MAC-10: American made Sub-Machine Gun
MBITR: Multiband Inter/Intra Team Radio
MEK: Iranian terrorist organization sponsored by the United States
Mérida Initiative: American aide package given to the Mexican government to help them fight drug cartels
MK-19: Automatic belt-fed 40mm grenade launcher
Mk48: A 7.62 machine gun that is smaller and lighter than the M240B
MP5: Heckler and Koch 9mm sub-machine gun
MSR: Main Supply Route
MSS: Mission Support Site
NAFTA: North American Free Trade Agreement
NORTHCOM: Northern Command
NSA: National Security Agency, handles signal intercepts
NSC: National Security Council
NVA: North Vietnamese Army
OBI: Office of Bi-National Intelligence
OGA: Other Governmental Agencies, euphemism for CIA para-militaries
ONI: Office of Naval Intelligence
OP: Observation Post
OPCEN: Operations Center
Overwatch: A stationary element that provides security, and cover fire if need be, for a maneuver element
PCI's: Pre-Combat Inspections
PIT maneuver: Pursuit Intervention Technique, a technique to ram and stall out a car
PKM: Belt-fed Russian machine gun
PL: Platoon Leader
PMC: Private Military Company
PRI: Mexican political party that dominated the country for 71 years
PSD: Personal Security Detachment
PSYOP: Psychological Operations
PVS-14: Single tube night vision goggles
PVS-15: Dual tube night vision goggles
QRF: Quick Reaction Force
Rangers: US Airborne Light Infantry unit
RPG: Rocket Propelled Grenade
RRD: Regimental Reconnaissance Detachment, now known as RRC
RTB: Return To Base
S2: Intelligence staff section in a military unit
Samruk International: A Private Military Company based out of Astana, Kazakhstan. See Reflexive Fire for the origins of this company.
SATCOM: Satellite Communications
SBF: See Support by Fire
SCUBA: Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus
SEAL: SEa Air and Land, US Navy commandos
SEAL Team Six: US Navy Counter-Terrorism unit. Also known as Naval Special Warfare Development Group or just Dev for short.
Sicario: Spanish word for assassin.
SIG Blaser: State of the art sniper rifle with interchangeable barrels to allow more than one caliber of bullet to be used by the same platform
SIGINT: Signals Intelligence
Sinaloa cartel: Mexico's oldest drug cartel
SITREP: Situation Report
SOCOM: Special Operations Command
Special Forces: Also known as Green Berets, specialize in training indigenous forces. A separate unit from SEALs, Rangers, and Delta Force
Sunkar: Elite Kazakh police force
SUV: Sport Utility Vehicle
Swedish K: Sub-machine gun
Technical: Improvised combat vehicle. Usually a pickup truck with a machine gun mounted in the back
Thermite: Burns at high temperatures and is used to destroy enemy equipment
Thermo-baric: Heat+Pressure, a type of explosive designed to collapse structures from the inside
TNT: Trinitrotoluene explosives
TOC: Tactical Operations Center
UAV: Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
UHF: Ultra-High Frequency
UW: Unconventional Warfare
Uzi: Isreali made Sub-Machune Gun
VDO: Vehicle Drop Off
VHF: Very High Frequency
Weapon's Squad: One of four Squads in an Infantry Platoon. Weapons Squad employs machine guns while the other three Squads are composed of riflemen.
WIA: Wounded In Action
Zapatistas: Mexican populist rebel group
Zetas: Drug cartel founded by Special Forces soldiers who defected from the Mexican military.
Jack Murphy is an eight year Army Special Operations veteran who served as a Sniper and Team Leader in 3rd Ranger Battalion and as a Senior Weapons Sergeant on a Military Free Fall team in 5th Special Forces Group.
Growing up in New York, Jack Murphy enlisted in the US Army at age nineteen. Completing Infantry Basic Training, Airborne School, and the Ranger Indoctrination Program, he was assigned to 3rd Ranger Battalion. As a Ranger, he served as an Anti-Tank gunner, Sniper, and Team Leader, and also graduated from Ranger School and Sniper School.
After several deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq, he attended the Special Forces Assessment and Selection Course and was selected as a Special Forces Weapons Sergeant. Over a year was spent training in the Special Forces Qualification Course, including further weapons training, SERE School, language training, and more.
