Death Merchant #56: Afghanistan Crashout

Rescue Mission

"With the help of Allah," a handful of fanatic Afghanistan freedom fighters plan an all-out attack on the Soviet high command in the mountain city of Kabul. But the odds are staggering: The Russians have twenty thousand crack troops and the most sophisticated weaponry; the rebels are poorly organized, and still depend on knives for fighting and carrier pigeons for communication. Everyone, including the rebels, thinks that the attack will probably be a suicide mission. Even the Death Merchant has his doubts.

But the CIA needs Richard Camellion to get two key Western spies out of the Soviet-controlled Central Prison in Kabul, a hellhole of inhuman slaughter and torture. Only the Death Merchant could attempt such a daring rescue, but even he'll have to use more than just his great cunning and deadly firepower to pull this one off.

***

Richard Camellion is in Afghanistan ("the hillbilly haven of Asia", according to author Joseph Rosenberger), with a group of Shi'a Muslims led by Khair Bahauddin Ghazi. As noted on the back cover, the Death Merchant is trying to reach the Central Prison in Kabul and rescue two agents who were inadvertently swept up in a mass arrest.

Ghazi and his tribe are fighting the Russians, who have invaded Afghanistan (as they did for real in late 1979; this book was published in August 1983). The Death Merchant and three others - Rod Hooppole, Ghazi's son Ismail, and another Afghan - have been hiking for two weeks on their way to the prison when they spy a Russian mine-laying unit, complete with armoured cars and grenade launchers. Ghazi wants to attack the Russians and basically taunts Camellion into going along with his seemingly suicidal scheme. (Of course, all of the Russians are wiped out.)

Back at the complex of caves in the lower hills of the Karakorum mountain range, Ghazi reveals his big plan: to attack the city of Kabul in three weeks and drive the Soviet forces out. Ghazi has been amassing men and weapons on the outskirts of the city for awhile. Camellion thinks this idea is pure suicide; the Afghans' methods are so rustic, they rely on human runners and carrier pigeons for communication. (Yet, the CIA is supplying them with weapons.*) Ghazi agrees with Camellion to a point, admitting that while he expects to triumph, he'll likely lose 80% of his 7,000-mujahideen fighting force.

* The US is doing this covertly, of course. Rosenberger says that is because the US does not want to trigger WWIII. (But wouldn't the Russians already know (or deeply suspect) from whom the Afghans are getting their weapons?) Ghazi says that the US should care deeply about what happens in Afghanistan: "The Soviet Union's invasion of our country is a major international disaster which in the long run will adversely affect the United States." In this, Rosenberger was quite prescient.

As they are discussing the Kabul mission, they receive word that Soviet helicopters and tanks are approaching the base. First, the town of Bashawal is destroyed, reduced to smoking rubble. ("The Cosmic Lord of Death descended on Bashawal.") The Afghans fire some RPGs and destroy five of the copters. Close to 400 Russian troops begin to advance up a hill - and the Afghans hold their fire, waiting until the Russians advance far enough that a retreat is impossible. Camellion orders the Afghans to charge - the "brain-washed Russian goofs" have walked right into a trap! An epic firefight erupts, a battle that is big enough to be saved for the end of the book. Rosenberger describes the shooting and hand-to-hand combat in his usual overly descriptive way, informing us of the paths the many slugs take through human bodies.

After the fight, approximately 100 people begin the long march to Kabul (190 kilometers), most of it through the Hindu Kush mountains. At some point, Camellion feels that the mission "is no longer feasible", that the attack on Kabul will surely fail and the chances of rescuing the two men in the prison are next to nil; he wants to be helicoptered out when a supply drop is made. The CIA doubles his usual $100,000 fee and for that reason and some others that are not too clear, the Death Merchant agrees to continue. The march continues through the Nuristan region, and past a communication center in Failiya (which apparently is in Iran); they traverse a huge gorge known as Aknib Limok (fictional) and encounter an encampment of Kuchis. A week later, they are at the ruins of Shahri-i-Chulghula (also fictional (or misspelled)).

When they make it to the Zaranj plain, on the outskirts of Kabul, where the CIA will make the weapons/supplies drop, they are once again attacked by Soviet helicopters. This assault is over very quickly, though, as the mujahideen fire Stinger missiles and blow the pig farmers' "eggbeaters" out of the sky.

While drawing up the plans to attack the seemingly impregnable Central Prison from all four sides, Rosenberger goofs on military time yet again. It is daylight at 0400, someone asked if darkness will be a problem at 1500, and 1500 is also referred to as "three o'clock in the morning".

Afghanistan Crashout ends when Camellion et al. kill all of the prison guards and free the captives. We hear about the Afghans' subsequent attacks on the Soviet headquarters and airbase in a one-page Aftermath. They did not succeed and nearly 4,000 mujahideen were killed. But Camellion's mind is elsewhere, as the men hike out of Afghanistan to be picked by helicopter in India. (One of the two jailed agents that Camellion was trying to rescue died in his cell before the Death Merchant arrived; the second one dies in his sleep during the trek to India, two days after being rescued.) The Death Merchant will fly first to London and then on to Romania for his next mission.

