Echo Six: Black Ops 8 - ISIS Killing Fields Read Online Free PDF

have to stay alert during every second of the patrol. The whole thing stinks, and I can almost smell ISIS out there. Waiting for us, like a bloated spider on a vast web.
    He put it out of his mind. As he left the Colonel's office, he had a lot of other stuff to think about in his spare moments. It was all bad. Lately, his life had gone down the toilet. Problem number one was alimony. His ex-wife Kay had engaged a new, hotshot lawyer. A man who'd made it his mission to turn Talley upside down, and then shake every last cent out of his almost empty pockets.
    Not that he begrudged Kay or the kids the lion’s share of his monthly paycheck. It was just he had to draw the line when they were trying to push him into bankruptcy. The threat was real. If her lawyer got away with his extortionate schemes, he'd be broke. They'd even frozen his bank account and put a lien on his monthly salary, leaving him about enough money for boot polish and basic items of clothing, little more than enough to cover one or two extras.
    Problem number two was custody. She'd managed to get her lawyer to persuade the courts to pull his visitation rights. Effectively, she'd kidnapped his kids, blocked his access. To see them he had to go through the courts every time. That took money. The money her lawyer had sequestered.
    The third problem was the 'one or two extras' he'd started to indulge in. He was broke, and they'd stolen his family. Outside the unit, he had no friends and no current girlfriend. Neither did he have any way of paying for a social life. He had one special friend. Its name was booze.
    None of the men knew, he was certain of it, but he'd started to assuage the long, sleepless nights with frequent sips from a hip flask of Belgian vodka. The habit had even intruded into the daytime. It got bad after he’d lost three of his men on the last operation. The occasional sip was becoming a habit, and that knowledge made him feel guilty. He kept the flat, gunmetal flask tucked inside his shirt. It scorched a hole through his camos, as if the metal container had branded him with the Scarlet Letter B for booze, tattooed on his chest. Or was it A for alcoholic?
    I’ll work it out. Somehow. I’m not a real addict. Not yet.
    He tried to put his problems out of his mind and force himself to relax. Petersen may be right. All they’d have to contend with would be the local bad boys, although he had other worries. Bielski had complained long and hard when he saw the vehicles they’d assigned to them to, with some justification. British Land Rovers were tough, go-anywhere four by fours, proven on rough terrain all over the world, in theory. They were also reliable, in theory. Until British engineering came up against the Iraqi aversion to carrying out mechanical maintenance, or any other hard, physical work.
    “You’re not serious about us using these things, Boss? They’re worn-out crap. They belong in a breakers yard.”
    Tadeus Bielski had joined them from Poland’s elite counter-terrorism unit, GROM. He wasn’t afraid to speak his mind, like most Poles. The vehicles were fitted with V8 engines, so they should have been fast and maneuverable. The truth was they were neither fast nor reliable, not any longer. NATO was currently undergoing budget cuts, and one of those cuts was to make use of Land Rovers handed back to them from the Iraqi Army. For 'handed back' read 'rejected.' They were a sorry bunch of vehicles. Even before they ran the engines, the flaking paint, sagging springs, and dented bodywork was an indicator of their mechanical state.
    The Iraqis were delighted to let them have the vehicles after the Pentagon supplied them with newer, bigger and better Humvees. The Land Rover engines misfired, the suspension was almost non-existent, and even the upholstery was torn and in some places missing altogether. There was a rumor doing the rounds that the Iraqis had swapped out the good parts of the engines to fix their personal vehicles. It was