SOBs #8: Eye Of The Fire

SOBs #8: Eye Of The Fire, by Jack Hild

September, 1985  Gold Eagle Books

Not sure why I took so long to get back to SOBs. Eye Of The Fire is another strong entry that again proves that this series was the unsung jewel of the Gold Eagle line; as I’ve mentioned before, I got a copy of SOBs with every Gold Eagle shipment, and would place each volume side-by-side on my bookshelf, but I never read a single one of them. 

I think I tried to, though, and the cover of Eye Of The Fire (by Ron Lesser?) is so familiar that I’m certain I had it as a kid; I also seem to recall trying to read it and giving it up after a chapter or two. Likely at the time SOBs seemed too slow-going for me, and I probably just wanted the more action-focused stuff typical of the Gold Eagle imprint. Reading the books now, as an “adult,” I appreciate the series a lot more than I ever could have as a kid; the small group of writers who handled the series clearly were working together to retain a sense of continuity and vibe, and there’s a focus on characterization that isn’t as evident in the other Gold Eagle publications. 

This volume was handled by Robin Hardy, who I believe wrote the majority of the books in the series. Hardy also wrote the previous volume, but there’s not much pickup in this one; indeed, it mostly picks up from #6: Red Hammer Down, if only in how we finally get pickup on what’s going on with Billy Two. As we’ll recall, in that earlier volume the American Indian Sobs member was captured and mentally tortured and whatnot, and he’s been out of the series since then; now he’s back, and he’s in full-on “Billy from Predator” mode. 

It seems very suspicious how similar the two Billys are; one almost wonders if the movie character was inspired by Billy Two. Just as Billy became increasingly spaced-out and “Indian” as Predator progressed, up to putting on warpaint, so too is Billy in SOBs; he spends the majority of Eye Of The Fire in facepaint with feathers in his hair, and is prone to talking to visions or hallucinations. 

In short, Billy Two is by far the most interesting character in the series, and the most entertaining, to the extent that “series protagonist” Nile Barrabas is sort of lost in the shuffle. Occasionally Hardy will give us scenes from Barrabas’s perspective, and we learn he’s a no-nonsense, taciturn leader of men and whatnot…but he’s just not very memorable. Same goes for most of the other Sobs, but at least the series authors strive to make them somewhat identifiable: Nanos is the ladies man, Beck is the computer guy, and Claude is the, uh…well, he’s “the black one.” 

The back cover will tell you that the plot of Eye Of The Fire concerns the Sobs rescuing “Colonel D” from a Cuban prison, and while that’s sort of true, it takes a goodly portion of the narrative to get there. Rather, the main thrust of this 222 page installment is the Sobs trying to track down young Tony Lopez, 17 year-old brother of former Sob Hector Lopez, who was killed in action in #4: Show No Mercy. 

Tony takes up a goodly portion of the narrative; he’s run away from home now that he’s a “man,” determined to look up these bad-ass mercenaries his big brother hung out with. Instead Tony nearly gets blown away by Nanos and the others when he sneaks into the temporary Sobs headquarters in Tampa, then later he’s kidnapped by this right-wing group calling itself X Command, which reports to the senator who has been a recurring character in the series – a never-named senator who has a grudge with the Sobs and is constantly plotting to get them killed on a mission. We are reminded how this guy was crippled in the fourth volume (another Hardy installment), but we still don’t know why he hates the Sobs so much…or maybe we were told but I forgot. 

The Colonel D stuff only comes and goes sporadically, but basically he’s a sadist known for training death squads in Latin America. Now the Cubans have him and are interrogating him, and Walker Jessup – the fixer for the Sobs – wants Barrabas and team to slip into Cuba and exterminate Colonel D, to keep his mouth shut. “I’m not an executioner,” Barrabas angrily states, making one wonder if Robin Green were slyly taking a dig at Gold Eagle’s most popular series. 

It seems that the schtick with SOBs is that each volume goes for the slow build; Barrabas and team in their normal life as they prepare for the mission, with the mission itself taking up the final quarter. That is certainly true here, with action sporadic in the first three-thirds of the book; perhaps a reason why I was never able to get into the series as an action junkie kid in the ‘80s. 

But when Billy Two enters the narrative, the game changes big time. First we have a great psychedelic bit where he’s meditating nude in the desert, and approached by the ghost of Hector Lopez, who tells Billy that the team needs him. So Billy, still naked, walks off. When he shows up later he’s in full-on “mystical Indian badass” mode, making profound, spaced-out statements before killing guys with his bare hands. There’s a great part where he dives into the ocean and takes on a pair of frogmen. 

The cover art is not a lie, as this is very much a scuba-based mission for the Sobs. Colonel D is in an old fortress, and the only way the team can get in is by swimming underwater for a mile and then infiltrating from the ground up. This is a tensely done sequence that reminded me of a similar sequence in the never-published The Baroness #10. Robin Hardy ups the ante with not only the Cubans after the Sobs, but X Command as well; the busy plotting has these right-wingers using Barrabas to do the heavy lifting of freeing Colonel D, so that they can take Colonel D from Barrabas. 

When the action does go down, it is competently handled if not super gory. Also, there’s hardly any of the excessive gun-detailing Gold Eagle books could get mired in. That said, Robin Hardy has an annoying tendency to deliver clunky writing in the action scenes, often resorting to stuff like “Ka-blamm!” and also relying hugely on single-line paragraphs. I know this is to make things seem punchy and tense, but when you have several single-line paragraphs per page, the effect is a little squandered. 

Overall, though, Eye Of The Fire keeps moving for the majority of its 222 pages, though the stuff with teen psycho “The Kid” is a bit much. Hardy uses this in the finale as the opportunity for Barrabas to exposit on how he’s no hero, but he’s no killer, but all of this seems a bit too “deep” for a men’s adventure series. But then, stuff like this is what separates SOBs from the Gold Eagle line; as stated, there is more care to the characterization and the narrative structure. The highlight is Billy Two – if the series had been published in the ‘70s, he would have been the main (and perhaps only) protagonist – and if anything I look forward to seeing how the other SOBs writers handle him. 

I’ll let you all know if I win that 1986 Jeep they’re running the sweepstakes for on the cover. I just mailed in my entry!

SOBs #7: River Of Flesh

SOBs #7: River Of Flesh, by Jack Hild

July, 1985  Gold Eagle

The seventh SOBs is by Robin Hardy, who previously wrote #4: Show No Mercy. In my review of that one I opined that Robin Hardy might have been…a woman! However all I needed to do was check the damn copyright page, which credits “Robin Hardy for his contribution to this work.” (Italics mine.) I obviously don’t know anything about Hardy, but his prose style seemed somewhat similar to me this time…so either I was flashing back to his style on the fourth volume or he’s ghostwritten something else I’ve read and reviewed on here. 

