EXCERPT from "Black Eagle Force - Eye of the Storm" - Chapt. 12

        "We have our work cut out for us. Only have ten days to plan, prep and get into position. At least we got Admiral Valenti on board with the Navy's USS Iwo Jima. She can be on station in the Gulf in eight days out of Norfolk. The Marines of the 26th MEU will have four MV-22 Ospreys in addition to their regular compliment," Dare commented.
     "Damn swabbie brass pukes can be such a pain in the ass. If they don't get to play, they want to cancel the whole ball game. Especially when they sit at the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The guys are just politicians by the time they get that far up the chain," Kit muttered.
     "Look, Kit, I don't like intra-service rivalries and Pentagon politics any more than you, but look at the bright side. The SecDef and the President are behind us and besides, the BEF itself has gotten over most of that  internecine BS. It's one of our biggest strengths."
     "You're right, as usual. Sorry if I get bent out of shape sometimes. What's new from the DIA?"
     "Glad you reminded me. They tagged the cell phones used during the raid on the Eagle Nest and tracked them to six different accounts. One belonged to the head of the Tres Locos gang which was the primary organization behind the delivery of the murdered illegals. The CIA accessed his phone records and tied him to the Mexican Army Colonel arrested in Nuevo Laredo. It also tied him to a satellite phone number believed to be used by our new target, Javier Cojone."
     "You are kidding, right?" Kit said incredulously.
     "Kid you not. The DIA set up a special unit to monitor that phone frequency and record all transmissions. One of them was by the little blonde American cheerleader who disappeared from Barbados three years ago."
     Kit pushed back his chair and exhaled slowly. He had a daughter by his ex-wife who was the same age as that girl who had been in the news for such a long time. That story had always had such an effect on him. He nodded his head slowly as he digested the information.
     "So that's where the FBI fits in this puzzle. Some of the sex slaves being held are American."
     Dare looked at his Chief of Operations and knew what he was thinking.
     "Now you see why we need the Navy. There are between eighteen and twenty-five girls being held on Isla Gukumatz at any one time. We need the MEU's  MV-22 Ospreys to get them off the island in a rapid manner. The Mexican government won't be happy when they find out we put one of their billionaires out of commission… Permanently."

Co-author - Ken Farmer
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www.blackeagleforce.com

M600/A Black Eagle docking with C-5M Super Galaxy, 12,000 MSL at 285 mph.

      Mama Bird had leveled off at 12,000 feet AGL and reduced her cruise speed to 250 knots true airspeed. The rear clamshell doors were open and the ramp was in the level down position. Jill, in Eagle One, was on the ramp. Mike, in Eagle Two, was in the trail position fifty feet below and two hundred yards behind Mama Bird and had matched her 250 kts. speed while Jill was docking.
   As Jill's Eagle One was being pulled inside Mama Bird, Jill came on the BEF common frequency,
   "Not to worry, Cowboy, it's only like threading a needle at 285 miles per hour during an earthquake. Pieceacake."
   "Easy for you to say," Mike responded as he gradually pushed the throttle and crept forward twenty feet below and fifty feet behind the ramp of the giant dark gray aircraft. He started to work his way into the somewhat stable air pocket just under her tail. Eagle One had disappeared into the black hole of Mama Bird's cargo bay.
   Without warning, an invisible clear air mountain wave grabbed the massive cargo craft and shook her like a rag doll in its unyielding fingers. The four hundred thousand pound craft dropped almost ten feet instantaneously as the huge T-tail came down like a gigantic fly swatter toward the tiny Eagle Two. A split second later the same wave struck the much smaller fighter with more intensity. Mike instinctively slammed the stick forward to provide separation from his intended landing site. The Eagle pitched down and rolled hard left, then snapped right as each pilot's helmet, in turn, bounced hard off the canopy.
   "Jesus!" Mike blurted as he fought to control the aircraft.
   "Crap! What the hell was that?" asked Maria as she automatically covered Mike's hand on the stick.
   "I got it," he said as the Eagle leveled off fifty feet below the extended ramp.

Excerpt from Black Eagle Force - Sacred Mountain - Chapter 3.