Like the last few DM volumes, this book was a real slog in some places. Rosenberger's goofiness from the earliest books is long gone, and you really get the sense that he saw the series at this point as a job, and perhaps not a very pleasant one. While he still includes a ton of research (which is sometimes interesting, though it's hard to know if any of it is fictional) and will occasionally offer a poetic turn of phrase, often when describing the climate or specific terrain, Rosenberger's narrative is overly serious; there is a heaviness to the book. Rosenberger puts a lid on the usual discussions of politics in this book, though Camellion does muse that the internal collapse of the United States is "right around the corner":

"[U]nless something was done quickly by 1990 the American transportation system would collapse. Aliens from Asia, from Mexico and Latin America had already ruined many major cities. The demise of their economy and the free enterprise system was staring the American people in the face, while lawlessness was increasing, due to Kennedy-type liberalism.1

FN1: All this was foreseen by a recent symposium with both U.S. mayors and scientists in attendance.

There is also a serious increase in gun porn, with Rosenberger taking time out to describe exactly how some weapons work:

The Death Merchant sighted down the updated M16, thinking about the RAW, the Rifleman's Assault Weapon that was designed to give all riflemen the instant capability of defeating such obstacles as concrete bunkers, walls, and armored vehicles. The system required very little training to use; it was as easy as fixing a bayonet. The man firing attaches the unit to his rifle, pulls out the safety pin and fires an ordinary cartridge at any target, using standard sights. Within a quarter of a second, the RAW is propelled from its launch frame—attached to the barrel of the rifle—and flies straight to the target in less than two seconds with zero trajectory.

The RAW's launcher frame holds a tube which is free to rotate on bearings and which contains rear vents, as well as two side vents consisting of two curved tubes that are at opposing right angles to the axis of the main tube. The projectile—it resembles a round metal ball—fits into the main tube and up against part of the main launcher support. It is this portion of the support that has a hole drilled through it which connects with the muzzle sleeve. The removal of the safety pin unblocks a firing pin at the lower end of the hole where it meets the body of the projectile. When the bullet leaves the muzzle of the rifle, some of the expanding gas flows down the launcher-tube hole and through the bracket. With the safety pin removed, the gas is free to strike the firing pin, driving it into a primer in the rear of the projectile and starting the rocket motor that drives the five inch diameter ball-projectile. As gas is expelled from the rocket, it is directed through the two right-angled tubes, causing the main tube and the "ball" to spin sixty revolutions per second. At launch, the gases are directed through the 'rear vents and diverted away from the man pulling the trigger.

The RAW warhead is armed through a conventional thrust/pin mechanism. Upon contact, the front part flattens, giving a "squash head" effect for the thirty-four ounces of TNT that explodes. The RAW is rifle munition with artillery power.

Nevertheless, I'm committed to reading the rest of the books in the series - or perhaps I should be committed for doing so. I'm already looking forward to going back in time and reading the other series Rosenberger wrote in the early-to-mid 70s (Murder Master and Kung Fu: Mace). I fully expect those books to have plenty of the humour and wackiness Rosenberger displayed in the earliest Death Merchant volumes.

Etc.:

Opening line: "By the big black beard of Boob McNutt, this just isn't my day!"

"Camellion aimed with all the precision of a newly married virgin bride reading a marriage manual ..."

"The Afghans are nuttier over 'macho' than the refried bean boys south of the border."

"In contrast, Mului Imu was killed outright by the eighth grenade, the hundreds of pieces of shrapnel turning him into bloody Afghanburger ..."

When the battle begins: "The show was on the road! The curtain had just gone up. But it beats being an oboe player!"

"To the Death Merchant a Russian was about equal to a spirochete, the microorganisms that cause syphilis."

"Grojean can go fly a milk bottle!"

"The Death Merchant despised communists of any nationality, disarmament freaks, people who grabbed at him, cults, and green beans - and in that order."

"Damn pig farmers! They dropped out of first grade - when they were thirty!"

"What do you get when you cross a Mexican with an octopus?" "I don't know, but you should see it pick lettuce!"

Footnote, page 80: "Richard Camellion has written three books on bare-handed kills. Two are not available to the public. The third is: Assassination: Theory & Practice. Paladin Press, P.O. Box 1307, Boulder, Colorado 80306." I have a copy of this book, which was published in 1977. Paladin published another book "written" by Camellion, Behavior Modification: The Art Of Mind Murdering, the following year. I wonder why Rosenberger didn't mention that one; perhaps because it concerns mind-control and not "bare-handed kills"?

Death Merchant #55: Slaughter In El Salvador

Revolutionary Rampage

The tiny Central American nation of El Salvador becomes a seething cauldron of blood as right wing death squads and leftist guerrillas engage in brutal warfare. Civilians die by the thousands and the fragile pro-Western government teeters on the brink of collapse.

The turmoil is an opportunity for Moscow - and a deadly challenge for the Death Merchant. Wanting neither a Moscow stooge or a bloody dictator in power, the US assigns Richard Camellion to terminate the crazed leaders of each extremist faction.

Luck won't be enough, the Death Merchant will need all the firepower he can get - because his mission will put him in the middle of a jungle holocaust.