Now I know you all are wondering – what about Billy Two? As we recall, the previous volume featured Billy, who had been captured in the climax of #5: Gulag War, fighting his way to freedom. Billy is seldom mentioned in River of Flesh, and there’s absolutely no indication he went through anything horrific in the past few volumes. The implication is clear that Robin Hardy was not the writer of those volumes, and likely was writing his own installment concurrently. I get the impression that the stable of SOBs authors had a few characters that were “theirs,” if you know what I mean, and thus I’m guessing that Billy Two was “owned” by  Alan Philipson. 

As for Robin Hardy, his character is Geoff Bishop, a mercenary pilot who last appeared in, wouldja believe, the fourth volume, which as mentioned was also by Hardy. And hey not only that, but Bishop is also banging the sole female Soldier of Barrabas, Lee Hatton. In fact we meet Bishop just after he’s gotten out of bed with Lee; true to Gold Eagle form, it’s not like there’s actually any sex in the novel. Same goes for Barrabas, who has a steady girlfriend named Erika, based out of Amsterdam. In the ‘80s, men’s adventure heroes rarely would meet some exotic floozy while on a mission, as they would have in the ‘70s…but the authors would be sure to inform us the heroes had a steady girlfriend “back some,” so we wouldn’t think they were gay or anything. 

This one opens with a 17-page prologue set during the Vietnam War, with Barrabas determined to kill a “Cambodian murderer” named Kon. A warlord known for massacring entire villages, Kon has been an enternal thorn in Barrabas’s side, and Barrabas goes out with some Special Forces guys to punch his ticket. But it turns out to be an ambush and in the melee a fellow soldier named Scott is taken captive; Barrabas is certain he will be tortured to death, same as the other American captives Kon has taken prisoner. 

Now, all these years later, Barrabas will finally get his chance to settle the score. He’s called in by Jessup, the obese Fed who acts as the contact for the Soldiers of Barrabas, and briefed on the apparent presence of chemical agents in the jungles of Cambodia. The Feds want Barrabas and team to go in and find out what is behind this chemical nefariousness. Little does Barrabas know it is his old nemesis Kon, who now rules his own village in Cambodia, an army of Khmer Rogue under his command. But Hardy gussies up the simple plot by making the reader sympathize with Kon, at least in some regard; despite his sadism and penchant for massacring countless innocents, Kon has populated his village with those who were victims of Agent Orange. Vietnamese, Cambodians, even Americans, all of whom have suffered in some fashion (cancer, deformities, etc) from the chemical agent used by the US during the war. 

Even Kon’s little daughter suffers from a horrific facial deformity; we are informed that the children born to those who came into contact with Agent Orange also suffer from defects. So this makes the reader at least sympathize somewhat with Kon. However as mentioned he’s sadistic, and crazy to boot. And hell, even his little daughter shares his sadism, gleefully laughing as her daddy kills off entire villages of innocents while testing out his new chemical warfare. For Kon’s plan is to strike back at the US – he has put his people to work to develop a chemical agent even more devastating than Agent Orange, and he plans to pollute the waters of an American city with it. 

Barrabas is unaware of any of this, however, and for the most part River Of Flesh is more of a suspense thriller than an action onslaught. This seems to be the schtick of SOBs; each volume even follows the same setup, with Barrabas briefed on the mission, then putting his team together, training them, and then the volume climaxes with the actual mission being carried out. We even have the recurring motif of the “core” SOBs going about their normal lives before receiving the call to assemble; Liam O’Toole, the warrior-poet, will be getting into some humorous situation (this time responding to a “swinger’s magazine ad” and about to have sex with a suprisingly-hotstuff woman), and Nanos, the muscular lunkheaded one, will be getting drunk, or getting over being drunk. 

Hardy introduces what promises to be a developing subplot here with the guys, apropos of nothing, trying to knock Nanos out of his latest stupor by telling him to think of Lee Hatton – and how attractive she is. While we readers are reminded each volume that Lee Hatton is one smokin’ hot babe, apparently the actual members of the team have never actually noticed it! They think of her as just “one of the guys” and such. But after this errant comment Nanos becomes hooked on Lee, making insinuating comments to her throughout the rest of the novel. Meanwhile, Lee and Bishop are keeping their relationship secret, thus Hardy introduces the potential for a love triangle: Nanos now has the burnin’ yearnin’ for Lee, but Lee is developing feelings for Bishop. 

Speaking of feelings, Barrabas’s girlfriend Erika has a bigger role in River Of Flesh. Hardy must have been hard-pressed to fill these particular 200+ pages, as a lot of the book’s narrative concerns Erika trying to buy artifacts from mythical Angkor Wat. In fact Hardy baldly ties the two plot threads together; Barrabas gives Erika a kiss goodbye in Amsterdam and heads to Thailand for his latest mission…and runs into Erika at the hotel, as she too has come here to acquire those artifacts. Her contact is a sleazy Frenchman named Raul, who knows how to slip over the border into Cambodia. Raul also happens to be working for the warlord Kon. Only gradually does all this come out into the open, with lots of scenes of Barrabs dithering with Raul for information. 

Action is scant. There’s a part where Erika and Raul are attacked by commandos in black masks, but this turns out to be a Mission: Impossible-type ruse. In fact it occurs to me that SOBs is essentially a men’s adventure version of Mission: Impossible. I mean hell it actually just occurred to me as I was typing this sentence – Nile Barrabas even has white hair, same as the IMF team’s Jim Phelps! The difference though is that the plot builds to climactic action instead of a carefully-staged con. The finale of River Of Flesh isn’t too focused on action, though; there’s more character drama than typical of the genre, with the revelation that a core of American prisoners from ‘Nam live in Kon’s village…and might not want to leave. 

That said, there is some cool stuff, like the SOBs appropriating some of Kon’s vintage American muscle cars and augmenting them with weapons – like an M-60 affixed to the roof. But we aren’t talking a super violent thrill ride here: “gore lines were drawn across his chest” and such is about the extent of the violent carnage Hardy delivers. I also wasn’t fond of the finale. Barrabas has been determined to kill Kon for decades, but Hardy has our white-haired hero held captive by Kon’s gun while another SOB sneaks up behind the Cambodian warlord…and shoots him in the back. But at least the story ends with someone getting eaten by lions…even though this too happens off-page. 

