EXCERPT
Fog of War
by Ethan
Jones
Fog of War is an explosive spy thriller from #1 Amazon's Bestselling Writer, Ethan
Jones, and the third novel in his popular Justin Hall series.
Also available: Arctic Wargame (read my blog post), Tripoli's Target, Double Agents (read my blog post), Justin Hall Series Collector's Edition #1, The Interrogation: A Justin Hall Short Story, The Diplomat: A Justin Hall Novella, Rogue Agents, and Thrilling Thirteen (read my blog post; contains Arctic Wargame and The Diplomat as well as 11 other thrillers).
Also available: Arctic Wargame (read my blog post), Tripoli's Target, Double Agents (read my blog post), Justin Hall Series Collector's Edition #1, The Interrogation: A Justin Hall Short Story, The Diplomat: A Justin Hall Novella, Rogue Agents, and Thrilling Thirteen (read my blog post; contains Arctic Wargame and The Diplomat as well as 11 other thrillers).
Description
When an Iranian nuclear scientist wants to defect, Canadian Intelligence
Service sends in its best agent, Justin Hall. After his mission is compromised
and Justin barely escapes northern Iran with his life, he sets out to discover
who has put him and the Service in grave danger.
CIA information about a traitor in the Service sends Justin into
violence-soaked Somalia, where he quickly becomes ensnared in a web of lies and
deceit. He’s left with no choice but to go rogue and form an alliance with
Romanov, a sinister Russian oil baron.
Cut off from the Service, Justin is forced to navigate through
ever-shifting alliances and survive deep inside a Yemeni terrorist stronghold.
All the while, he’s being hunted by a traitor.
This tour-de-force spy thriller is the hottest page-turner of the summer.
New and old fans alike will love this new suspenseful novel in the Justin Hall series.
Excerpt
Afmadow, southern Somalia
September 20, 3:30 a.m. local time
September 20, 3:30 a.m. local time
Bullets hammered the
MH-60 Black Hawk. The Navy SEALs squad leader Alex Roberts glanced at the
control panel in front of him. The last mud-brick shacks of the village were
falling behind, but the hail of bullets was relentless. It seemed like everyone
on the ground was taking aim at their helicopter. People were shooting from the
streets, from the trucks, from the rooftops of this stronghold of al-Shabaab,
al-Qaeda’s branch in southern Somalia. Rocket-propelled grenades ripped through
the night sky with their amber streaks, missing their target by sheer luck. The
Black Hawk could withstand small-arms fire, but not RPGs. Their warheads could
disable the helicopter’s rotors and force a crash landing.
Roberts looked at
two squad members shattering the night with their M134 machine guns. The
weapons were pouring forth a torrent of bullets at two thousand rounds per
minute. He could not see it, but he was sure some of those bullets were
shredding al-Shabaab militants engaged in the firefight.
Seconds later, the
Black Hawk veered to the right, and the Islamic bastion disappeared into the
darkness. The hail-like sound of bullets died down. Roberts looked back at the
gunners falling in their seats and then at the other five members of his squad,
who were securing their “cargo,” the targets of this operation, in the back of
the helicopter. Two high-ranking al-Shabaab leaders lay tied, gagged, and
blindfolded on the cabin floor.
“What’s our status?”
Roberts asked.
“We’re clean. All
systems seem functional,” the pilot replied, glancing at Roberts in the
co-pilot’s seat.
Roberts nodded. “You
all did well down there. In and out in fifteen.”
The snatch-and-grab
operation was executed with the assistance of Joint Task Force Two, the elite
Canadian counter-terrorism unit of the Special Operations Forces. Canadian
Intelligence Service had obtained actionable intelligence on the target, and
CIA had engaged one of their local assets. Their man on the ground had
confirmed the target’s location thirty minutes before the start of the
operation.