***

At the end of the last "incredible" Death Merchant adventure, Richard Camellion asked H.L. Kartz if he'd like to accompany him to El Salvador on his next mission. Kartz - a Hitler-loving nihilist - said yes, and as the two men (along with Wilbur Fainn) are sneaking through a coffee plantation on an assignment to terminate the six leaders of the right-wing terrorist group, Escuadron de la Muerte (Squadron of Death), the racist Kartz is going on about how "this Central American tortilla trash is only one step above the gooks in Vietnam". Charming.

The Death Merchant's mission in Slaughter in El Salvador is to wipe out the six high-level leaders of the Sandinistas, as well as a handful of top Cuban and Russian officials, at a meeting in Managua. The Death Merchant and a force of five are in disguise as KGB officials (Camellion's alias is Colonel Viktor Maikop Kizhnatsky) who are supposedly late for the meeting. They get ushered up to the fourth floor conference room in the National Institute for Agrarian Reform and commence firing as soon as possible. The slaughter is over fairly quickly - the men at the table have no time to draw their weapons - and then it's a battle with the building's guards as the Death Merchant et al. head to the seventh floor and then to the roof, where a helicopter will be waiting to carry them to safety.

Before that, there is a trek into the Mountains de Huapi with members of the Paribundo Marti National Liberation Front (who are also fighting the "Sandys") and various shoot-outs that all seem like killing time (and filling pages) before crashing the big Managua meeting. At one point, one of the El Salvadorians tells Camellion that he is sick of hearing Kartz's racist opinions. The Death Merchant is of little help: "Racism is a tricky word that has many meanings to many people. ... I don't agree or disagree with what he said ... I will say this: any man who thinks all races are equal in abilities is an idiot."

Early in the book, author Joseph Rosenberger offers a short explanation of how the United States government "has always meddled in Central America":

As far back as 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt issued the "Roosevelt Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine, declaring that the United States was entitled to police Central America.

U.S. troops were sent to Honduras in 1911 to protect American business interests and property. Between 1912 and 1933, U.S. Marines periodically fought Nicaraguan peasant rebels whose fanatical resistance made Washington worry about "Bolshevik" influence close to the Panama Canal. Before the Marines left they had established a National Guard that soon placed Anastasio Somoza Garcia in power and created a dynasty that lasted almost fifty years.

Then there was Guatemala! mused the Death Merchant. In 1954 Washington helped overthrow the Guatemalan government. Well, D.C. didn't have much of a choice. Not only had President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman expropriated property belonging to the United Fruit Company, but his wife, being a communist, had other agrarian reforms in mind. Those two idiots should have known better than to try to buck American Big Business.

Aided by the CIA, Guatemalan exiles invaded their homeland and overthrew Arbenz.

And here we are in El Salvador, trying to convince "God's Forgotten" that we only want to help!

It's a blunt history lesson I didn't expect from Rosenberger, who from all appearances was extremely conservative. Rosenberger even castigates President Ronald Reagan for giving tax breaks to the rich. Fainn refers to Kartz as "the Rolls-Royce of hit men" and then states (complete with footnote!):

"You now, speaking of Rolls-Royces, I suppose you know how our dear President—he who loves the poor!—has handed Rolls-Royce owners a tax break, giving them seventy grand tax-break rebates—two-thirds of the purchase price of their jazzy jalopies. A working stiff has to depend on his own wallet, but a rich guy can buy a new Rolls and Uncle Sam will save him seventy thousand dollars.7

7: Fact.

In Rosenberger's world, there is always time - even during the most tense part of a mission - for a discussion/argument about the evils of religion:

"God help us all!" breathed Leon Sunol, squeezing the fingers of his right hand. "It will be only with the help of the Almighty that we get out of this alive."

Kartz lit a cigarette. "You mean it will be with the help of firepower," he said with a sneer out of the corner of his mouth. "You can leave out God and his holy joes. In fact, it's the holier-than-thou morons and their unrealistic ideals who are making it easy for the Russians, not only in the U.S., but down here in Central America. If you spi— if you people down here had brain one, you'd boot out all the ministers and priests, and that includes the so called lay missionaries who are working with the rebels and their 'noble cause.'"

"You're really something, H.L.," exclaimed Fainn. "It seems to me that every time you bump your gums together you're castigating someone or something. Don't you ever have anything good to say?"

Kartz gave Fainn a You-dumb-banjo-butt look. "I say it how it is. Those who can't stand the heat of reality can get the hell out and hide in the cooler of unreality. That's what the Jesus boys and girls are doing—helping communist revolutionaries and thinking they're 'serving God' and doing 'His will.' The idiots! How in hell do they know what God wants!"

"He's right." The Death Merchant came to Kartz's defense, not so much because he liked the man and admired his professional kill ability, but because he respected truth in any form. "I'll give an example. The nuclear-freeze movement and the phony peace drive are inspired and directed from Moscow. The Soviet-controlled World Peace Council works with American groups to promote disarmament. The nuclear freeze program, for example, has been coordinated by the American Friends Service Committee under its disarmament program. This outfit is active with the World Peace Council. It was also the American Friends Service Committee that helped found the U.S. Peace Council."

The Death Merchant went on, "All over Central America and South America, priests and Protestant ministers are helping Communist especially the damned Jesuits. In fact, the Jesuits are so bent on overthrowing governments that the Pope has told them in no uncertain terms to stay out of local politics; and the damn fools think they are doing it in the cause for 'peace.'"