Overall River Of Flesh was passable, however there was a bit more characterization than typical for the genre. Mostly I just wanted to find out what happened to Billy Two, after the crazy previous volume. Hopefully he will return in the next installment.

SOBs #5: Gulag War

SOBs #5: Gulag War, by Jack Hild

March, 1985  Gold Eagle

Alan Philipson turns in a fast-moving installment of SOBs that’s basically the setup for the next volume. It would probably be best to read these two novels back to back, but I read that fifth installment years ago so my memories of it are few. I do remember feeling like I was missing out on a large part of the story, but at the time it was the only volume of the series I had. (I later got the entire series for a pittance…like ten bucks or something.) And no wonder I felt like I was missing out on a large part of the story, because this fifth volume has all the material I was missing out on. In reality the two volumes really just tell one long story. 

What I found even more interesting is that Philipson is at pains to spoof the genre this time. There are a few mockings of The Executioner throughout the book. First, redheaded Liam O’Toole, the warrior poet of the group, has a meeting with a publisher in New York. O’Toole thinks it’s because they want to print some of his poetry, but in reality it’s so the publisher can introduce him to the author of the “adventure for men” series The Obliterator. In his designer military boots and with his artificial tough guy appearance, author Malcolm Strangways is intended as a spoof, but surely not of Don Pendleton. I got more the impression of someone like Mark Roberts. O’Toole makes fun of one of the novels – pointing out an incorrect firearm detail on the cover and also mocking some of the narrative. He ridicules the entire action-adventure genre – and the people who write it – and leaves, turning the publisher down cold. And later in the novel, another character jokes that he learned about something “from a paperback.” Anyway, I found this genre-spoofing kind of interesting, as it’s very out of line with the average Gold Eagle publication. 

But then, SOBs itself is unusual so far as Gold Eagle goes. As I mentioned before, it’s too bad I didn’t read the series as a kid, even though I dutifully collected it (which was easy, as I’d get a copy every other month as part of the Gold Eagle Reader Service). I’m not sure I would have appreciated it, as the series is more carefully constructed than most, with more of a focus on characterization and world-building. And as mentioned there’s also a subtle underlay of satire. But then, none of the characters here have the memorable spark of the guys in Able Team or Phoenix Force; indeed, it’s kind of hard to tell the SOBs apart, and also there seems to be a new guy every volume. This obviously gives the series a bit more suspense than those other Gold Eagle series, as it means the characters are more expendable than the recurring heroes of those other Gold Eagle series. 

Another thing I get about SOBs is that each novel mostly seems to be setup. While there is occasional action, for the most part these books are more about establishing the situation, assembling the team for this particular mission, and then carrying out the mission in the final quarter. So there’s a bit more plotting than the genre average. I also get a bit of a ‘70s vibe from the books, and I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s just because there seems to be a general rebellious vibe to the series, and it’s likely the subtle genre spoofing that’s making me get the impression. Or perhaps I’m just imagining things. There’s also a bit more continuity than the typical Gold Eagle books of the era; there’s this senator who has a grudge against the SOBs, particularly after being paralyzed below the waist after the climactic events of the previous volume. Indeed it is he who tasks SOBs handler Wakler Jessup with this latest mission, which is practically suicidal. 

And speaking of plotting, Gulag War is so complexly plotted that I couldn’t really fathom what the setup was. Basically it’s a two-pronged mission in which the SOBs are supposed to venture into Siberia and spring an imprisoned Russian scientist, Leonov, from a gulag. But at the same time another group of SOBs will sell a bogus tank mainframe to GRU representatives, trying to use the GRU-KGB rivalry to get themselves into Russia. If I understand it all correctly, the SOBs plan to fool the GRU into thinking they are getting this newfangled tank mainframe gadget, and in exchange the GRU will give the SOBs safe passage to Siberia. Or something! But the gist of it is that head SOB Nile Barrabas plans to swindle the GRU and escape them in Siberia, free Leonov from the gulag, and escape to safety. 

Central to this plan is a “bush pilot” with the memorable name Chank Dayo; he is the newest SOB, and has gotten the gig from Billy Two, the American Indian SOB who stars in the next volume. Dayo is an Eskimo, and also has a pet bear. I can’t even remember much about him from the next volume, but Philipson again doles out some subtle genre spoofery with Dayo telling Billy Two that he, Dayo, is certain he’s going to die on this mission. This to me seems like Philipson perhaps making fun of how all the new guys die. Otherwise Dayo doesn’t contribute much to the tale, and indeed the entire premise of his intro is rendered moot when the SOBs do get to Siberia…and the one plane available is of a type Dayo has no familiarity with. So they have to kidnap a Soviet pilot and have him give Dayo some on-the-job training. 

As with previous volumes, a good portion of the opening half is devoted to setting up the various characters and getting us into their everyday lives. There’s also time-wasting stuff about Leonov’s miserable lot in the Siberian gulag. As ever the book is too long; it seems that a gimmick with SOBs is that the books were around 220 pages long, which is a bit longer than the average and again is a measure of how they were more devoted to plot than action. We also get stuff on the peripheral figures in the world of the SOBs, ie the guys who don’t even go on the missions, like obese Walker Jessup and the Dutch siblings who are part of Barrabas’s life – the Dutch guy who runs the rock club in Amsterdam and the Dutch guy’s sister who is in love with Barrabas. (Obviously I failed to note their names.) I recall both playing a part in the ensuing volume. 

The first real action scene is tied in with the belabored plot; in Rio, SOBs Claude and Nanos set up the trade with the GRU, and then get in a running gunfight with State Department agents. Nanos has to reconcile with the fact that he’ll be killing American agents, but this is settled for him when they start shooting at him. One hallmark SOBs shares with the overall Gold Eagle line is a healthy disrespect for the American intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA, which is consistently portrayed as a nefarious shadow agency in most all Gold Eagle novels. But I found this negative portrayal of the State Department interesting from a modern-day perspective. Otherwise this is it for Claude and Nanos in the novel; they hand over the mainframe and get in a long fight with State Dept. agents, and meanwhile a separate faction of SOBs take on the second half of the mission. 