The SEALs dropped
into Afmadow’s outskirts, neutralized the guards, and plucked the two militant
leaders out of their safe house. The SEALs actions had drawn the terrorists’
fury, but their backlash was weak and easily counteracted. Hellfire missiles
and machine gun fire had kept them at bay. The SEALs were now on their way to
extract CIA’s man, Mussad Weydow. Their meeting point was another village
twenty miles to the west. Then the squad was to proceed to the safety of
Dhobley, a village close to the border with Kenya, in the hands of African
Union peacekeepers.
“Will we be late?”
asked Roberts.
“Negative,” replied
the pilot. “We’ll make up the lost time.”
One of the militants
jerked, kicked up his feet, and rolled against the cabin door. Walker, one of
the gunners, leaned over and lifted the man’s blindfold. “We said don’t move,
so don’t you dare to move,” he shouted in Arabic.
The militant’s gray
eyes burned against his dark face. He mumbled something, but the rag stuffed
deep into his mouth made his words inaudible.
Walker pulled down
the blindfold and pushed the man back to his place next to the other detainee.
“What a prick,” Walker spat out his words, “luring kids into this kind of a
shithole life.”
“Chill out, man,”
said Green, the other gunner. “They’ll pay for it soon enough.”
“Yeah, but how many
innocents have they brainwashed so far?”
Green nodded with a
sigh. Al-Shabaab had recently stepped up its aggressive recruitment campaign.
US- and Canadian-born Somalis joined it in droves. The name al-Shabaab meant
“the boys” in Arabic, and they lived up to it. The terrorist network kidnapped
children as young as ten from all over Somalia and forced them to fight. Many
foreign fighters from Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria had also
joined al-Shabaab’s army, which claimed around fifteen thousand fighters.
“Green, is our
contact in place?” Roberts asked.
“He should be. Last
time I checked, he was two miles away from the exfil point. That was five
minutes ago, give or take. I’ll call him to confirm his current position.”
Green dialed
Weydow’s number on his satellite phone. He talked for a few seconds then hung
up. “Weydow’s waiting at the abandoned warehouse, a mile east of the village.
Everything’s going according to plan.”
“We’ll be there in
five,” the pilot said.
***
The warehouse was a
one-story cinder block building smaller than a school bus. It had a tin roof
and was surrounded by a thatched fence with large holes and an open metal gate.
Green switched on his night-vision goggles and looked down from the helicopter.
Everything took a greenish tinge with a grainy feel. He spotted a small acacia
tree behind the warehouse, the hulk of a large truck, and other debris scattered
around in the yard. Weydow’s white van was nowhere in sight. “Where is Weydow?”
“Don’t see him,”
Walker replied. He was also scanning the warehouse and its surroundings.
“Maybe he’s inside,”
Green said.
Roberts pondered
their options. At the relatively safe altitude of one thousand and five hundred
feet, he could not observe the situation on the ground with accuracy. But he
did not want to land until they had a visual on CIA’s man. On the ground, the
helicopter was a sitting duck. They had carried out their operation so far with
barely a scratch. He did not want to put his men needlessly in harm’s way.
“Call him again,” he
ordered Green.
Green dialed
Weydow’s number. No signal. He tried again. Again no signal.
“He’s not answering.
Must have turned off his satphone.”
“What? Why?” Roberts
asked.
“No idea.”
“He’s afraid someone
will trace him?” Walker said.
“Who? Al-Shabaab? It
doesn’t have that kind of gear,” Green said.
Roberts shrugged.
“You never know. Weydow didn’t last this long in this hell of a place by being
careless.”
“We’re landing?”
Walker asked.
Before Roberts could
reply, the warehouse’s metal doors swung open.
“Wait. There’s
movement,” he said.
A white van zoomed
outside the warehouse. The driver swerved around the acacia tree and headed
toward the gate. Something resembling a spare tire was strapped to the front of
the van.
“What? Where’s he
going?” Roberts asked.
“I’m sure he can see
us. He knows we’re coming. What’s going on?” said Walker.
An RPG warhead
rushed toward them. Roberts saw it at the last moment, too late to do anything
to avoid it. The warhead flew past them. It missed the Black Hawk’s main rotor
by about three feet. A plume of gray smoke engulfed the helicopter.