BOOK REVIEWER ALERT

If you are an online reviewer and are interested in an ARC copy of BLACK EAGLE FORCE  - Eye of the Storm for review purposes, please email blackeagleforce1@yahoo.com  with your name, address, and the name of the publication, website or blog on which you review. Where applicable, please include a link!


Co-author Ken Farmer
www.blackeagleforce.com
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AUTHOR UPDATE

Whew! Been a busy last three days. Buck and I taught a three hour acting class Thursday night in Dallas. Got  home at midnight, up at 5:30am and drove to Oklahoma City Friday morning to hold a six hour Screen Writing Workshop, starting at 10am, for a group of  Tate authors wanting to learn how to adapt their novels to a screen play. Workshop over at 4:30pm, drove the two hours back to Gainesville. Saturday morning we drove to Denton, Tx to address the Denton Writers League at 10:30am. Met some great new writers and the league bought our lunch. Drove back to Gainesville and went to bed early.
Got the first three chapters of Honor Redeemed from Loree Lough and read them Sunday morning. Grab your butt, the second in Loree's First Responders is hot. You don't read Loree's novels, you experience them.
Now to get back to our second novel in our Black Eagle Force series, Sacred Mountain. Buck and I are right at 53,000 words, almost half way.
Ken Farmer

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EXCERPT from "Black Eagle Force - Sacred Mountain" - Chapt. 8

    Mickey sat alone in the twelve foot diameter, multiple jet hot tub set flush with the floor, all jets running. The hot tub was positioned beside a twenty-four foot oblong, powered lap pool in the underground gym module. He was immersed up to his chin in the churning water with his head leaned back on the sky blue padded rim cushion when Maria entered the 1,500 square foot exercise module. Mickey looked up when he heard the door click closed and watched Maria walk in wearing a white heavy cotton terry cloth robe, flip flops and carrying two bottles of Eagle Nest Water. She stopped at a chair positioned beside the pool, set the bottles next to the rim, removed her robe and laid it on the chair. She was wearing a black French cut Tonga style bikini which matched her hair; now pulled back into a pony tail. The suit accentuated her hour glass figure and shapely toned legs. Mickey watched as she lithely stepped down into the bubbling water. Oh, my God. Nobody should look that good. I fully understand 'Double D' now, Mickey thought.
    "Ooh, just right," she said as she settled down in the water on the blue merle fiberglass bench next to Mickey.
    "I like it hot," Mickey said as he was finally able to get his mouth to work. "Well, I… uh, mean the water."
    "I know what you mean," Maria said coquettishly. After a short beat, she added, "I brought you some water. Noticed you weren't carrying any."
    "Duh, can't believe I forgot water, thanks." Mickey hesitated. "How long have you been with the BEF."
    "Oh, just a little over three months… I had been flying F-18s off the Avenger…"
    "Avenger?"
    "USS George H.W. Bush—Part of her keel is made of salvaged steel from the Twin Towers."
    "I knew that."
    "Right—Anyway, I was coming up to the end of my original flight school commitment in the Corps and got a call direct from SecDef Baker that someone wanted to talk to me about my options. Well, turned out to be Dare and he offered me a position with the BEF. I had heard scuttlebutt, you know how that goes, but had no idea it actually existed."
    "Neither did I till that fracas in the Gulf last year and got to meet Dare and the rest of the team. They're something else."
    "I met with Dare and Kit, they explained what the BEF was and how they worked. Did you know it was created by President Reagan?"
    "No kidding?"
    "Dare said that because of plausible deniability, we technically don't exist. No glory, no honors; just the satisfaction of knowing we're in the front line to protect our country. The Force had access to the very latest technology and weaponry. Much of it not even deployed to the regular services. Sounded good to me, so here I am—What about you?"
    "Well, not a lot to tell. I'm adopted. Don't know who my real parents were. Raised by a wonderful family in Altus, Oklahoma. No brothers or sisters. My mom was a school teacher...
    "Oh, wow! My mom was too. But I have two brothers," Maria interrupted.
      "Cool—My dad was the mayor for ten years. He had a good friend who was a congressman. Got me an appointment to West Point. Played football. Did a couple of tours in Iraq with the Green Berets after I graduated. Got offered a move to the Secret Service and eventually was asked to head up the detail for President Thompson and—you know the rest."
    Maria sensed Mickey's demeanor becoming morose. She placed her hand on his shoulder.
    "Mickey, I think I know what you're feeling…"
    Mickey turned and Maria embraced him.
    "Maria, I can't help but feel I somehow let her down. It's eating me up."
    "Mickey, Mickey, please believe me, we will get her back. I promise you that. I've never been around a team like this."
    Mickey leaned back from the embrace and looked into her face.
    "Thanks, Maria, I really needed that."
    She hugged him again.

