Vagabonds

Tourists in the Heart of Darkness

Nick Brokhausen, Jeff Miller

• Publisher: Casemate
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781612009964
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

Two ex-Green Berets recount their missions after two decades in Special Forces, from running counter-terrorism training to rescuing kidnap victims & more. A lot of confusion, a lot of humor, a lot of broken dreams and broken promises, an occasional triumph... 1978—A chance meeting on a remote military airbase between two Green Berets involved in the same operation leads to a partnership that will last over forty years. Four years after that meeting, Nick Brokhausen and Jeff Miller leave the service within a few weeks of each other and begin an odyssey that takes them to dozens of countries on five continents. Along with a small coterie of fellow former Special Operations and intelligence community veterans like Penguini, Max, Reek, The Spider Woman, and a score of others—some heroes and some villains—they undertake a variety of missions for the government, other governments, large multinational corporations mostly in the aerospace or resource development industries, and occasionally just for suffering individuals who cannot find help anywhere else. In the process they lay the groundwork for an entire new industry of private military contractors. Two men sadly just a bit ahead of their time. Every episode in this book actually happened. Not always precisely as described herein, but close. Changes have been made sometimes to make the narrative flow more smoothly, some to obfuscate events that might be flirting with classification issues... Names have been changed, not always to protect the innocent. But the underlying story is, for the most part, the reality as they lived it. "A fascinating account of an extraordinary series of adventures." — Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• 1 Birth of a Notion
• 2 There are Carpetbaggers in Our Soup
• 3 Looking for High Tech in All the Low Places
• 4 Remake of the Wild Bunch
• 5 Assassins on the Hotel Roof
• 6 Send Lawyers, Guns, and Money
• 7 Ishtar and Other Bad Plots
• 8 Tiny Hostages in the Maghreb
• 9 Running for Our Lives Across the Rim of Africa
• 10 Pancho and Lefty
• 11 By the Dawn’s Early Light
• 12 Nigeria with Snow
• 13 Into the Hindu Kush with the Beast of the Baskervilles
• 14 Bosnia by Bus
• 15 The Spy Who Slid in from the Cold
• 16 Lah’Tay on the Spanish Main
• 17 Soaring Hopes and Soaring Temperatures
• 18 Port au Prince is Dying
• 19 On the Road to Mandalay
• 20 Terry and Some Very Odd Pirates
• 21 The Heart of Darkness
• 22 The Lost Empire of Prester John
• Epilogue