Assigned as the Senior Weapons Sergeant on a Military Free Fall team in 5th Special Forces Group, Murphy was again sent to numerous schools and training courses before being deployed to Iraq. Acting as the senior trainer and adviser to an Iraqi SWAT team, his Special Forces team conducted Direct Action and other missions across Northern Iraq.
Having left the military in 2010, he is now working towards a degree in Political Science at Columbia University. Murphy is the author of Reflexive Fire, Target Deck, the PROMIS series, and numerous non-fiction articles about Weapons, Tactics, Special Operations, Terrorism, and Counter-Terrorism. He has appeared in documentaries, on national television, and syndicated radio.
Jack's work appears frequently on SOFREP, the #1 source for news and information about US and Allied Special Operations. He also has a blog at Reflexivefire. He can be reached at reflexivefire@yahoo.com
© 2012 Jack Murphy
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any electronic, or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, to include, but not exclusive to audio or visual recordings of any description without permission from the copyright owner.
Target Deck, Samruk International, and the Samruk International logo are all trademarks of Jack Murphy. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
http://reflexivefire.com
First Edition
Written by a former Reconnaissance Marine and veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, Task Force Desperate is the gritty, fast-paced beginning of a new series of military thrillers. Jeff Stone and his team of Praetorian Security contractors are marking time on counter-piracy duty aboard a freighter in the Gulf of Aden when the boredom ends abruptly. A major US base on the Horn of Africa is overrun in a well-coordinated terrorist attack, and those base personnel who survive are taken hostage. With the world economy tanked, and most of the Western militaries dangerously thinned, the Praetorian operators find themselves to be the hostages' only hope of rescue. The mission wasn't going to be simple, or easy. But as events in East Africa accelerate, and outside players start to show their hand, the Praetorian shooters start to realize just what a desperate gamble they are embarked upon, and what this particular job is going to cost...
Dragged Back to Battle
Tommy Scarred Wolf thought his commando days were all behind him, until somebody messed with his family. Jennifer Scarred Wolf and her college girlfriends were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and now face death and worse. The kidnappers probably assumed nobody would be crazy enough to come after them.
The Shawnee Green Beret is going to show them the danger of assumptions.
&
nbsp; Tommy needs friends, funding, and firepower to accomplish what no government is willing to try. Hardly a stranger at pulling off the improbable, he soon assembles all three, and steams for a vice-ridden hellhole halfway around the globe.
His hand-picked team includes Dwight “Rocco” Cavarra, a former SEAL team commander; Jake McCallum, a Delta Force veteran; and Leon Campbell—an unflappable sniper whose conscience has been declared M.I.A. These are the survivors of Tommy’s last suicide mission, from an outfit unofficially known as Rocco’s Retreads. Together they are bound for two deadly jungles—one of trees and undergrowth; one of brick and iron. Waiting for them are modernday pirates, gunhappy sex traffickers, and an ultra-secret black ops team so dangerous even the CIA can’t touch them.
Soon it’s obvious there’s something more sinister than “white slavery” going on. What starts as a rescue mission rapidly degenerates into a small-scale war, with no quarter asked or given. Death is dealt with everything from bare hands to automatic weapons, but it’s going to take a lot more than brute force for the Retreads to fight their way out of this deathtrap.
Tier Zero is sequel to Henry Brown’s Hell and Gone, both available wherever books are sold online.
Kruger and his team are indicative of the evolution of warfare, they are former elite soldiers working for a Private Military Company that exists in the gray area between government and business. As security contractors they sometimes, but not always, work on behalf of the US Government essentially as a proxy force that can be denied when things go wrong.
The action clips along as Kruger's men are called into the Congo to retake a gold mine that has been captured by rebel fighters. Again, the scenario is anything but fiction and reminded me of the Port Soyo mission that Executive Outcomes executed in the 1990's. DR does his homework in regards to the geo-political perspective as well as the tactical aspects of this book. Although DR is a Navy veteran, he doesn't have any background in Infantry operations, something that is surprising as the action scenes are so spot on. Even the verbage and terminology is accurate to the point that I'm starting to think DR might be some kind of military contractor himself! Got anything you want to tell me DR?
Things get ugly for our protagonists as they move on to a secondary objective that they hadn't anticipated, a hostage rescue of some missionaries that have been captured by the same group of rebels. Teaming up with a Special Forces trained indigenous unit, Kruger's team has the odds stacked against them. They might be able to pull off the impossible, but it won't be pretty.
-Reviewed by Jack Murphy