Kartz blew cigarette smoke toward the sky, then snarled, "You know what 'peace' means to the Soviets? It means the killing of all opposition to Soviet-dominated territories, whether it's by mass murder as in Afghanistan, by slow starvation and overwork as in their own Gulags, or by random terrorist attacks as in the target populations of Latin America and Africa." He tossed away his cigarette and practically glared at the Death Merchant. "Or we going to sit here and gab, or get on with it?"

and

Remarkably calm as he always was when the Cosmic Lord of Death was close by, Richard Camellion was not interested in the glories of Managua. Every nation has its "beautiful" cities with all their past and present "glories," their monuments and "sacred" places that its people cherish—and that in a twinkling of an eye can be turned into dust. It was all relative, all meaningless when viewed within the framework of reality—If the sun turned into a nova tomorrow and this planet evaporated, not the tiniest wave of discontent would ripple through even our own galaxy, much less the Universe. In less than thirty years, Managua would be nothing but rubble, its buildings deserted, most of its people dead and scattered throughout the jungle. And so will New York, Berlin, Moscow, Paris, and all the rest of the "great" cities of the world. But the THEN does not have anything to do with the NOW!

So far, he reflected, they had not encountered any difficulty. The drop-off at Pedro Melgarejo's small farm had gone as scheduled. They had spent a restless night and had left the farm on schedule. Not once had any Sandinista, or group of Sandys, stopped the jeep to ask the occupants for identification, none of which surprised Camellion. Other Sandinistas, seeing Sunol, Dorticos and Tristaban in similar uniforms, assumed everyone in the jeep belonged there and that the vehicle was on some official errand.

The jeep was soon skirting the guajiros barrio, a tremendous district of dilapidated houses, the poor section that was soon far to the rear as Tristaban turned onto the Autopista, the wide highway that would take them to the Avenida Andres, the long tree-lined boulevard that moved through the center of the city and divided it into the east and the west sections.

Traffic increased as they moved deeper into the city . . . a trickle of traffic, the kind one would find in Moscow, or Warsaw, or any city in any communist country. The automobiles were also similar to the vehicles one would find in a nation in the pig-farmer bloc—small East German and Czech cars. There weren't, however, any Soviet-built vehicles. Another difference was that there were quite a few American cars on the streets, these having been imported before the revolution.

Ricardo Tristaban called back in a loud voice, "Americanos, see how few cars there are? This is due not only to a lack of gasoline, but to a total lack of turistas. Rush hour used to be a bullfight in the streets with every car a blaring beast and every pedestrian a toreador. Not even the sidewalks were safe. All that has changed. People are afraid. At night the streets are deserted."

"Si, even the prostitutes have been driven out of business," said Leon Sunol. "Ironically, driving out the prostitutes is the only social good the Sandinistas have accomplished, and then it was unintentional."

Emilio Dorticos said, "So far they have not put any restrictions on religion. They have expelled many foreign priests and ministers. So far it's nothing like what is taking place in El Salvador where they're murdering the Religious left and right!"

Those weird "laughing" noises from Kartz. "Yeah, both the Left and the Right are knocking off the holy joes and janes."

"With the communists, religious liberty never lasts long," said Leon Sunol. "What kind of a nation can you have without religious freedom?"

And often . . . what kind of a nation do you have WITH religious freedom? The Death Merchant recalled the words of Lucretius: "How suasive is religion to our bane."

"Religious freedom" seems to be on par with stupidity, hyprocrisy, and brutality . . . with opponents of abortion committing arson against abortion clinics, and kidnaping and threatening death against those who disagree with them—all in the name of Jesus!

With opponents of the prayer-in-school amendment being reviled, threatened, and their patriotism impugned—all in the name of Jesus!

With books being banned by dangerous, uneducated boobs who tell us that God cannot stand Kurt Vonnegut!

I wonder what kind of God these people have? I wonder what kind of people are these, these screaming and raving Bible thumpers, these twentieth century Torquemadas who, with their inquisition of hate, are so quick to curse, so slow to forgive, so in love with compulsion, and so very ignorant of the very Bible in which they so fervently believe; these moronic sadists who could rationalize the worst moral crimes by saying it was "God's will" . . . who could totally ignore the real teachings of Jesus, who told his followers to pray in private . . . the same Christ who praised the publican's quiet prayer in the shadow over the Pharisee's public display of righteousness, who said religious acts should not be ostentatious, should almost be done on the sly, so that the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing!

On the sly! The Death Merchant wanted to vomit. Modern religion in the United States was a symphony of loud noise, with screaming and screeching of "The Word," on television and radio productions aimed at the gullible millions—all of it orchestrated by legal con artists with an eye on the Almighty dollar.

I rather suspect God finds it hardest to hear prayers that are boomed from loudspeakers!