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EXCERPT from "Black Eagle Force - Sacred Mountain" - Chapt. 8

                                           EAGLE NEST RANCH
                                              BECERRO CREEK

    Mike and Jill rode two of the ranch horses down the rugged path toward Becerro Creek. He was on his favorite mare, Azure, an adopted line-back dun Kiger Mustang and Jill rode Scooter, a bright red sorrel Quarter horse gelding with a flax mane and tail. Both horses picked their way over the rocks, around the cactus and yucca as Mike led them down to the edge of the creek to his favorite spot on the ranch; a deep clear pool formed by a bend in the creek surrounded by massive oaks and cottonwood. They dismounted; let the horses ground tie, loosened their girths and walked over to a large flat slab of fossiliferous limestone by the creek's edge.
    Mike didn't know that this spot was also the favorite of his fifth great uncle, Jonathan Hermann. The twenty-four year old Jonathan had been killed back in 1836 when General Antonio Lopez De Santa Anna Perez De Lebron and his six thousand Mexican troops choose the part of the Rio Grande to cross where Eagle Nest Ranch lay in route to San Antonio de Béxar. The slaughter of all but one of the Hermann clan was the first battle prelude to the battle at the mission known as the Alamo. Mike's fifth great grandfather, Fredrich, was the sole Hermann survivor only because he had been on a supplies buying trip to Edinburgh. He arrived back at Eagle Nest shortly after the fight to find the rest of his family mutilated, bayoneted and desecrated. Fredrich noted with a small degree of satisfaction that his family put up a tremendous fight, accounting for over seventy of Santa Anna's soldiers.
    The horses began to graze the short buffalo grass while Jill carried a wicker type basket with sandwiches, fruit and bottled water over to the limestone outcrop. Mike had taken an old gray woolen blanket with wide red stripes that had been tied behind the cantle of his saddle. He spread it over the rock for them to sit on and enjoy a peaceful lunch away from the BEF facility before they had to start prepping for that night's mission.
    A bass slapped the water in the creek as Jill pulled the blanket back to get a closer look at the rock.
    "Look at all those different types of shells in the rock."
    "All this country was sea bottom during the Cretaceous. This type of rock makes great looking table tops when it's cut and polished," Mike explained.
    "I can believe that."
    "Ah, smoked ham, tomatoes, bread and butter pickles with mustard," Mike said as he opened the baggie and lifted up the top slice of homemade bread.
    "Do you never get tired of smoked ham?"
    "Not yet… Haven't found anything I thought was better. If it ain't broke, don't fix it… What did you make for you, turkey?"
    "Of course. I've never tasted turkey like this."
    "It's wild Rio Grande turkey. Don't think we've ever had store bought turkey on the ranch." Mike took a big bite of his sandwich, followed it with water from his bottle and continued, "God provides us a wonderful bounty. We only buy what we can't hunt or grow ourselves."
    "I see why you love it here so."
    "Five generations of Hermanns have lived here… Maybe we should talk about six," he said as he looked over the top of his sandwich at her.
    "Maybe we should talk about that after we do our job and get the President back… How did you and Maria finally work out your little problem you were having in the sim?"
    "Oh, that. Your suggestion about the targeting laser and the GPS did the trick. Just had to train our lying eyes not to look at the regular air speed indicator. And having the pilot not flying call out increases in airspeed from the GPS enabled me to keep eyes on terrain better at speed and be more aware of our inertia at a thinner altitude."
    Jill took a bite of her turkey sandwich and said, "Maybe we need to add another program to the flight computers to reduce the optical illusion effect and allow for air density."
    "I don't know… I think having to multitask tends to keep us sharper. Plus don't want to get to the point that we're just passengers."
    "Don't see the possibility of that. There's still only so much computers can do. It's like watching those computer generated actors in a film… Just isn't the same."
    "Roger that," Mike said as he leaned forward to brush a crumb of bread from Jill's lower lip.
    Their eyes met and like magnets, they came together in a passionate kiss.

