The Recruiter

by Roger Weston

  The Bosnians were practically fearless, all of them getting off several shots before they stepped back from the window.

  “Take cover next time,” Chuck said.

  The Bosnians nodded and glanced at each other, but didn’t seem impressed. The shooting continued but now from the cars behind them as they took their turn at rolling past the deadly hole. Chuck heard yelling as the immigrants also took shots and took cover. Each car endured a brief gun battle as it rolled sluggishly past the gaping maw with its spitting gunshot.

  With several frozen train wheels screeching on the track, they approached the next tunnel at less than a hundred yards. This time it sounded like there were more shooters and at least one machine gun. The combined spray of bullets that coughed out of the tunnel was daunting, but it got worse when Chuck realized that another machine gunner was raking the train from a channel up ahead. Since there were no windows on the front of their car, they couldn’t see and had to depend on sound, and it was getting closer.

  When their turn came, bullets ripped through the old wood. Almost every one in the car dove to the floor planks for cover. The gunners were aiming high, and one of the Bosnians was cut down by a storm of automatic fire. After the first hit, he stepped back from the window and jerked wildly as the bullets riddled him. Despite taking five hits, he pulled the pin out of a grenade and lobbed it down the inky warren before he dropped dead.

  Chuck counted the seconds until the explosion roared. He knew the killers behind that ambush were in sad shape. The fact that they didn’t fire on the following train cars verified it, and the remaining Bosnians cheered the heroism of their fallen comrade. After less than twenty seconds, at least three gunners on the back side opened up with big machine guns that shredded the side of the box car as if it were made of foam. Wood chips and dust rained down on them, and some of the bullet holes were only inches above them.

  The screams of terrified women in the car behind them grew to shrieks and hysterics. Evidently, they’d taken casualties. The gunning continued as car after car was raked with deadly fire.

  “We are in a death train,” a young Bosnian said bitterly. “We will all die.”

  “No, we’re getting out of here.” Chuck held Lydia close. “But nobody said it’d be easy.”

  The wails in the next car died down after a tyrant threatened to kill the screamers if they didn’t shut their mouths. Chuck could hear this because for the moment the gunfire had stopped. The train was picking up speed, the sound of the frozen wheels singing out at an earsplitting screech. Under normal circumstances, the noise would have been intolerable, but presently it was comforting. At least it was better than the clatter of guns raking the train.

  The bitter young Bosnian crawled a few feet in Chuck’s direction. “Are we through the gauntlet yet?” he said, his eyes desperate.

  “I don’t know.” Like an exclamation point at the end of his sentence a huge explosion to the rear shook the entire train.

  “They fired a rocket at the caboose,” Hassan said.

  “If they hit the engine, we are finished.”

  This gave life to Chuck’s greatest fears, but they became irrelevant within seconds. Chuck gained his feet and stood by the window. What happened next seemed surreal.

  The train was thundering down the tracks at high speed, and Chuck could see light up ahead. There was no gunfire from the next tunnel, but seconds later, they entered a kill zone. A storm of gunfire cut through the walls. Chuck grabbed Lydia’s arm and led her to the front where they lay flat on the floor. What hit the side of the train car was nothing less than a barrage. So many wood chips rained down on them that Chuck kept his eyes closed to avoid getting a million shards of wood in them. Bullets ripped through one side of the car and left exit holes on the back side. The automatics drew lines across the wall that promised doom to the unfortunate.

  A Bosnian gave a hideous death cry. Chuck saw that it was the young one who’d just said they were all going to die. Chuck pounded his fist on the floor. “Damn them,” he said.

  Another of the Bosnians began ranting in his own language.

  Everybody lay flat, and Chuck felt Lydia’s fingers scraping his back. He could feel her body shaking violently against his. No sooner had they passed through the worst of it when two explosions shook the train, and one of the blasts lifted their train car up onto two wheels for a couple of seconds.