Camellion is referred to early in the book as "an amateur paleontologist", and none of Rosenberger's research goes to waste:

The escape corridor was not a straight shot to the canyon. It was not built like a railroad tunnel. To the contrary, the passage twisted and turned, often at very sharp angles; nor were the roof and the floor evenly spaced from each other. In some places the rock overhang was as much as thirty feet above the floor, in other places no more than six feet. There were no stalactites or stalagmites. There was only the dark ceiling, the floor strewn with rocks and the jagged walls of metamorphic strata with large cavities known as vugs; yet within the light of high intensity flashlights, "Night Blaster" lanterns and spot Q-beams, Camellion could see that within the walls were embedded the skulls of primitive birds, the bones of ganoids and placoderms, dinosaur vertebrae, wing bones of pterodactyls, and the bones of archaic mammals such as Xiphodons, palaeotheres, Eohippi, titanotheres, pinoeshemes, and Oreodons. ...

The Death Merchant saw that the far rim of the canyon, half a kilometer away to the east, was four hundred feet from the floor, all sides wild and primitive. On the canyon floor were bluffs and broad washes, interlaced with steep weedy slopes thick with tangled grass, cactus, and scrub. The bare surfaces that could be seen revealed an absence of Archaean and primordial strata, most of the rocks being Jurassic and Comanchian sandstones, with now and then a glossy black outcropping that suggested a hard, poor grade coal. These were gabbros, coarse-grained igneous rocks composed of diallage and labradorite.

At last, with his mission completed, the Death Merchant thinks some deep thoughts:

It has to do with Reality, with Time. If our future is predetermined, our every act is determined, including how and where and when we die. But who determines it? But if Time isn't a closed circle and the past, present and future aren't one, all rolled together, this means the future doesn't exist during the present and that the past is totally gone, except in memory. On the other hand, if we somehow choose our future from an infinite number of existing parallel universes, then there isn't any fixed result at any given time in any future and all possible futures exist. Precognition does exist. Does that particle of future exist at the same time that one is aware, precognitively, of that slice of future, of that specific happening? Fudge! None of this can explain a death aura.

Etc.:

"Fate put funny relish on our cheeseburger."

"Only one man in the second jeep had time to realize that the Cosmic Lord of Death was in their midst. He couldn't do anything about it. He could die, and did, a stream of slugs blowing open his skull like an overly ripe melon before he could even pick up his AK assault rifle."

"Porcupine poop!" ... "Camel crap!" ... "Donkey dung!" ... "Cassowary crap!"

"All four of you belong in the Who's Who of Dumb!" sneered the Death Merchant, who swung the AKM toward the doomed Sandinistas."

"'What is your name?' Stark naked vindictiveness dripped from all four words as the Death merchant let Sevilla have his most ferocious stare, stabbing him straight in the eye. For only a split second did the two men lock eyes, but that tick of time was too long for Sevilla. He didn't know what he glimpsed in the depths of those blue pools, but whatever it was the sheer malevolence, beyond time and matter, filled him with a flash of unspeakable dread and horror."

"'Hot diddly damn!' yelled Kartz—happier than a wino who had just broken into a liquor store and was looking at all the cases and shelves filled with booze."

"Give the man a tube of gold-plated Preparation H."

"The 9mm 115 grain JHP projectile stabbed into Enrique Varona ... the impact of the slug in the man's chest staggering him. Varona was still acting like a man trying to open an umbrella in his pants ..."

In each of the last half-dozen books, Rosenberger has made a passing reference to someone in California named "Rance Galloway". Rosenberger clearly does not like this guy (or his "sow-slut" wife), but Google has been no help. (I wonder if it's someone from Rosenberger's personal life.)

Death Merchant #54: Apocalypse U.S.A.!

VXB-2L6 - it's the most deadly nerve gas ever invented. In the hands of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi it could spell death for millions of Americans.

The mad Muslim strongman has sent a crack team of Libyan terrorists and East German spies to America to carry out his plan: the poisoning of the atmosphere above the east coast of the US. If the scheme succeeds there will be twenty-five million corpses - from New York to the nation's capitol - and the world will rock as World War III breaks out.

Only Richard Camellion stands to stop Qaddafi's lust for blood - but the Death Merchant's search and destroy mission is turning into a deadly game of cat and mouse with the terrorist team.

***

In Apocalypse, U.S.A.!, author Joseph Rosenberger once again makes Muammar Qaddafi the bad guy (see DM #s 49 and 50, in which Rosenberger referred to him as "Kaddafi"). This time, the Libyan dictator's weapon against the U.S. is nerve gas ... with a name like a Canadian postal code!

When we first see Richard "Death Merchant" Camellion at the CIA's "Black Station" near Keasbey, New Jersey, he is dressed in a "tan heather turtleneck, redwood corduroy slacks, and Padmore chukka boots", eating from a sack of carob-coated sunflower seeds. Camellion has teamed up with a variety of agents, including Hannibal Llewellyn "H.L." Kartz, who is a totally ruthless nihilist and "an ardent admirer of Adolf Hitler". (Rosenberger describes nihilists as people who "have no loyalties, no culture, no religious faith, and consider themselves a law unto themselves". Which sounds not unlike the Death Merchant.)

Naturally, Kartz is a guy who runs his mouth, so he gets to litter the narrative with his conservative rants, including one with broadsides against Billy Graham, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the "leftwing trash" who protest the U.S.'s nuclear arms build-up. And while Camellion "couldn't have cared less about the pinheads in the federal government ... much of what [Kartz] said was the truth".

