CLOSE AND DESTORY: RECOIL’s First Feature-Length Fiction Book

Photos by Patrick McCarthy

Earlier this year, RECOIL’s parent publisher released its debut foray into commercial fiction, penned by former staff editor Tom Marshall. Some of you may know his byline from his Vets Vices column here in RECOIL, or from his time as editor of RECOIL OFFGRID, but he’s also been harboring a lifelong passion for military thriller fiction that has manifested in his first full-length novel: Close and Destroy.

Close and Destroy follows the men and women of Windsor Kraft Strategies, a well-heeled private military company combatting a thriving insurgency in the (mostly) fictitious failing nation-state of Daristan. If the premise sounds ripped-from-the-headlines, that’s because it’s informed directly by Tom’s own experience in Iraq and Afghanistan where he logged 14 separate deployments between the two theaters as both a US Army officer and a private military contractor.

What follows are two separate excerpts from the novel, as well as photos depicting the real-world guns and gear featured throughout. Stay tuned for more detailed coverage of the top-notch kit shown here.

Hilton Pierce
Callsign “Alley Cat”
Recce Troop – Windsor Kraft Strategies
Tarkent International Airport
Tarkent, Daristan
1540 hours, local

Through the darkness, Hilton felt the afternoon sun against his face, bright and brutal. The sour, peaty stench of unwashed people — punctuated by the sweet chemical tinge of burnt explosives — filled the front of his skull. It wasn’t until someone stepped on his ankle that his eyes snapped open in a bolt of pain. That’s when he realized his ears were ringing — again — and the world was sideways. All he could see were smears of pasty gray muck and brown, sandal-clad feet.

Still in the fetal position, Hilton’s hands clawed for the hem of his button-down, plaid shirt. In a motion rehearsed thousands of times over the last decade, his left hand hiked the shirt up as his right snatched a Staccato HD pistol out of the holster tucked into his jeans just behind the zipper. A chorus of screams and the intermittent popping of AK-47 fire overtook the ringing in his ears.

Holding the pistol tight to his chest, Hilton rolled to all fours, then reared back on his heels before clamoring to his feet in a low crouch. He craned his head to look over one shoulder. Behind him was the airport’s pedestrian gate — an earthen wall interrupted by chain-link fence, shielded by a line of American paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne. A herd of Daristani civilians crashed against their riot line like waves on the shore. Already desperate to flee their collapsing country, the explosion in the crowd rocked them forward en masse against the group of young soldiers. On the walls above them, more paratroopers huddled behind their M4 carbines and M240 machine guns. Some fired short strings over top of the crowd while others swept their muzzles frantically back and forth, unable to shoot without killing innocents.

Hilton’s head whipped forward, following the gunfire. At the back edge of the crowd was a shallow, scorched crater where the suicide bomber had detonated. A macabre confetti of blood and viscera scattered around the charred cement. Further back, across the street, a squad of black-clad insurgents with AKs fired wildly toward the gate.

Hilton pushed his way through the crowd, stepping over fallen bodies shot or trampled in the panic. Once he was on the edge of the chaos, Hilton leveled the Staccato, placing its red-dot sight over an insurgent fumbling to reload his AK. He let out a slow breath and pressed the trigger four times in a row. Just as the insurgent started to collapse, someone burst out of the crowd and grabbed Hilton’s pistol, wrenching it out of his grip. As Hilton scrambled to put space between them, the man raised a large screwdriver, its slotted head sharpened to a crude point. Hilton shoved the man away from him and backpedaled, hands digging under his shirt once more.

The man regained his balance and charged Hilton with the screwdriver, but Hilton’s hand came back up with a double-edged Contingency dagger just as the two collided like linebackers. Hilton went down on his back, and the insurgent plunged the screwdriver down into his chest. The point of the screwdriver skipped off the front plate of Hilton’s body armor — hidden under his shirt — and sank an inch deep into the edge of his pectoral muscle.

Hilton rolled into the stab wound, then back the other way, burying his knife deep into the man’s armpit in a backhanded stabbing motion. The angled point of Hilton’s dagger severed the man’s brachial artery. Hilton pulled the knife out and stabbed again, this time slamming his blade into the side of the man’s neck. Instinctively, the man grabbed Hilton’s forearm with both hands and pushed the blade out. A pulse of bright, red blood sprayed across Hilton’s face as the man collapsed on top of him, gurgling and wheezing frantically as blood from the severed vessels poured into his lungs. Hilton bear-hugged the man and rolled them both over.

Now on top of his attacker, Hilton stabbed him directly through one eye, dropping his full bodyweight onto the pommel of the knife. The man let out a feral wet scream. Hilton heaved downward again, using his armor plate to hammer the knife through the man’s orbital socket. The scream stopped short, like shutting off a light switch.