This portion takes up the majority of the narrative. The team who handles this greater-risk assignment is Barrabas himself, super-hot brunette Dr. Lee Hatton, Liam O’Toole, Billy Two, Chank Dayo, and Nate Beck (the computer guy). Again it’s more on the suspense tip as they fly to Moscow, and then with a GRU escort they head on to Siberia. Here we meet Baladin, the sadistic GRU boss who factors prominently in the next volume, given that he’s out for revenge for what happens to him here. Actually the reader would have no idea Baladin even survives this volume; last we see of him, Lee Hatton has literally ripped Baladin’s balls off (even stuffing them in his pocket!) and has left him for dead. This leads to yet another Executioner piss-take, when Lee sneers to Baladin, “Stay hard, guy.” I seem to recall “Stay hard” was a Bolan maxim (despite the juvenile way I’ve always interpreted the phrase), and in fact it might have even been on a bumper sticker Gold Eagle included as part of the Reader Service. (Or maybe it was “Live large?”) 

At any rate, the SOBs are pretty ruthless here. Lee deals with Baladin so cruelly because he not only gave her a thorough (and off-page) body cavity search, but also because he tried to force himself on her – something he boasts of doing to many other women. Lee’s emasculation is not only revenge for herself but for the other women Baladin hurt. However her attack sets off a veritable massacre of the other GRU; the SOBs kill several of them in their sleep, slitting throats and shooting them dead. “Killing commies with commie bullets,” as Billy Two puts it. The GRU murdered, our heroes commandeer the sole plane here and take it to the gulag, where they intend to save Leonov. We get a bit of a Rambo II prefigure when they end up rescuring even more emaciated, half-dead prisoners. 

As readers of the series know, Billy Two is pretty much the star of the next volume, which details his escape from the Soviets. Interestingly the SOBs think Billy is dead; he’s separated in the action to free Leonov, and the group sees him hit the ground while being shot at. Dr. Lee even gives her expert opinion that Billy’s dead – though she can only see his “corpse” off in the distance. Readers learn though at novel’s end that Billy has survived, the prisoner of Russians who intend to drug him. Also, Barrabas realizes the entire mission was a waste, as Leonov has been rendered a nutcase, spouting nothing but gibberish on TV. 

Another new gimmick added to the series is a running gag on how much of an “s.o.b.” author Jack Hild is himself. Gulag War closes with two facetious “letters from readers” on the fictitious Hild…fake letters from fake readers about the fake author, which is about as postmodern as this imprint ever got:

SOBs #4: Show No Mercy

SOBs #4: Show No Mercy, by Jack Hild
January, 1985  Gold Eagle Books

I almost forgot about the SOBs series; it’s been three years since I read the previous volume, but this one’s courtesy a new author so there’s no continuity to worry about. Per the copyright page a Robin Hardy wrote Show No Mercy, and the only author named “Robin Hardy” I can find is a lady named Robin Moore Hardy, who was born in Fort Worth in 1955 and began publishing novels in 1984. This would put the start of her writing career right around the timeframe that SOBs was being published, so it’s my assumption that she is indeed the Robin Hardy who wrote several volumes of the series.

If this is the case, then there are no giveaways that this version of “Jack Hild” is a lady; true there’s no sex or exploitation of the (few) female characters, but that’s par for the course in 1980s men’s adventure novels. The violence is fairly minimal, though; indeed the novel has more the vibe of a mainstream thriller than your typical men’s adventure joint, slowly building to the action finale over the course of 220+ pages. Unfortunately the main villain of the novel – a seven-foot giant named Jeremiah who runs a compound of brainwashed followers in El Salvador – is kept off-page too long, and his crazy jungle domain isn’t exploited to its full extent.

We meet Barrabas as he’s flying back to the US from Germany, having broken off a romantic interlude with his girlfriend, recurring character Erika Dykstra. She won’t appear this volume. Heavyset handler Walker Jessup has summoned Barrabas to New York, where he delivers the latest mission courtesy the senator who has given Barrabas’s soldiers all their previous missions: head into El Salvador and wipe out Jeremiah and his army of soldiers before they bring chaos to already-chaotic Central America. Oh, and while they’re down there they can also kill the female leader of the leftist guerrillas.

There’s a fair bit of US foreign policy bashing in Show No Mercy, more than you’d expect from an ‘80s Gold Eagle publication. But then the earlier volumes also had a sort of left-wing vibe, if for no other reason than the occasional mention of rock songs or the fact that some of the SOBs had counterculture backgrounds. But we are constantly reminded that the US government goofed, backing the sadistic Contras rather than the left-wing Sandanistas, and Barrabas is incensed that he’s now expected to clean up the government’s mess.

Too much time is placed on putting the team together. They’re the usual suspects returning from previous volumes, with a new guy named Geoff Bishop who’s a pilot. We also get the occasional reminder that Lee Hatton, the Smurfette of the SOBs, is smokin’ hot, but otherwise she’s as bland and forgettable as the other soldiers – save as ever for Billy Two, who comes off as a bit cynical this time around. I still feel there are too many characters on display and it’s tough to remember at times who is who, especially when it’s been three years since I read one of these books.

So we’ve got this plot of a religious nutjob and his army of brainwashed soldiers looking to raise hell down in Central America, and Barrabas and team are finally together and ready to go down there and bust those fuckers up. But what does Hardy do? Comes up with a pages-filling sequence in which some of Barrabas’s soldiers pose as employees at the Panama Canal, checking out the storage on the ship that’s carrying stolen weapons down to Jeremiah. These weapons have been taken by a wily, coke-snorting American terrorist named Beam, who regularly steals weapons for the religious figure and takes them down to El Salvador in this ship.

This does eventually lead to a firefight in which Hardy pays hommage to a recurring series schtick – one of the SOBs gets wasted. In this case it’s (SPOILER ALERT) Lopez, who I couldn’t remember from previous volumes but we do get a reminder that Lee Hatton sewed up his arm back in the lackluster first volume. His death is sort of built up, with best bud Nanos crying, and then Barrabas wondering how Lee will react to the news, but Hardy must forget about all this because it’s not really brought up again. And meanwhile Beam gets away, worming his way down to Jeremiah’s armed camp.

The leader of the guerrillas turns out to be a smokin’ hot babe named Rosaria; Barrabas of course doesn’t kill her despite his orders, given that he’s sort of aligned with her cause, anyway. It’s the ‘80s and all so absolutely nothing is made of her smokin’ hotness; if this book had been published 10-20 years before, Barrabas would be hooking up with her in a jungle hut posthaste. But in the ‘80s it’s all about guns and stuff, other than the occasional reminder how pretty Rosaria us.

It's unfortunate that we don’t get to Jeremiah’s “New Society” compound until late in the novel. It’s all very Apocalypse Now as the hulking Jeremiah surrounds himself with brainwashed vassals who are prepared to start various wars across Central America. An increasingly nervous Beam is treated to a tour of the camp, which rests beside a volcano and has an underground well system – Jeremiah shows off the drugs he filters into the water to keep his followers nice and brainwashed. All this reminded me of Tilt! in that Jeremiah got his start in San Francisco in the late ‘60s, preaching to the psychedelic masses; the implication is that these gun-toting mind controlled soldiers were originally acid-fried hippies.