The book is not 40 pages old before Kartz takes part in an epic argument about Israeli aggression towards the Palestinians. (It's been hard to determine Rosenberger's personal stance on this issue, since he seems to flip-flop when bringing it up in recent DM books. In this volume, he's clearly anti-Israel.)

Ever since the Sikorsky Sea Stallion had lifted off from the naval station, Kartz had been in a heated debate with Daren Givens over Israel, Kartz maintaining that the Israelis were ruthless assassins who murdered innocent Arabs, men, women, and children—that "There are many thoughtful Jews—in Israel and in the U.S.—who feel that the wrong damn bunch is running Israel these days, whipping up hatred for the Arabs that is more typical of the most primitive political systems of the Middle East and not at all characteristic of the hopes of the majority of Zionists who struggled to establish and build Israel."

Sergeant Givens, a young, husky blond who was pro-Israel, maintained stoutly that the Israelis—"They're three million surrounded by one hundred million"—had a moral right to defend themselves, that "What the hell do you think we Americans would do if the Mexes were firing at us from across the Texas border? You know what we'd do! We'd go into chili-land and make short work of the greasers!"

Neither Camellion nor Captain Glen W. Griffith, the commander of the ten SEAL Force 1 antiterrorist commandos, intervened. Why should they? Kartz and Givens were grown men. Besides, the loud discussion—with Kartz moving his arms like the blades of a windmill in a strong wind—within the partially soundproof chopper took the minds of the other men off the deadly danger into which they were flying.

"You don't seem to consider what Yasir Arafat and the PLO have sworn to do!" Givens yelled at Kartz, who was sitting across the aisle. "Push every Israeli into the sea. And that means kill every Israeli! It was the PLO that blew up a busfull of Israeli children. What the hell do you expect the Israelis to do, send the sonsabitches a thank-you note?"

"Don't worry! The Israelis got even," sneered Kartz. "Last summer when they invaded Lebanon, they killed ten thousand civilians and created more than half a million homeless refugees. They even used cluster bombs on civilians. This doesn't surprise anyone who knows Ariel Sharon, who led the Israeli force. He's a tyrant who intimidates even that little runt Begin!"

"I think Sharon is a damned good general," ground out Givens. "He sure beat the piss out of the PLO and the Syrians."

"He's also a sadist. He's the joker who ordered his troops to snuff twelve Arabs in retaliation for the murder of an Israeli woman and her two children. After twelve were gunned down, Sadist Sharon still wasn't satisfied, so he had forty-six Arab houses blown up while the Arabs were still inside. Sixty-nine Arabs were killed, most of them women and children.1 Need I say more about Israel's defense minister?"

"Make your point! Make your point!"

"I'm saying that what happened months ago in Lebanon can easily be understood when one realizes that Begin and Sharon believe that pure violence can destroy an idea and terrorize a people—in this case the Palestinians."

Sergeant Givens thought for a moment and hooked his thumbs over the pouched cartridge belt around his waist. Then he said, "I suppose you'll say next that the PLO hasn't been killing innocent Israelis! What about that?"

"I didn't say that," growled Kartz. "Hell yes the Arabs knock off Israelis—and that's murder. But they don't kill on the scale that the Israelis kill. Killing is Menachem Begin's trademark! His savage record goes all the way back to the 1940s, when a group of prominent American Jews wrote a letter protesting Begin's visit to the U.S. He was then the leader of some Jewish party in Palestine. I forget the magazine the letter appeared in.2 But it was Begin and his terrorist group that blew up the King David Hotel—almost a hundred: people were killed—and ordered terrorist assaults on Arab villages, including the massacre at Dar Yasin."3

All this time, Pini Hilleli had stayed out of the discussion between Kartz and Sergeant Givens. Now he said, unexpectedly, "As a former Israeli, sergeant, I can tell you that he's right about Begin. Only several years ago, Begin wrote in an Israeli magazine that the slaughter at Dar Yasin was not only justified but necessary, that without it there would never have been a state of Israel!"

"Exactly," Kartz said with satisfaction. "And now Begin and Sharon—his chief 'hit man'—are slaughtering thousands of Arab civilians to crush the Palestinian spirit, the same kind of spirit that fires up Zionists like them."

"Begin's logic is really fascinating," Hilleli said, grinning as if he were about to tell a joke. "If an Israeli shoots up Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock Mosque and kills Arabs—well, he's crazy. But no nation bombed Israel for it! On the other hand, if an Arab gunman kills an Israeli, then U.S. supplied Israeli bombers rain cluster-bomb death on Lebanon. No insult intended toward you men, but the biggest suckers are you Americans!"

Kartz's grin was from ear to ear.

Sergeant Givens made an angry face. "How do you figure that?"

"Look what Begin did right after his army finished with blowing hell out of Lebanon. He flew to Washington and demanded that the record 1980 two-and-a-half billion-dollar aid to Israel be upped to three billion. Begin makes you American taxpayers pay twice—first for Israel's brutal assault on Lebanon and then for the relief of Lebanon's suffering people. You should ask your Congress who runs this nation—Begin or the Reagan administration?"

