side, the trailer skidding on the asphalt a little farther before coming to a halt.

Nick reacted immediately, swerving toward the median, aiming to get around the stricken tractor-trailer and out of the kill zone. It was exactly what he should have done, and it would have worked if the driver of the box truck behind him hadn’t panicked.

He didn’t lose control right away, but he swerved so hard, while stomping on the brakes, that when his tires hit the gravel of the median, he lost it. He’d slowed down enough that the wreck wasn’t that catastrophic, but the box truck tipped over and slammed on its side. And just like that, we were stuck.

Even as the dust cloud billowed up from the impact of the box truck spilling over, more pickups and a couple of Crown Victorias of all things came tearing out of the rest area. They didn’t do a drive-by, but swerved to line up side-on with the convoy. Windows down, the thugs inside the vehicles opened fire.

I’d had about five seconds to take in what was happening. So had Larry. It was enough.

Larry cranked the wheel and mashed his foot on the accelerator, turning our Expedition to face the storm of gunfire. In the unarmored SUV, the only hope we had to survive was to put the engine block between us and the bullets. Both of us were wearing low-profile plates under our shirts, but there are plenty of ways to get shot around plates, especially when you’ve got a bunch of Uzis, Tec-9s, and a couple of AKs blasting at you.

The SUV almost tipped over, but Larry was good enough to keep it under control. I had the jacket off my 870 and was bringing it up even as I ducked down below the dash to avoid the slashing fragments of metal and window glass as the windshield shattered under the hail of bullets. I could hear the engine screaming as more rounds tore up the radiator, but that engine was keeping us from getting perforated with it, so I didn’t mind. I got my head just high enough over the dash to point the shotgun, and opened fire myself.

I’d loaded with rifled slugs. It still wasn’t going to reach out as well as a rifle at this range, but it was better than buckshot. I got the front bead in the vicinity of one of the windows that was spitting flame and fired. It wasn’t a good shot; it was more of a “get something heading downrange at those assholes” shot, but it got the message across. I don’t think they’d been expecting to get shot at. The fire slackened a bit as they ducked for cover.

Larry had his own shotgun up and resting on the steering wheel now. He cranked three shots as fast as he could pump the SuperNova. Fortunately, there wasn’t much of a windshield left to hinder the slugs.

More thunder announced the guys in Jim’s Expedition opening fire. I glanced out of the side window to get a picture of where Jim’s guys and the rear box truck were. The box truck was halted halfway on the median, in a still-settling cloud of dust. That driver, at least, hadn’t tipped his truck over. Jim’s SUV was pointed at the bad guys, just like ours, and Jim and Little Bob were leaning partway out of the side windows, blasting away with their shotguns. I caught a glimpse of Ben and Derek piling out of the back, staying low, cradling their own weapons.

“Push!” I yelled to Larry, who still had his foot on the accelerator. He complied, rolling our increasingly shot-up Expedition toward the ambushers. We were only a few feet away now.

The abused, wounded engine screamed and smoked as we surged forward and slammed into the Crown Vic in front of us. I rocked forward with the impact, recovered, and shot the dazed, tattooed gang-banger across the crumpled hood from me in the face. I shifted fire to his buddy, who was blinking blood, hair, and bits of brain and shattered bone out of his eyes, and gave him the same treatment. Larry extinguished the car’s driver and passenger with a pair of shots so close together they almost sounded like they made a single noise.

The pickup in front of the Crown Vic suddenly surged ahead, as the shooters in it apparently decided that they had bitten off more than they could chew. Larry thumbed four more slugs into his shotgun faster than I could load two, and cranked off another pair of shots, shattering the pickup’s rear window even as it fishtailed away from us, its rear tires spinning on the gravel. I concentrated on the third pickup behind the car full of rapidly cooling corpses, smashing the rest of my shotgun’s tube through the windshield and into the driver and passenger, both of whom were trying to get a shot at me while taking shelter from the fire coming from Jim’s truck.

A few more shots, and then everything went quiet, aside from the Crown Vic’s horn blaring from the ruined head of the driver lying on it.”