There are like 500 of these soldiers, and believe it or not the SOBs wipe them all out in like a page and a half, conveniently hammering the convoy as it leaves Jeremiah’s camp. After this the nutjob only has a few of his elite guards with him, making the SOBs assault on the camp relatively easy – and anticlimactic. As I say, there’s all kinds of potential here, but Hardy avoids it, save for a hand-to-hand fight to the death between Barrabas and Jeremiah. There’s more heroic sacrifice here, but not courtesy any more of the SOBs.

All told, Show No Mercy is fairly fast-moving for such a long novel (at least for this genre), and Hardy’s penchant for single-line sentences adds to the quick-moving vibe. But the lack of proper exploitation of the subject kind of ruined it for me, and I’m still not finding myself very interested in Barrabas, his SOBs, or the series itself.

SOBs #3: Butchers Of Eden

SOBs #3: Butchers Of Eden, by Jack Hild
November, 1984  Gold Eagle Books

Alan Philipson turns in this third volume of SOBs, which takes place not long after the previous volume, which was also courtesy Philippson. Running to 219 pages (a bit long for a Gold Eagle novel of the era, I believe), Butchers of Eden doesn’t really feel much like a SOBs novel for the first half or so.

Instead, it’s more of a no-frills suspense deal, one with a vague Joseph Conrad vibe, or maybe that was just the Nyquil I was taking at the time. Nile Barrabas is in Sri Lanka with his “blonde goddess” girlfriend Erika Dykstra and her heavyset brother Gunther; the siblings run the family arms-supplying business, and are series regulars while not officially being members of the SOBs. The trio have come here to Sri Lanka to help out T.M. Something-Or-Other (he has like a sentence-long last name), who oversees the family business in this part of the world.

But there’s trouble brewing in “Eden” (as Barrabas thinks of Sri Lanka); the population, roughly split between Buddhists and Hindus, is on the verge of civil war. The Buddhists, whom we are told are lazy and indolent, like to blame all their troubles on the hard-working Hindus, and given all the problems lately the Buddhists are becoming even more and more hostile. To the point that T.M., a Hindu, is pressured by Erika and Gunther to leave Sri Lanka, taking his family along with him. Barrabas has come along…well, for some reason, I guess.

This opening section seems to come from a whole different genre than men’s adventure, with the Buddhist-Hindu tensions rapidly heading toward boil, and Erika and Gunther vainly trying to get T.M. to leave the country. Philipson occasionally cuts over to Karl Heiss, onetime CIA agent turned heroin trafficker turned mercenary, last seen in the first volume. Back during the ‘Nam days Heiss ran a heroin empire with the depraved Vietnamese colonel Son Ny; a heroin empire which was destroyed by young Nile Barrabas, in an origin story somewhat similar to that of The Penetrator.

As we’ll recall from the first volume, Heiss was not killed by Barrabas at the end of that story (for lame reasons), instead turned over to the local police there in Kaliba, Africa, where Heiss had been part of a revolutionary plot. Butchers Of Eden opens with Heiss in nearly skeletal shape, having suffered these past three months in the dank hellhole; he is saved by merciless American mercenaries he remembers from the ‘Nam years. Men who were part of Son Ny’s mercenary army, these guys free Heiss and take him to Sri Lanka, where Son Ny has set up his most recent shop.

Son Ny wants to start up his heroin empire again, and wants to work again with Heiss. As an incentive he offers Barrabas’s head on a silver platter; knowing Barrabas is here in Sri Lanka, Son Ny has planned a trap. He’s taken over a rubber plantation deep in the jungle and stocked it with men, machine guns, and booby traps. The plan is to capture Erika Dykstra, whom Son Ny himself has lusted after since Vietnam, and to lure Barrabas in to rescue her. Heiss says what the hell and agrees. 

The trap is sprung while the Buddhists are in full-on riot in the streets of Sri Lanka; Erika and Gunther, having been taken downtown along with T.M. by the corrupt cops, are attacked by those mercenary soldiers. Despite being shot in the friggin’ head, Gunther somehow lives, but Erika is captured. Barrabas scouts out the rubber plantation and makes a call to his CIA contact, Walker Jessup, who each volume is the man who assembles the SOBs. Nearly haflway in we are finally reunited with them, and all the surviving members from previous volumes return, save for Hayes (aka “the black one”) and Dr. Hatton (aka “the female one”).

While those two don’t appear, a quite unexpected character does – none other than The Executioner himself. While dozing in the jungle Barrabas dreams of a ‘Nam incident he shared with “Sgt. Mercy” as they chased a phantom squad of Viet Cong. It’s a nice scene but one gets the suspicion the idea was forced upon Philipson by Gold Eagle’s editors to ensure consistency with the rest of the line. And anyway it’s all forgotten once the SOBs show up and launch their assault on the rubber plantation.

Obese Walker Jessup has also come along, much to Barrabas’s surprise, and Philipson has him meeting the other SOBs face-to-face for the first time. He remains behind to watch for any attempted escapes on the sole rode out of the plantation while the rest of the force handles the dirty work. It’s all very military fiction-esque as the SOBs take out gun towers and roving security patrols. It gets a bit more men’s adventure-esque (ie less concerned with real-world “strategy” and such) when Lopez, the wiry Hispanic SOB, appropriates an M-60, drapes some ammo across his shoulders, and goes around blasting people, places, and things to shreds.

Heiss for unstated reasons spares Erika, who has been kept bound to a chair throughout. Heiss and Son Ny escape, but Jessup stops them – turns out Jessup has come here because he was under orders to ensure Heiss’s escape, as the CIA wants to use him for some unknown purpose. Barrabas is properly pissed when he finds out, but there isn’t much he can do, plus Erika is unscathed, so there’s that. And meanwhile Barrabas has sliced Son Ny in half with a car! A pretty grisly ending, but I figured Son Ny would stick around for more volumes.

And that’s that – T.M. Whasisname and family do in fact leave Sri Lanka at the end (and Philipson by the way includes a too-long subplot about T.M.’s family overcoming various setbacks and dangers), and Barrabas heads off for the next volume, which hopefully will be a bit more entertaining. Not that Butchers Of Eden was bad – Philipson’s writing was as ever quite good – I just didn’t enjoy it as much as the other SOBs I’ve read. Save of course for the first one, which was a dud.