EXCERPT from Chapt. 2 of Black Eagle Force - Eye of the Storm.

           DARE PHILLIPS CLEARLY REMEMBERED the face of the Marine Captain displayed on the large monitor in the BEF Command Center. He had really wanted to court martial the young Captain for insubordination in Iraq. Dare had been in command of a squadron of Super Cobra attack helicopters involved in a firefight in Najaf when the brash young Captain called him a stupid son of a bitch on the tactical radio. Dare smiled as he remembered how mad he was back then. The then Lt. Colonel Dare Phillips was a no nonsense hard charger and a fearless warrior.
    Mujahideen Shiite fighters had taken up positions inside a sacred mosque. Two dozen of them had pinned down the two squads under Captain Hermann's direct command. Several Marines were wounded and two were dead. Dare had refused to fire missiles at the mosque as very clear ROEs had recently been issued to prohibit such actions. Nobody, particularly a young Marine, was going to call Dare a stupid son of a bitch.
    Dare hovered 200 feet above the dust colored town after he had responded Unable to the request made by the unseen officer somewhere beneath him. Suddenly, one of the hundreds of former Iraqi military men, now a mujahideen, stepped out of the low mud colored building connected to the west side of the gilded mosque and lined him up in the sights of his Russian made RPG-7. He had fired and in less than a second, the tail rotor assembly of Dare's Super Cobra was history. Lift rotor torque forced his crippled bird to spin rapidly without the counter acting force of the tail rotor. The mortally wounded Cobra had landed hard and flipped over on impact, slightly injuring both Dare and his weapons operator.
    The rangy, broad shouldered Marine from Texas reacted quickly and dropped the insurgent who fired the rocket propelled grenade that took down Dare's chopper. The Captain's three shot burst had bracketed the Iraqi's heart. He was also the one who drug Dare and his WSO out of the wreckage, even while under fire from the mosque. That action is where Mike was awarded his first Silver Star and his Purple Heart. Yes, Dare Phillips knew the man in the picture well.
    "Cowboy, what the hell have you gotten yourself into?" Dare asked as Kit turned to him.
    "You know this guy?" Kit asked incredulously.
    "Oh, yeah, we go way back," was the short reply. Dare continued into the phone, "Mr. Richards, Dare Phillips again. How old is this satellite feed we've been watching?"
    The GS-11 supervisor at ICE checked his watch.
    "Twenty minutes, give or take. I can get you some additional footage in 35 minutes when the next NERA satellite comes within range."
    Dare thought for a second. The NERA, Near Earth Reconnaissance Asset, was not necessary. BEF had a RPV, Remote Piloted Vehicle, drone setup in Laredo; it could be launched remotely and in place in under 15 minutes. Kit watched the transformation come over Dare as his mind raced with the adrenaline one always gets before combat. He had seen it before in many other men, but this was the first time he had witnessed it in him. Dare spoke quickly to Richards,
    "That won't be necessary, we'll deploy our nearby BEF resources. With your concurrence, BEF will take over operational responsibility of this incident. Standard Protocol on my mark. The time is now 1705 Zulu…Mark."

    Back at the ICE intelligence facility in Bethesda, GS-11 Herbert Richards had noticed a change in Dare's voice. He had not personally met Dare, but knew he was thoroughly vetted all the way to Top Secret clearance by the entire US federal security hierarchy. Richards could not put his finger on the subtle change he heard, but it sounded something like steel was being forged inside the voice on the other end of the phone.
    "Homeland Security concurs the transfer of operational responsibility, Standard Protocol, at 1705 Zulu. Standing by if you require further assistance."
    Richards knew all the conversations were encrypted, time stamped, recorded and transcribed. As the phone connection terminated, he felt a slight tinge of pity for the people who would face the Black Eagle Force.