  A moment of silence followed this onslaught. But it was broken by cheers from the car behind them. Evidently they were so glad to have survived that they’d broken out in spontaneous expressions of joy. The surviving Bosnians also began cheering. Chuck pulled himself to the window. The wall was now speeding past, and he saw the train race out of the dark tunnel into daylight. He squinted his eyes against the brightness, but what he saw before him made him dive to the floor and roll against Lydia. He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her tight.

  “What’s wrong!” she said.

  “Get down,” he yelled. The next few seconds were peaceful, but for Chuck they were excruciating. He’d seen the tracks ahead, at least what remained of them, and they’d been blown up.

  He was gritting his teeth when the train jumped the tracks.

  Heads Up: Thank you for reading this far! Book 2 of the popular Brandt series, The Handler, is now available on Amazon. Grab a copy today. Now back to The Recruiter.

  Thank you for reading this far! VENGEANCE continues below. The next book in the series, The Recruiter, is now available on Amazon. Grab a copy today. Now back to VENGEANCE.

  URGENT: Thank you for reading this far! The Recruiter continues below. The next book in the series, The Handler, is now available on Amazon. Grab a copy today. Now back to The Recruiter.

  CHAPTER 89

  It sounded like a hurricane of destruction as the train jackknifed, and Chuck curled up around Lydia. His only consolation was that he would die with Lydia in his arms. The horrendous sounds of crashing and bending metal, of snapping wood and death cries of the doomed seemed to last for an eternity, though it couldn’t have been more than twenty seconds. When the train came to rest, their car was actually upright, but the brittle wood walls were riddled with bullet holes. What remained were splinters and snapped and crumbled boards.

  The sight of the wreckage was hideous, but Chuck had little time to observe the calamity. Machine gunners were raking the wreckage with deadly fire. He pulled Lydia off the open flatbed and down onto the ground. They’d come out near a service road, a relatively flat area that was carpeted with pine trees. The gunners appeared to be hiding behind the trees near the service road, and a few were firing from up in the branches. In just seconds, Chuck saw two immigrants mowed down and one cut in half. The survivors took cover and returned fire. Sounds of an Apache helicopter’s engine promised death to all within minutes.

  “Stay here,” Chuck said to Lydia. He ran behind the wreckage, keeping his head low, and still nearly getting shot. He dove down by a boy with a missile launcher.

  Chuck tore the missile launcher from his hands and swung it toward the Apache as it lifted into the air. He only had one shot, so he made sure he had acquisition on his target before firing. The missile whooshed through the air and closed the gap in seconds, smashing straight through the windshield.

  A fireball erupted in a massive torrent of flames. Chuck ducked down to avoid fragments from the explosion. A secondary explosion hit just as the helicopter touched the ground. A sniper with a nest in a burning tree near the crash caught on fire and fell to his death.

  Two motorcycle riders dressed in fatigues tore down the service road, squeezing off bursts from machine pistols. A couple of Bosnians shot them. Their fallen bikes dug up a dust storm as they slid to a stop.

  The gun battle continued, but the RUMAN soldiers were outnumbered by the armed rabble. Two were shot out of the trees, and the others were neutralized by the overwhelming gunfire coming in from a dozen angles as the workers shot back from overturned train cars.

 
At least twenty more enemy gunners came down out of the mine and started firing from the mouth of the tunnel.

  A Somali man shouldered a missile launcher and aimed for a machine-gun nest by the mine entrance, but he was torn apart by a lead hailstorm. Lydia crawled over to the fallen immigrant and picked up his weapon, balancing it over her shoulder. She launched the missile, and it screamed into the machine-gun nest. The explosion rocked the ground, and a fireball vaporized the gunners.

  By now there were only a few gunners left outside, and with at least three dozen workers focusing their entire wrath on those positions, the last of the RUMAN soldiers fell, causing the immigrants to shout with joy. They rose to their feet and fired their guns into the air.

