My friend Steven Hildreth just released his third novel today, The Ronin Genesis. From the blurb: April 20th, 2005. Three days have passed since Ben Williams survived the harrowing attack on Tucson’s Saguaro Towers Hotel. However, the danger has far from subsided. Unknown to the public, the Saguaro Towers was a covert CIA station; the attack, an Iranian false-flag operation aimed at breaching the American intelligence apparatus. The Iranian operative responsible for the attack is in possession of sensitive information and has gone off the grid. Short on options, the CIA turns to a small start-up private military company to hunt the Iranian. In turn, that PMC turns to Williams and members of his old Special Activities Division team. Through bloody mercenary combat with multiple factions hunting the data in drug-torn Mexico, Ronin Defense Institute will be born, but there is no guarantee their company–or the shooters themselves–will survive. I haven’t finished it yet, so I can’t say much about it, though Steven did run a few bits of it past me for a sanity check. A review will be coming up in a while. But he’s done a pretty good job with his first two, and from what I’ve
Six Miles West of Nogales
If it hadn’t been for the earpiece, I never would have heard the radio over the snarl of the four-wheeler’s engine. “Hillbilly, this is Plug,” Hank called. I eased off the throttle and took one hand off the handlebars to key the radio. “Send it, Plug.” “Can you push up to the top of that ridgeline just to the east of you and take a look to the south?” he asked. “Tell me what you see.” “Sure thing,” I answered. It wasn’t like we had a set patrol route, or even any particular need to be anywhere. So far, this job had consisted of little more than long hours just hot-wheeling around the hills of southern Arizona on four-wheelers and the occasional pickup truck. I gunned the engine and sent the sturdy little ATV surging up between the mesquites and the creosote bushes toward the ridge that Hank had indicated. It wasn’t a long climb, but it was steep and rocky, with plenty more sagebrush and creosote bushes that I had to weave around. But it still only took a couple of minutes to reach the top. Halting my ATV, I stood on the running boards and pulled my binos