SOBs #2: The Plains Of Fire

SOBs #2: The Plains Of Fire, by Jack Hild
February, 1984  Gold Eagle Books

The second volume of SOBs is much better than the first, and I’d recommend anyone new to this series to just skip Jack Canon’s first installment and start with this one, which was written by Alan Philipson, who would go on to become one of the regular authors on the series.

Philipson wisely avoids all of the scene-setting and character-building which stalled Canon’s first volume, doling out brief blocks of background for each of the Soldiers of Barrabas as he introduces them in action. He also gets to the good stuff much more quickly, and does a great job in killing off the despicable villains in memorable ways. Compare to Canon, who took forever to even get to any action, and then quickly dispensed with the villains in almost perfunctory fashion.

And the villains are quite despicable this time; they’re a legion of Islamic Revolutionary Guards, aka Pasdars, who when we meet them are in the process of torturing one of their own. The place is Iran, the man being tortured is a fervent Muslim who idolizes the Ayatollah, and the sadist in charge of the man’s torture is Razod, who has the scientist stripped down and then hammers the man’s balls to a chair, and then sets him on fire!! Why is Razod doing this? Because the scientists have discovered that the nukes they’ve been working feverishly on are going to be used in terrorist actions, and they’ve complained about it.

Well, what else can the US government do but call in the Soldiers of Barrabas? I mean, what with all those goddam liberals it isn’t like they can send in Delta Force or the Marines or whatever. So once again our mysterious Senator tasks Walker Jessup with the mission: for the SOBs to covertly venture into Iran, kill everyone, disarm the nuclear bombs, and make the whole thing look like a nuclear accident. Jessup, who has a much more contentious relationship with the Senator in Philipson’s hands, only agrees to the mission if the pay will be $200k per person, plus expenses.

The team this time is the same as the last, an unwieldy group of ten mercenaries, save for Lopez, who we are informed is still “recuperating” from the injuries he sustained last time. Barrabas is back in Amsterdam, hanging out in the heavy metal-playing nightclub of his friend/gun-runner Gunther Dykstra, the brother of Erika, Barrabas’s current woman. After meeting with Jessup Barrabas calls together his SOBs, and thankfully Philipson doesn’t make this “the” novel; within just a few pages he has them all in “The Bunker,” aka the rolling compound owned by Dr. Lee Sutton in Malaga.

Lee by the way has gotten tougher, something Philipson makes a point of calling out in the narrative. Since the previous mission, some time ago (months?), she’s continued to train, to the point where she’s in better shape than most of the other mercs, who have spent their time off laying around, getting drunk and getting laid. Philipson juggles the big group of characters around, but you can already tell in this earliest volume that there are certain favorites, besides Barrabas; namely, Lee, Billy Two, Nanos the Greek, and Liam O’Toole. The others sort of fade into the woodwork.

Barrabas lays down the dangers of the job, but the team’s all for it. They head to Bahrain in various groups, with Gunther using his gunrunning contacts to do the brunt of the cover story, using a shipment of helicopter gear shift boxes as a means to convey the team in-country. Philipson brings the local world to life with the team negotiating with the shady owner of a dhow, one which is powered by four big engines and will get them across into Iran, but they’re certain the dude is planning to kill them.

This is an almost First Blood Part II-esque scene, with the three smallest members of the team going down into the dhow to search for any hidden attackers. Lee of course is the first to find them, and when the dudes come out of the shadows and grab her, she proves herself again to be a completely different character than she was in the first book, killing one of them with a blow to the heart and then firing a gun point-blank into the crotch of the other! By the way, one thing to mention is that, while there’s plentiful violence, Philipson does not exploit the gore; usually, when someone is shot, we just read that he falls down.

The Pasdars are on a remote outpost that’s surrounded by electronic surveillance. The scientists, unbeknownst to the SOBs, are being driven to create four nukes; Razod, the sadist in charge of the place, makes off with one of them with the express purpose of bombing Haifa. Barrabas and team are not aware of this as they make their late-night attack on the base, which again is carried out with a great sense of tension and suspense and payoff – again, all of it so, so much better than the stuff we read back in the first volume.

Philipson displays what to me appears to be a bit of a military understanding, with the SOBs using knowledge and training to get past the surveillance devices, and then going for quiet kills or sniper shots to take out the various guards. But of course the way these things go, soon enough the cat’s out of the bag and it’s rock and roll on full auto. None of the SOBs really stand out in this sequence, even Billy Two, who eventually would become the most interesting character in the series (thanks to Philipson), starting with #6: Red Hammer Down.

And another big difference from Canon’s approach to the series is Philipson’s willingness to dispense with the SOBs themselves. While none of them were killed in the previous book, here three of them die in battle, and avoid this paragraph if you don’t want it to be spoiled. But Al Chen is the first to go, gunned down in a firefight; redneck Wiley Boone is next (and his passing barely registers on your consciousness), and finally Vince Biondi is the last to go. His death in particular is very well done, with race driver Biondi stealing away with the truck that holds the fourth nuke and barrelling toward the base for a fiery climax.

An even better send-off is delivered to Razod, who has hitched a ride on the back of that bomb-carrying truck, and hops off it a few miles outside of the base, realizing a madman’s behind the wheel – not understanding English, Razod has no idea that the SOBs have infiltrated his base, killed everyone, set the three nukes to blow, and have now set this last one to blow along with them in just a few minutes. But he doesn’t die in the catastrophic nuclear blast, instead rendered into what is for the most part is a mutant out of a post-nuke pulp, with his skin hanging from him like curtains and his tongue and face destroyed.

While it wasn’t the greatest men’s adventure novel I’ve ever read, The Plains Of Fire was still an entertaining, enjoyable read, and it makes me glad I picked up the entire SOBs series for a pittance the other year; I’ll look forward to reading more volumes.

SOBs #1: The Barrabas Run

SOBs #1: The Barrabas Run, by Jack Hild
September, 1983  Gold Eagle Books

The SOBs series gets off to a rocky start with a first volume that comes off more like a standalone novel than the beginning of an ongoing series. The copyright page credits a whopping three authors: Jack Canon, Robin Hardy, and Alan Bomack.

Hardy became one of the main writers of the series, and “Bomack” was the pseudonym of an author who mostly worked on Gold Eagle’s Executioner and SuperBolan novels (humorously, his name was an anagram of “Mack Bolan;” according to William H. Young in A Study Of Action-Adventure Fiction, the author’s real name was David Wade). Canon though spent the late ‘70s on through to the early ‘90s writing the Nick Carter: Killmaster series, and my theory is that he did most of the writing of The Barrabas Run; the book reads almost identically to Canon’s “realistic” vibe as shown in such Killmaster novels as Blood Raid.