1 True—this took place in 1953.

2 True. On December 4, 1948, the New York Times ran a letter signed by twenty-eight of America's most respected Jews, including Albert Einstein, Sidney Hook, and Rabbi Jessurun Cardozo. The letter protested the visit of Menachem Begin, then leader of the Herut party, described as "closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties." The signers were worried that Begin would collect money and support, thus creating the impression that "a large segment of America supports Fascist elements in Israel." The signers cited Begin's terrorist acts and espousal of "ultra-nationalism, religious mysticism and racial superiority." (Italics mine.) [Rosenberger used italics on the three quotes]

3 True. The massacre occurred April 10, 1948. Dar Yasin was an Arab village whose residents lived on good terms with Jews. But Begin's Irgun terrorists wanted to occupy Dar Yasin for strategic purposes. The terrorists, led by Begin, attacked with rifles, machine guns, grenades, and even cutlasses—later seen dripping with blood. Some 241 men, women, and children were butchered. Twenty men were led off in chains and actually paraded like cattle through Jerusalem's Jewish sector, then lined up against a wall and shot. Begin later bragged that the horror at Dar Yasin caused seven hundred thousand Arabs to flee Palestine. British historian Arnold Toynbee had something else to say. He said the mass murders were "comparable to crimes committed against Jews by the Nazis."

In his attempt to kill millions of Americans with deadly nerve gas, Qaddafi has teamed up with the SSD, the East German Security Service - and three American businessmen. After weighing the pros and cons, Camellion decides to kidnap Keith Griesbeck, a wealthy Atlanta businessman who has "international connections". Camellion et al. hijack a tractor trailer delivering 23 tons of scrap metal to Big Benny Laczko's scrapyard, where Griesbeck (an old friend of Benny's) has lunch every Thursday at noon. The attempted kidnapping of Griesbeck is spread out over five chapters and the book is nearly half-over when the Death Merchant and his men lift off from the scrapyard in a helicopter with their prize.

When questioned, Griesbeck tells them he thought the Qaddafi deal was for neutron bomb secrets. He  mentions his contact - and so the Death Merchant decides to black-bag that guy. That leads to a shootout in a former brick-making factory in Brooklyn. Three East Germans are taken prisoner and they quickly blab about the Prinz Rupert, a ship that is carrying the nerve gas. It sets up a showdown with the Death Merchant and twenty SEAL commandos rappelling from two helicopters onto the enemy ship. They make their way through the vessel, killing everyone in their path. Why don't they simply sink the ship and send the nerve gas to the bottom of the ocean? Because Uncle Sam wants to grab the deadly gas and add it to its own chemical weapon stockpile!

Throughout the book, Rosenberger touches on his usual political and social topics. While there is no talk in this book of the Death Merchant being able to seeing human auras - and tell by their colours which people have been marked by the Cosmic Lord of Death - there is a small bit about the angels mentioned in the Book of Genesis as actually being extraterrestrials.

And, of course, Rosenberger has Camellion muse about the end of human civilization, which the author has mentioned many times will occur before the year 2000 (this volume was published in March 1983):

Camellion suddenly thought of another irony, this one involving the mighty of the world. In reality, their power was zero! Cosmic forces were in motion, forces that would utterly transform world society within the next seventeen years, in the form of a catastrophe never before seen by modern man—One that is impossible for the average man to even conceive. Men can never face up to what they think is total oblivion!

There would be a literal shifting of the axis of the earth, and the planet would be tilted at a new angle so that the sun and the moon would appear to move in different orbits in the sky—Unless Michel de Notredame is wrong! Well, he's been right on target for hundreds of years.10

The tilt of the earth would come during World War III—a nuclear holocaust—and usher in a new age, one of peace, one that would last for a thousand years, from A.D. 2000 to A.D. 3000, after which there would be a new horror, a new evil. Only this time man would not be fooled; he would be prepared, having developed a higher spiritual consciousness. At the end of the year A.D. 7000 there would be a universal conflagration in which earth would be destroyed. The planet would vanish in fire and smoke because its purpose will have been served, the material sphere no longer needed to support the physical body of man. By then, man will have left his material body and will have become pure spirit, as he was intended to be.

10 This is Nostradamus, the only truly accurate seer the world has ever known. Here is the actual quatrain in which he predicts the change of position of the sun and the moon. Only a tilting of the earth on its axis could effect such a change. The "twentieth year" is the year 2000.

The grand twentieth year ends, also the position of the moon.
It will hold a different monarchy in the sky for another 7,000 years.
Then the sun, too, will be tired of its place.
And at that time will my prophecies for the world be ended.

Late in the book, fighting for their lives aboard the Prinz Rupert, Camellion and his force engage in some "savage eyeball-to-eyeball combat"!

"Like Raid, it kills bugs dead!" [Camellion] snarled and pulled the trigger of the AMP. The Alaskan boomed and Erich Bamberger's face and head disappeared in a flash of bones, blood, and brain that tried to shoot to the sky but made it only to the ceiling. He let the empty MAC-10 SMG drop from his left hand and, at the same time he slammed Siegfried Feuermann across the face with the long barrel of the AMP, let Horst Erzkinner have a left-legged Shito-Ryu Mae Geri Kekomi front thrust kick, a grand slam that wrapped the German's stomach around his spine and crushed vital blood vessels and arteries in the abdominal region. There was never any redemption from such a kill kick. Looking as if his features had been frozen by a blast of liquid air, the dying Erzkinner fell back and started to sag, eyes wide, arms quivering.