“Ambush!” Walker shouted.
The pilot tilted the
helicopter to the left, dropping out of the smoke cloud. Another RPG tore up
the dark sky. This one widely missed its mark.
Walker pushed the
cabin door to the side and rushed into position behind his M134 machine gun.
Muzzle flashes lit up the left side of the warehouse. He focused his firepower
at that target and kept his finger on the trigger. The bullets tore chunks out
of the cinder block walls.
The pilot turned the
helicopter around. Two shooters came into Green’s line of fire, and their
muzzle flashes soon died. “Got the shooters by the acacia.”
“Nailed the three on
the left,” Walker replied.
Roberts looked at
the white van. It was quickly disappearing in the distance. He made a swift
decision. “We’re going after them. Green, advise the command. Tell them we’ll
be late.”
“Right away, sir.”
Green got through to
the command center in Nairobi, Kenya and updated them on their status.
“How did they know
we were coming?” asked one of the SEALs from the back.
“They’ve gotten to
Weydow and made him talk,” Roberts said in a tense voice.
“You think he’s in
the van?” asked Walker.
“Not sure—”
A loud bang rattled
the back of the helicopter, almost jolting Roberts out of his seat. A moment
later, the control panel beeped a sharp sound of alarm.
“We’re hit,” the
pilot said. He studied the screens in front of him. “An RPG clipped our rear
rotor.”
“We’re going down?”
Roberts asked.
“Yeah, we’re going
down,” the pilot replied.
The Black Hawk
overtook the white van. Roberts squinted but could not make out the driver. The
ground sped toward them fast and hard. The pilot slowed down. He tried to seal
the helicopter’s fuel lines to avoid an explosion on impact. Roberts braced for
the crash landing, a sick feeling forming in the pit of his stomach. His team
was going down on his watch. He muttered a short prayer.
The helicopter
swerved in a large circle. It tilted to the left and began another turn. The
pilot struggled with the system controls. He tried to level the helicopter and
execute a somewhat controlled crash landing. The main rotor stopped turning.
The Black Hawk fell into gravity’s clutches. It completed another 360-degree
turn.
Then it crashed on
its starboard side.
The impact rolled
the helicopter over. The main rotor blades crumpled as if made of tinfoil, the
metal crunching and the glass shattering all around them. The cabin walls
closed in. Everything not fastened to the Black Hawk’s airframe was hurled
around the cabin like balls in a bingo blower. The pilot’s crashworthy seat
protected him from the direct impact, but the windshield folded in as it hit
the ground, killing the pilot and Roberts instantly.
The Black Hawk
exploded into a million fiery fragments.
Featured Review
By MEG
This was my first
exposure to Justin Hall, thank you Ethan Jones. It was what I always look for
in an action packed adventure, exciting adventures, an appreciation of the
challenges of the "business of intelligence gathering" with a bonus
of great character development, not just individually but in their
relationships with each other. It was especially positive for me to have the
other half of the team, Carrie, effective and a full contributor. So often in a
male action writer author's view the woman comes off either savage or a
lightweight.
The initial quotes
were a clever prelude, to an entertaining story. So entertaining, I'm going
back to read books one and two. I fully recommend Fog of War.
About the Author
Ethan Jones is the author of the wildly popular Justin Hall spy thriller series. The first book in this series, Arctic Wargame, came out in May 2012 and reached the Amazon's Top 10 Best Sellers lists
in 2012 and 2013. The second book, Tripoli's Target, was released in October 2012. The third book in the series, Fog of War, came out in June 2013, and the fourth book, Double Agents, was published in December 2013. Ethan has also published three short
stories and one novella, The Diplomat, which is the latest adventure in the Justin Hall series. Ethan is a lawyer by trade, and he lives in Canada with his wife
and son.
To learn more about Ethan's current and future works and to read
exclusive author interviews, books excerpts and book reviews, visit Ethan's blog.
Links