Like that novel, The Barrabas Run is a rather dour, unenjoyable affair, too focused on scene setting and character building. It lacks the action one would want from a men’s adventure novel, and, like Mark Roberts's Hanoi Hellground, is more along the lines of a Dirty Dozen ripoff, spending much too much time putting together the daredevil group who must see through this particular mission – namely, rescuing a Nelson Mandela-type African politician from a group of left-wing terrorists.

But instead of getting to the action straightaway, we must instead endure, for over a third of the 195-page narrative, the looong tale of how the Soldiers of Barrabas come to be, and then how they train for the mission. I mean, shit – Z-Comm would’ve saved the guy by page five!! It boggles my mind that some of these men’s adventure authors thought their readers would want to read “realistic” takes on how a mercenary army is put together, and how it trains for an impossible mission. And who knows, maybe some readers did. But what I want from this genre is violent escapism.

Rather, we get lots of character background concerning one Nile Barrabas, in his early 40s when the novel opens and a blood-soaked veteran of ‘Nam; indeed, on the veritable last chopper out as Saigon fell. These days Barrabas makes his living as a merc, but he’s currently in a rat-infested prison in some South American hellhole, having fought for the wrong side. Then a CIA “spook” named Walker Jessup shows up; the two met in ‘Nam, as we have seen in the prologue. Now Jessup reports to some mysterious senator, who has funded an off-the-books mercenary strike squad to take on terrorism around the world.

Jessup springs Barrabas from his cell (not via fireworks – yet another indication of Canon’s authorship – but through political maneuvering), and now our white-haired hero is free to go about the world to recruit his army. An interesting note: Barrabas’s team (and likely Canon’s manuscript) is frequently referred to as “Eagle Squad;” this is even how they eventually refer to themselves. My guess is this was Canon’s title for his original manuscript, which perhaps Gold Eagle then farmed out into a series, under the much better title SOBs.

The series was known for killing off team members, but don’t worry about that happening here. Canon spends so much time putting together his massive team that you can tell he has no plans to kill off any of them. But damn they could’ve been whittled down: we’ve got Liam O’Toole on explosives, Emilio Lopez as a general commando, Wiley Drew Boone as a sailor, Vince Biondi as a professional race car driver/top gun pilot, and in various general capacities we have Nate Beck, Claude Hayes, Al Chen, Alex Nanos, Lee Hatton, and Billy Starfoot.

Probably the last three will be most familiar to casual readers of the series, as they appeared throughout. But those fans of Billy Starfoot, in particular due to the psychedelic turn his character took in #6: Red Hammer Down, will be in for disappointment with this first volume, as Billy is a cipher of the character he would gradually become. Of them all Canon spends the most print on Lee Hatton; Dr. Lee Hatton that is, the Smurfette of the SOBs. Barrabas hand-picks his vast team (at exorbitant page count), with the exception of Lee Hatton, who is thrust on him as a surprise by Walker Jessup.

In a way, though, Lee’s presence makes sense; I’ve often wondered why none of these men’s adventure strike squads ever bother to include a medic on the team. But Lee Hatton’s prime job will be nursing the elderly Joseph Noboctu (ie the Mandela type) through the jungle terrain of Kaluba (ie the fictional African country in which all this goes down). Meanwhile we get lots of soul-plumbing from both Barrabas and Lee; the former because he just doesn’t want a woman on the team, the latter because she wonders what exactly she’s doing here.

There is also a sexual undercurrent between the two, capped off in a scene where Lee strips off her clothes and demands that Barrabas take her to bed, to “get sex out of the way.” A chagrined Barrabas hurries off, properly chastized, but this is the closest we come to sex in the entire novel; we are, of course, in the sex-shunning, gun-loving world of Gold Eagle. You can take all those sleazy adult shenanigans over to Zebra Books, buster! Meanwhile we are assured that Barrabas does in fact have a steady lay; some gal named Erika Dykstra, the sister of Barrabas’s favorite gun seller.

So once the team is finally put together, Barrabas ships ‘em off to Majorca…where they’ll train for two weeks! My friends, what the hell kind of a shit-kicking mercenary team is this? It’s for this reason I say that The Barrabas Run reads more like a “serious” piece of war fiction and less like a bloody and pulpy (and fun) men’s adventure novel. But yeah, more text is sacrificed as we read about the “Eagle Squad” learning to work together as one unit, and poor old Joseph Noboctu continues to rot in his cell.

As for Barrabas himself, he’s busy gallivanting around the Mediterranean; one thing I have to say about Jack Canon is the dude enjoys vicariously traveling through his characters. In his Killmaster installments, Nick Carter racks up some serious frequent flyer miles, and Nile Barrabas is no different here, even going all the way up to Paris (where he briefly meets with Erika and her gun-running brother). But even here too much time is spent on the mechanics of arranging an illegal arms shipment, of navigating political red tape. You almost want to check the spine and make sure you aren’t reading a book by Robert Ludlum.

Anyway, The Barrabas Run goes to 195 pages (with several pages afterwards made up of pointless appendices about Barrabas and his time in ‘Nam)…and it isn’t until friggin’ page 148 that the actual “action stuff” even begins! And mind you, this isn’t a “big print” kind of book; there’s precious little white space here. It’s all just deadening “shadowy undercover ops world”-type stuff, which for me is a chore to read. Again, it’s all almost identical to Canon’s later Blood Raid, which similarly squandered a promising, pulpy plot with too much “realism.”

Even when the action goes down it lacks much spark, let alone any payoff. For example, early on we briefly meet Field Marshal Haile Mogabe, who captures Joseph Noboctu in his attempt to wrest control of Kaluba. Mogabe is often compared to Idi Amin, which makes the reader assume the author is going to give the bastard more of a comeuppance when the bullets start flying. Instead, Mogabe basically just shows up for a sentence or two toward the end, only to be anticlimatically blown away by Barrabas!

Instead, more attention is given to the long story of how our heroes escape the terrorist compound, once they’ve saved Noboctu; again, it’s all very similar to Roberts’s Hanoi Hellground, which featured a similarly-anticlimactic denoument which shed more detail on the team escaping after their assault on the VC fortress. Here too Canon doesn’t dwell much on the action or gore. Other than a brief mention of Billy Starfoot almost hacking off some guard’s head (an incident which happens off-page, mind you), the climax is practically bloodless.