  Chuck walked along the wreckage with Lydia at his side. There were more than two dozen immigrants who were wounded and unable to walk. Some were unconscious, others dead.

  Chuck frowned and turned to Lydia.

  “I have to go back in the mountain. Stay with Dean. I’ll catch up in a while.”

  Lydia grasped his arm. “No, Chuck.”

  “I have to.”

  “Why?” Lydia said.

  “I have to get a tractor and trailer. If we leave these people here, they’ll die.”

  “But you’ll never make it out.”

  “I have to try.”

  Chuck raced the motorcycle up the tunnel, a machine pistol slung over his shoulder.

  He was running toward a tractor when he saw the grenade roll on the ground. After that, his world went black. He had been momentarily knocked out by the concussion, but the bulldozer had shielded him from a worse fate. He was rudely awakened from his peaceful sleep by stabs of pain. He opened his eyes as boots slammed into his body. His head snapped back as a black man kicked his face.

  Another man was shouting into a cave phone. “What do you mean not know? I need Robert on phone now. Hurry up. We have the recruiter.”

  “Stop,” Chuck said.

  He was answered with a boot in his mouth that slashed his lip and knocked out a front tooth.

  “Hey!” Chuck yelled.

  As the next kick came in, Chuck grabbed the boot and twisted. The guard spun and fell as Chuck disarmed him and thrust the pistol toward the second guard.

  “Don’t make me do it.”

  The Somali guard dropped the phone and stood there wide eyed.

  “You’re making a mistake,” Chuck said. “It’s over. You hear me? Over! I’m on your side.”

  Driving the tractor out of the tunnel with the men on his side now, he stopped at the camp office. Tightly clasping his pistol, he limped through the open gate of the headquarters building. The guard’s body lay on the ground, a blood-soaked mess. Hundreds of footprints marked the dirt. Chuck entered the building with his gun drawn, but the armed receptionist was not only disarmed, but also dead. The door was broken down. The bodies of two men lay across the board room table. He recognized CIA director Vincent Law. On top of him lay a man in military fatigues. His name patch read Green. An older man in an expensive suit with creases around his mouth lay dead near the window.

  Everyone else was gone. Chuck found the security room empty, and all of the electric fences were off.

  Back at the train wreck, it took him half an hour to load the wounded onto the trailer. There were fourteen of them, and at least half had a decent chance of survival. With that bloody job done, he revved the big engine and put the tractor into gear.

  He’d driven out of the compound and had gone a mile when he found Lydia waiting along the road.

  “It’s over,” he said to her.

  “Where’s my baby girl?” she said, shaking with agony. “What happened to her?”

  “I made sure that she’s safe.”

  Lydia threw herself at him and clung to him. They climbed up into the tractor seat, and Chuck drove down the path.

  THE END

  URGENT

  Just when Chuck thinks he’s overcome the terrible situation at Ming Mountain, he discovers his problems are just beginning. His problems are about to get much worse…and they rise up from a totally unexpected source—a disgraced Russian general who is presently operating in Catalonia, Spain. The story continues in The Handler: A Chuck Brandt Thriller (The Brandt Series Book 2)

  Author’s Note

  Thank you so much for reading The Recruiter. I am honored that you not only began the book but read it straight through and are even reading the author’s note. I was not always a big reader. In high school, I remember thinking that I would never write a book. I thought that anyone who’d write a book was crazy (chuckle). Not long after I recall reading my first action novel while working on a ship in Alaska. I was hooked, but there were no more action novels onboard so I watched Chuck Norris films for entertainment. A few years later, I picked up some Hemingway novels in Spain, and while reading them, it occurred to me that I wanted to write novels as well. Then while walking the docks of Barcelona, I saw all the old ships and was saddened to think that I would never know the men who’d sailed on those ships and that I hadn’t been onboard with them for their many adventures.