Hilton leaned back, placed a knee on the man’s chest, and pried the knife free. He sheathed the blade on his belt and climbed off the corpse, scrabbling around on all fours to find his handgun as more bullets snapped overhead …

Jimmy Tooms
Callsign “Jameson”
Combat Advisory Troop – Windsor Kraft Strategies
Hafiza, Daristan (350KM west of Tarkent)
0618 hours, local

Jimmy chugged half the lukewarm water bottle, then poured the rest over his head, blowing out a long breath as the water cascaded over his nose and mouth. Tossing the bottle into the dirt behind him, he picked up the garden hose draped over the Hilux’s tailgate. He squeezed the pistol grip in a quick double-tap to test water pressure. Then, he put one foot on the truck’s back tire and hoisted himself over the sidewall into the truck bed. He squatted down on his heels and started spraying.

Swirling eddies of water, the color and consistency of grapefruit juice, sluiced back and forth across the truck bed, and the tops of Jimmy’s boots. He angled the hose nozzle, using water pressure to push bits of flesh and fragments of bone off the tailgate, onto the dirt behind the truck. Several skull fragments still had hair stuck to them.

Four dead, out of his 15-man team of Daristani commandos. The locals called them Owls, because they were cunning, moved quietly, and hunted at night. Also, the night-vision goggles they wore gave them the appearance of unnaturally large, owl-like eyes. It didn’t sound as fearsome as other indigenous guerrilla units he’d worked with in the past — who always wanted to name themselves after tigers or panthers or some other big cat. But he liked it.

Jimmy wagged the hose nozzle back and forth, using the water jet like a push broom to sweep human remains out of the truck bed. When the water in the bed finally dripped clear, he hopped off the truck, slammed the tailgate closed, and used the same wagging motion to rinse a trail of bloody handprints off the tailgate itself, as well as off the rear quarter panels and cab doors.

The trail of prints told a very clear story; a gaggle of men — bleeding and fleeing — ripping open the doors or pulling themselves over the quarters, seeking shelter from hundreds of incoming AK and PKM rounds. One side of the truck had a torso-width smear of blood where two of the survivors had pulled their comrade’s corpse into the truck bed before speeding off. It was the only body of four recovered off the objective. Jimmy wouldn’t be able to wash off the multiple strings of bullet holes, but those were far less shocking to the psyche than the dozens of smeared bloody handprints.

“Hey brother, I’ll give you a hand with that.”

Jimmy turned around to Ben Gordon, callsign “Flash.” Ben was a former SARC — Special Amphibious Reconnaissance Corpsman — who ran another 15-man Owl team alongside Tooms the night before. He dressed identically to Jimmy: 5.11 combat pants and matching shirt, drop-leg holster slung off one hip. Streaks of dried blood, now the color of bricks, ran down both of Gordon’s sleeves and one whole pant leg. As a former recon medic, he’d spent most of the night performing first aid on wounded Owls. He’d only lost one, but nine of his 15 had been shot over the course of the two-hour firefight with Al Badari’s insurgents.

Jimmy shook his head, shrugging off the help. “I got it,” he said.

One corner of Ben’s mouth turned up. He understood the reluctance. But he persisted. “C’mon, Jameson. You don’t clean up your own dead.”

Jimmy turned back to the truck and started spraying again. Ben put a hand on his shoulder. Jimmy tensed for a moment but stopped spraying. He looked over his shoulder at Ben. “I don’t need a hug, doc.”

“Good, ’cause I’m out of those. What I do have is empty mags. You pull ammo out of the connex, I’ll finish cleaning the trucks.”

“I know what you’re doing,” Jimmy said.

“While you’re at it, we need 40 mike-mike, flash-bangs, and two thermite grenades. I tossed both of mine in the police station.”

“On it,” Jimmy said, holding out the hose. Ben took it, and Jimmy walked away to the half-dozen shipping containers full of ordnance a hundred meters behind them.

Al Badari’s forces had overrun the Hafiza regional police precinct. Ben and Jimmy, with their Owl commando teams, had helped local police officers repel the initial assault. But Al Badari returned with a larger wave of attackers, this time using trucks, RPGs, recoilless rifles, and one mortar. When it became clear they couldn’t hold the ground, Ben set the precinct on fire with incendiary grenades and left the compound burning behind them as they broke contact.

When Jimmy was out of sight, Ben looked over the truck, front to back. Under the rear bumper was a mud puddle, mired with thick strings of red runoff and ivory-colored flecks. Ben clenched his teeth and punched the side of the Hilux hard enough to dent the door panel. After two deep, sucking breaths, he wiggled his fingers to check for broken bones. Then, he went back to spraying …

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