Peter Nealen - Veteran and Author
Brannigan’s Blackhearts #3 – Enemy Unidentified is almost finished. So, in the spirit of past releases, here’s some of the gun porn for the Blackhearts’ latest adventure!
This time around, staging out of Texas for an op in the Gulf of Mexico, the Blackhearts are rolling with a bit more conventional loadout. Their primaries are LWRC M6A2 carbines, chambered in 5.56x45mm NATO.
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.
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). …
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.
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…
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?”
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.
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 –…
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…
We have a cover, and a release date. Brannigan’s Bastards #1 – Fury in the Gulf, will be out November 15. Iranian Fanatics, American…