  I didn’t think about it for a number of years. Then I started writing and couldn’t stop. I moved to Korea with my wife to write my first book The Golden Catch. Around that same time I heard about a killer who’d found redemption, and I thought I would like to write about a character like that, an assassin who is seeking redemption, but when trouble arrives, he’s forced to use the skills he was trying to turn away from. In The Golden Catch Frank Murdoch is that man. He’s so determined to live a quiet life that he moves to Kiska Island, Alaska, one of the most remote islands in the world to escape his past. The only problem is that trouble finds him anyway after he makes a shocking discovery on his island.

  After moving back to the states as I was working on a Masters degree in English, I worked as a leasing agent at an apartment complex that took in a lot of refugees from all over the world. Then one day a guy applied to live there. He said he was in the intelligence field. I was surprised because he really didn’t fit as the typical tenant of the low-rent apartment complex. What was he there for? I wondered. Was he there to recruit refugees? From there, The Recruiter was born.

  But The Recruiter is only the first installment of the story. Chuck’s story continues in The Handler. By book five, the threat of Ming Mountain comes full circle on a decommissioned aircraft carrier hidden near Antarctica. There Chuck will face a terror like he’s never seen before.

  In a world where demented men occasionally gain positions of power and use their power for horrific purposes, I wanted to create a character who is broken by his mistakes, but who fights back and is given the authority to act as a law unto himself—to deal out justice rather than deal with killers as if his main concern is bad headlines and lawsuits followed by a justice system that sometimes lets the guilty go free. I wanted to see justice because if killers are allowed to go free, we are aiding them in their crimes.

  Chuck Brandt is mindful that he doesn’t lose his soul and sink down to their level, but unlike some authorities, he doesn’t play softball.

  In Chuck’s world, crime pays … in pain and misery.

  I have thoroughly enjoyed writing the Chuck Brandt series as well as the Jake Sands series, which involves shipwrecks and mysteries at sea.

  If you enjoyed this book, please give it a rating on Amazon. Your kind words and encouragement are so important to authors. I will continue to write whether you leave a review or not. However, the power of a few kind words is profound for an author who toils away for endless hours, grappling with his characters, but also gaining inspiration and energy to write faster from a FANTASTIC review (smile). Any comment on the best scene, favorite line, personal response or feelings would be great.

  Thank you again. I’m truly honored that you have read my novel.

  Roger Weston

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  Continue reading the Brandt series here with Book 2: The Handler: A Chuck Brandt Thriller (Brandt Series Book 2)

  Reviews are always appreciated. They are inspiring to the author and encourage others to try the series as well.

  MORE BOOKS BY ROGER WESTON:

  The Brandt Series:

  The Handler: A Chuck Brandt Thriller (Brandt Series Book 2)

  BRANDT IS BACK!

  Costa Brava, Spain. A race. A girl. A dead ambassador. A madman who escaped from a Russian insane asylum years ago. One agent missing, another betrayed. Now patriot Chuck Brandt is on his own. Caught up in a conspiracy, on the trail of a deadly enemy—ex-CIA assassin Brandt will not back down. He will not leave his men behind. Even if it costs him his life.

  Rogue Op: A Chuck Brandt Thriller (Brandt Series Book 3)

  Chuck Brandt is determined to save America from a dangerous plot. And he's dead set on saving Maria from her psychotic father--General Ivan Lazar. Chuck is chasing a legend deep into the heart of the Peruvian Amazon, but his impossible quest leads him straight into a green hell. There he faces diverse evils, from the jungle itself to General Lazar's Black Cobra guerrillas--the sadistic monsters tasked with the slow death of Chuck Brandt. He uncovers a horrible secret, but will he be able to stop a madman?

  From a monastery in Spain to deep in the Amazon jungle, Chuck Brandt hunts down the man who started it all, and gets more than he bargained for. Don't miss the explosive climax on the upper reaches of the mighty river.

  VENGEANCE: A Chuck Brandt Thriller (The Brandt Series Book 0)

  The Recruiter: A Chuck Brandt Thriller (The Brandt Series Book 1)