Rather than Mogabe, a sadist named Karl Heiss proves to be the true villain of the piece; he would return in future installments, where as I recall he was given more room to shine. Here Canon (or one of the other two authors) shoehorns in arbitrary mentions in flashback of how bad Heiss is; he almost got Barrabas killed on several past skirmishes. Now he’s working for Mogabe’s forces and trying again to kill Barrabas. It’s all built up so that the reader expects that this time Barrabas might get his vengeance, but of course he is denied. And goofily enough, it plays out with Heiss running after Barrabas and team as they leave on their jeep and asking if he can bum a ride!

I know I’m railing on Canon, but truth be told he isn’t a bad writer. He brings his characters to life and he has a gift for dialog. The only problem is, I think he’s writing in the wrong genre. The dude’s skills seem more suited to political thrillers and the like, the sub-Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum stuff that others appreciate a whole lot more than I do. What’s odd is you’d figure the guy would’ve made more money writing in that genre, not to mention that he would’ve been able to publish under his own name. Of course it’s likely he was using the men’s adventure genre as his entrance into the writing field, but given how long he stayed in this particular genre, one has to wonder.

The Barrabas Run wasn’t all that great, and I’m glad it was the only volume Canon wrote. To further my theory that this was intended as a standalone novel, it ends with the “Eagle Squad” safely escorting Noboctu to freedom and then breaking up, each going their own way, Barrabas wondering when they’ll be needed again, if ever.

Little did he know he’d be back just a few short weeks later, but this time in a book by an author more suited to his specific gut-busting skills…

SOBs #6: Red Hammer Down

SOBs #6: Red Hammer Down, by Jack Hild
May, 1985  Gold Eagle Books

Back in the mid-‘80s I subscribed to Gold Eagle books, and every other month I’d receive a package with the latest shipment of books. The SOBs series was one of those books; I’m not sure which volume I came in on, or how many of them I eventually collected, but I know I never read any of them. They sure looked good lined up on my bookshelf, though.

Anyway, “SOBs” stands for “Soldiers of Barrabas,” so named after their leader, Colonel Nile Barrabas, a white-haired ‘Nam vet who now commands this squad of mercenaries. As a kid I was more into the Gold Eagle exploits of Phoenix Force and Able Team, that whole Stony Man shared world, and it seemed clear that SOBs either took place in the “real world” or was at least unconnected to those more-popular GE offerings. Looking at the series now, though, it seems that SOBs might be the gem of the bunch.

Unlike the other Gold Eagle series, which were penned by an army of ghostwriters, SOBs was written by a small group of authors (under the house name "Jack Hild"), which must’ve made for a tighter sense of continuity. Also, the series was unique in that members of the team would die, so it wasn’t like Able Team where you knew that, no matter how bad this month’s threat was, the three team members would survive to fight another day.

This installment is considered one of the best of the series; I’m not sure if it’s one I had as a kid, but I have Mike Madonna to thank for sending me this copy. (And for that matter, I wonder if all of my old Gold Eagle books are sitting in a box somewhere in my mom’s house??) This one was written by Alan Philipson, a house writer who was cranking out books for Gold Eagle all the way up to 2008, but if his website is any indication he’s recently retired from the pulp biz.

Philipson’s writing is strong. The characterization, dialog, and plotting are all excellent in Red Hammer Down, above and beyond what one would expect from just another entry in a bimonthly action series. Unfortunately it picks up right after the previous volume, #5: Gulag War, also penned by Philipson, which apparently saw the SOBs break some scientist out of a Siberian prison, embarrasing the elite Soviet commando force Spetsnaz in the process. Now Spetsnaz wants revenge.

In particular, Captain Baladin of the Spetsnaz wants revenge – turns out he was castrated by Dr. Lee, the female member of the SOBs, in the previous volume, and now he burns with the desire to torture her to death. Balandin has an ace in the hole for his vengeance quest: Billy Two, captured American-Indian SOB. Baladin has stashed Billy in Moscow for the past month, torturing and drugging him. The rest of the SOBs think Billy died during the battle in the preceding volume, and Baladin plans to use him as bait.

Billy Two is easily the highlight here, and it’s my understanding that this volume saw a huge change in the character. Red Hammer Down opens and closes from Billy’s viewpoint (Philipson is so good he doesn’t even POV-hop!!), and having undergone heavy drug torture for the past month he’s now a bit skewed. The novel veers into the metaphysical right from the start as Billy astrally leaves his body and meets the Animal Spirit, symbol of his forefather, who tells Billy that he will emerge from this torture changed forever, but most certainly stronger.

Baladin sends out a few hit squads and Philipson delivers some fun sequences of the various SOBs tackling them. Most memorably is when Nanos “The Greek,” a muscle-bound member of the team, is hit on by a female weight-lifter in the gym; during some impromptu sex in the gym sauna she tries to kill him, like something out of an X-rated Bond flick. Philipson also has fun with the character Liam O’Toole, a SOB who has designs to become a published poet, but is told by his agent that he should sell out and work on greeting cards – surely a bit of personal commentary from Philipson.

But really the majority of the narrative deals with the Spetsnaz assault on SOB headquarters on the isle of Majorca. Here the team maintains an ancient fortress, surrounded by impenetrable forest; Barrabas is certain even the crackest squad of Spetsnaz commandos would have a hell of a time getting through it to them. So after learning of the various hit squad attacks, Barrabas orders the team to convene in Majorca, where they will make their final stand against Spetsnaz.

Over half of the novel deals with the climatic assault on Majorca. It’s almost like a piece of war fiction as the SOBs hole up from various positions of defense and repel the Spetsnaz invaders. It’s all taut and well done, with a very good “action movie” type of feel, especially when you have Billy Two (who frees himself in quite a novel and memorable way) running around and killing Russians, naked and ravaged by psychotropic drugs, a machine pistol in each fist. That is, when he isn’t talking to cockroaches who speak in the voice of Animal Spirit.

True to what I’ve read, the team suffers here; one of them dies in the assault, but of course it’s the one who is given the least amount of narrative time and has I think only one or two lines of dialog. The assault gets a bit tiresome after a while, as all plot and character development just stalls into an endless sequence of battles. What’s most frustrating is there’s no resolution – Baladin simply leaves after the SOBs fool him into thinking they’ve committed suicide with the destruction of their own fortress.

But overall I really liked Red Hammer Down, despite not having read the previous volume. Philipson’s writing is great and the characters are interesting enough that I’d like to read more about them, in particular Billy Two, who emerges here as a very memorable character…I gather future volumes play out more on his metaphysical bent, so that's something to look forward to. I say this because I recently picked up the entire SOBs series at a very nice price, so it should make for some enjoyable reading.