This collection came together thanks to a couple of things. One goes way back to the beginning of my writing career. In a way, it…
Peter Nealen - Veteran and Author
Tag: Action Adventure Fiction
Just posting a quick link today. A couple months ago, Hank Garner, who runs the Author Stories podcast, contacted me to invite me on the…
New Wave of Murders Hits Baltimore While estimates are still coming in, at least seventy-two people have been killed in a fresh wave of…
Brannigan’s Blackhearts are out for blood. John Brannigan doesn’t take too many things personally. But he’s lost three men to the Humanity Front. So, when…
Yes, it is time for a guns post again. What kind of hardware shows up in the seventh outing for Brannigan’s Blackhearts?
The Blackhearts get to pick their loadout before insert this time, as opposed to some of their previous adventures. But with the AO being in South America, they’ve still got to find weaponry that will, if not blend in in South America, at least be compatible for ammo resupply.
Wade selects the IWI ACE 52 for their rifles. The ACE is an updated version of the Galil, and the ACE 52 is chambered in 7.62×51. It’s been adopted by several South American special operations forces, including in Argentina.
John Brannigan was not a happy man.
The fact that he was wearing a tux, sitting at a very expensive table in a very expensive, very exclusive restaurant, high atop a luxury hotel in the middle of San Francisco, would have been bad enough. Ever since his forced retirement from the Marine Corps and the death of his wife, Rebecca, of cancer a short time later, he’d essentially retired to the mountains, living not too differently from an old-time mountain man. Fancy restaurants, fancy clothes, and big cities put his teeth on edge. He’d gotten a haircut and shaved his cheeks and chin, but his massive, bristling handlebar remained, setting him apart even more than his broad shoulders and six-foot-four-inch stature from the soft men around him.
But all of that was only a minor annoyance compared to the woman sitting across the table from him.
Special Agent Vito Castiglione looked up from the spotting scope as the door opened behind him. Special Agent Cara Hernandez walked into the room and stood next to him, peering out through the black mesh laid over the gap in the curtains.
“Aren’t you supposed to be keeping eyes on the objective?” she asked.
“Nobody’s budged out of that place in the last thirty-six hours,” Castiglione said dismissively. “We’ve got the whole place tied up tight. Besides, have you seen the pictures of this guy? I don’t think we really have much to worry about.” The fact that he was admiring the view presented by the willowy, olive-skinned Special Agent next to him was beside the point. She was much more interesting to look at than the dull, expensive house across the street.
She rolled her eyes at him, exasperated. He just leered back.
“Yes, I have seen the photos,” she said. “Still, you should at least pretend to be taking this warrant seriously.”
“What’s to take seriously right now?” Castiglione replied. “He’s a pasty-white billionaire wanted for bribery, money laundering, and influence peddling. He’s hardly Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah. The whole point of putting an Enhanced SWAT team on him is to send a message, and none of the cameras are here yet.”
“The cameras might not be,” Hernandez replied, glancing over her shoulder, “but there are other people here who don’t seem to have much of a sense of humor.” She nodded toward the door as her tone dropped. “That one in particular,” she added as she turned back to the window.
Castiglione looked over his shoulder at the door behind him as a short, severe-looking woman, who appeared to be in her late fifties, walked in, flanked by two men in plaid shirts and jeans, who nevertheless had that aura of barely-restrained violence that he’d come to associate with special operators. Castiglione hadn’t ever served in the military; he’d been a SWAT cop in Chicago before he’d signed on with the Bureau. He generally disliked the special forces types, just on general principles. They usually thought they were gods among men, and looked down on “humble” law enforcement guys like him.
But a glance from the woman in her simple but businesslike suit got him turning around and putting his eye back to the spotting scope hurriedly. He didn’t know who she was, but if she was walking around the FBI’s cordon with that kind of impunity—he didn’t even see a handler, and Special Agent Dover was usually a stickler about such things—she had to have some serious pull.
“I assure you, Special Agent Castiglione,” the woman said, her voice full of ice, “that having an Enhanced SWAT team here is most certainly not simply to ‘send a message.’ The only reason you and your team are here instead of the HRT itself is because you were closer.”
Since I’m working on Brannigan’s Blackhearts #7 – Kill or Capture, I’ve been back to the SOBs series for some reading. Which is when I realized that I haven’t written up the last few I’ve read. So, here is Eye of the Fire.
Eye of the Fire has a couple of things going on. The mission is an assassination in Cuba. But the target isn’t a Communist official or guerrilla leader. He’s an Argentinian known only as “Colonel D,” a torturer-for-hire who has spent decades finding inventive ways of making Communists die in agony throughout Latin America. And, coincidentally, he’s also been employed by the CIA.
This makes him valuable to several people. Jessup, “The Fixer” hires the SOBs to take him out in order to keep him from burning his contacts with the Agency. Barrabas isn’t having any of it to start with; he says he’s a soldier, not an executioner.
But the mission isn’t the only thread in this book. There are a couple of others, that make things much more interesting.
As I’ve written elsewhere, setting a story in the near future sometimes requires some attempt at clairvoyance. Some of the weapons systems that will be used in a future war are still in development. Some might not exist yet, but getting too crazy sci-fi could derail things, so I’ve got to strike a balance. One of those systems that I introduce in Escalation is the M5 Powell Infantry Fighting Vehicle. This is set up as the replacement for the M2 Bradley IFV, which has been in service since 1981.
Now, there is an M2 replacement in the works. The Army calls it the Next Generation Combat Vehicle program, and the Request For Proposals went out in March of this year. Right at the moment, there are three major contenders, the BAE Systems CV90 Mk IV, the Rheinmetall and Raytheon Lynx IFV, and the General Dynamics Griffin III.
⊕ The thunderous report of the 7.62 echoed across the hills around the town, shattering the early morning calm. The dark-clad man with the FAMAS bullpup staggered, staring down at the widening dark stain on his chest for a brief fraction of a second before he crumpled, crashing to the deck with a thump and a muffled clatter as he landed on top of his rifle.
I was already up and moving as he hit the floor, sprinting around the side of the guest house and heading for the steps leading up to the deck. A figure loomed in the doorway, and I caught a glimpse of a weapon. I started to slow, bringing my own rifle back up to fire, but a shot cracked past my shoulder and took the man in the chest. He fell backwards, into the house. ⊕
Cover photo 📷 @yorick_drd; Larue Tactical rifles at the 10th World Snipers Championship in the Czech Republic.