Mercenary History

Col. Mike Hoare tells how his force of mercenaries, 5 Commando, put down a Comunist-backed rebel uprising in the Congo. As they restored law and order, town by town, he and his men freed 1800 nuns and priests. His men also learned what it means to be real soldiers.

What does an elite Navy SEAL Team operator trained to kill the United States’ most dangerous enemies do when he realizes his skills aren’t being properly utilized? He leaves the Navy. In American Mercenary, Daniel Corbett takes listeners on a wild ride through the unadulterated, morally ambiguous, and riveting world of being a hired gun. From Abu Dhabi to Washington, D.C., Cairo to San Diego, Belgrade to places that must remain secret, this is a world where money rules, and where adventure, danger, and absurdity often follow.

The Middle Ages witnessed almost constant warfare in Europe, so mercenaries were a constant on the battlefield, but the 15th century also saw the rise of mercenary usage by the increasingly wealthy aristocracy. One of the finest groups of mercenaries were the Landsknechts from central and northern Europe. The term means “servant of the country”, and they mostly served the Holy Roman Empire, first under Emperor Maximilian I (r. 1508-1519) and then under his successors.

A parallel army lives on the margins of the Iraq war - nearly 100,000 armed men, invisible yet in plain sight, doing jobs the overstretched and understaffed military can't or won't do. The U.S. media call them "security contractors." They call themselves "mercs," and they operate under their own rules. Washington Post reporter Steve Fainaru traveled with several groups of security contractors to find out what motivates them to put their lives in danger every day.

From former Green Beret and USA Today best-selling author Jason Kasper comes a gripping set of thrillers.

From former Special Forces officer Jason Kasper comes a gripping set of thrillers for fans of Vince Flynn and Brad Thor. Now an international best seller.

Moscow, 1985. The Soviet Union and its communist regime are in the last stages of decline, but remain opaque to the rest of the world—and still very dangerous. In this ever-shifting landscape, a senior KGB officer—code name GAMBIT—has approached the CIA Moscow Station chief with top secret military weapons intelligence and asked to be exfiltrated. GAMBIT demands that his handler be a former CIA officer, Alex Garin, a former KGB officer who defected to the American side. The CIA had never successfully exfiltrated a KGB officer from Moscow, and the top brass do not trust Garin.

Dirk Friedel used to be an Imperial Duke, now he's a washed up freighter captain. When a shady broker offers him easy money to steal some obsolete cargo and transport it off-planet, he and his crew of amateur thieves jump at the chance. Who'll miss a few crates of worthless supplies and some broken down trucks? But when the supplies turn out to be something more than imagined, they end up dodging the Imperial navy and enlisting as unwilling mercenaries in civil war.

Tired after eleven years of serving as flying 'Soldiers of Fortune' in South American wars and as 'Internationalistas' in the service of Republican Spain, Ricart, Wing, and Wilson have moved to the forests of Northern Michigan after fighting to the bitter end in Spain.Gathering Spanish refugees and Upper Peninsula locals, they start to form a manufacturing firm, building primary gliders and glider launching winches. The lure of big money temps Eddie Ricart to build the largest transport aircraft in the world from "acquired" plans and force the US military establishment to employ it by ...

Reeve has come out on top of his enemies: the gods themselves. The Mage has finally created the first iteration of the System, and although it falls silent, he knows it's still there—planning, plotting, doing who knows what. He has found answers that have led him to far more questions than he had before. Who is pulling the strings behind the scenes? Why are the gods going along so compliantly with his conquest? Where in the nine hells is Jax? Is the Entity still around?

He was driven by violent injustice from his home moon of Callisto - and set forth to claim the epic destiny that would blaze across worlds and time. He saw his family destroyed, his sister carried off into sexual slavery, his beautiful lover killed - and he swore revenge against the murderous pirates who held the Jupiter planetoids in a stranglehold of terror. Fired by raw courage, steeled by young might, he rose in the navy of Jupiter to command a personal squadron loyal to the death.

Raised in the slums and alleys of Helsin, Argo is tired of lurking. He is exhausted of living meal to meal and tries to elevate himself to a better life. The Rumi Guild he plans to depart, well, they decide the bury him instead of letting him escape their grip. Argo sees the trap coming, avoids the clutches of fate, and runs from everything he's ever known.

Free from those who would seek to make him their pawn, Kyle is now able to seek his own destiny. His team is shaping up around him, but becoming divine has given him a larger view of things. He never asked for any of this but can he turn his back on all of creation? That may very well be what is at stake. His relationship issues may just have to take a backseat. But let his foes beware, if a team isn't enough then the war god shall raise an army.

The Byzantine Empire was the heir to two great cultures that cradled and nurtured European civilization: Greece and Rome. Byzantium was a strong, organized, highly effective, and adaptable civilization for most of its long history. It owed its success in no small part to its military, which, in contrast to the feudal armies of Western Europe and the tribally based forces of the Middle East, operated with a high level of discipline, strategic prowess, efficiency, and organization. The most famous of the foreign units was without question the Varangian Guard.

In the early days of the Afghanistan war, Jeff Stern was scouring the streets of Kabul for a big story. He was accompanied by a driver, Aimal, who had ambitions of his own: to get rich off the sudden infusion of foreign attention and cash. In this gripping adventure story, Stern writes of how he and Aimal navigated an environment full of guns and danger and opportunity, and how they forged a deep bond. Then Stern got a call that changed everything.

In 1494, there were five sovereign regional powers in Italy: Milan, Venice, Florence, the Papal States, and Naples. In 1536, only one remained: Venice. These decades of conflict precipitated great anxiety among Western thinkers, and Italians responded to the fragmentation, forevermore, of Latin Christendom, the end of self-governance for Italians, and the beginning of the early modern era in a myriad of ways. They were always heavily influenced by the lived experience of warfare between large Christian armies on the peninsula.

It was just supposed to be a decoy weapon, a little robot aircraft with a bomb on board for the enemy aircraft to chase instead of shooting down an Allied bomber. Then "Count" Alexandru ("Wizard") Volosevic modified a new British radio homing system and the little, blind, drone aircraft became an active, target seeking, stand-off cruise weapon. It was hard to tell which battle was going to be worse; the brawl with the Luftwaffe as the Eighth Air Force began daylight bombing against the Third Reich, the fight to get the weapon into Allied Airman's hands, or the fight against Nazi ...

I had something to live for. The moment I saw him, I knew. His eyes would hypnotize. His lips would speak the most beautiful promises. His body? Made for pleasure.

In June 2023, the Wagner Group assembled an armed convoy that included tanks and rocket launchers and set out on what seemed like a journey to take control of Moscow. The last person to attempt such a venture was Adolf Hitler. Wagner’s power began from patronage, then grew from international theft and extortion, until it was so great it exposed the weakness of Russia’s conventional military and became a threat to the Russian state, one that was not demonstrably eliminated until a private jet containing Wagner’s core commanders was blown up in midair.

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