Muttering oaths in German, Hans Fischer grabbed Camellion's right wrist with his left hand and tried a right-handed sword chop aimed at the left side of the Death Merchant's face. Concurrently, another SSD agent rushed in from behind Camellion, intending to turn the back of his head to mush with the barrel of an empty Czech Skorpion machine pistol. Instinct and the rush of air against his back warned Camellion of the attack coming at him from the rear. Camellion exploded into action. An Ushiro Keage Geri rear snap kick with his left leg caught Alfred Groner Heine five inches below where his last meal rested and made the SSD officer think his small intestine had collided with a buzz saw. Tasting the bile that jumped up in his throat, he tried to fight the waves of agony flowing throughout his body. Losing the battle, he found himself falling backward and vaguely sensed that someone was reaching out for him. Heine couldn't have fallen into worse hands.

"Stupid! You're breathing my air," snarled H.L. Kartz. His arms flashed out in the beginning of a commando neck-breaker. His left forearm went over Heine's throat, his fingers fastening to the top of his right arm. As his left arm tightened, his right hand went to the left side of Heine's head and pressed mightily to the right. Snap! Crackle! Pop! Heine's neck snapped a few seconds after the Death Merchant used a left-handed Ippon Nukite one-finger spear thrust that caught Hans Fischer in the right side of his neck, the intense agony forcing the East German to release his hold on the Death Merchant's right wrist. Camellion could then have easily put a bullet into Fischer. But why waste a bullet on a piece of slime?

"If brains were made of leather, you wouldn't have enough to saddle a flea," laughed Camellion, who then killed the SSD man by slamming the barrel of the AMP against his left temple. ...

A man who lived life in one long gleeful rage, H.L. Kartz was having one of the prime times of his life. Like Camellion, Kartz had eyes in the back of his head and a built-in sensor that could detect personal danger from all sides. A roundhouse kick to Edwin Hemholtz's lower chest wrecked the man's xiphoid process, the fingerlike tab of cartilage hanging off the lowermost edge of the sternum, or breast bone. This is the insertion of the rectus abdominus muscle on the sternum. Any severe blow that strikes the xiphoid process while traveling upward at an angle toward the heart causes severe bruising to the liver, stomach, and heart, resulting in unconsciousness and even death. In the case of Hemholtz, Kartz's expertly delivered kick caused instant unconsciousness. The German was still falling when Kartz killed him with a right Chungdan ap chagi middle front snap-kick to the side of the neck.

While the ending of Apocalypse, U.S.A.! has plenty of the intricate fighting scenes and exquisitely-described gore that we expect from Rosenberger, it's a weak finish because Camellion snuffs out the murderous plot before it really has a chance to get off the ground. And Rosenberger relegates the discovery of the nerve gas on board the Prinz Rupert to an aside in the "Aftermath".

Etc.:

"[Camellion] could shoot the balls off a bee at a hundred feet." (page 16)

"Camellion could have shot the butt off a bee at a hundred feet." (page 84)

The "hawk-eyed" Death Merchant, "who could have seen a flea fly in a foggy field".

"[T]he road was deserted, the glow of the streetlights falling only on ice and snow and loneliness."

"Go kiss a hair brush."

"The well-dressed Keith Griesbeck looked so confused that the Death Merchant assumed it would have taken him two hours to watch '60 Minutes'".

"'And especially to hold off the police,' finished the Death Merchant, speaking with the sharpness of a construction boss rebuking a steel riveter who complains he's afraid of heights."

"A thin, cold wind blew snow around their legs, and there was an uncanny suggestion of invisible pipes playing an evil tune, one that suggested the terrible sadness that could only come from a city of lonely corpses."

"'You know how it is,' Kartz growled. 'Cast your bread upon the waters and you'll get a soggy sandwich every time.'"

"'I'll be happy when we're on deck,' said another man. 'Getting down the ladder is going to be more difficult than a Sioux manhood ritual.'"

"Dimirrel weighed 194 pounds and was as strong as two young camels in their prime".

"There was another reason, the biggest of all: he immensely enjoyed what he was doing. He was not alone in his love of excitement. Kartz and Chatters, Hilleli and—to a certain extent—the SEAL commandos were the kind of men fascinated by death-dealing machinery. All very normal—for them. Normal because there are those men and women who love danger, who find violence and death fascinating. Some become professional mercenaries. Or stuntmen. Or drive racing cars. Always they live in the fast lane, skating barefoooted on the cutting edge of life's razor blade."

Death Merchant #53: The Judas Scrolls

A British archaeologist discovers twenty-seven ancient scrolls in the west Bank of Jordan. The scrolls, written by none other than Judas Iscariot, contain information so devastating it could bring the Vatican to its knees.

Then the Palestine Resistance League steals the valuable scrolls and offers them to the highest bidder - Russia or the Vatican. Price: $30 million. But then the scrolls are stolen again.

This deadly game of hide and seek could undermine the entire Christian world. Only the Death Merchant, master of cunning and disguise, can stop it. He must penetrate the enemy dragnet and find the scrolls before the Russians do. But now the hard part - even Camellion's not so sure he can get out of this death trap alive.

***

Twenty-seven ancient scrolls have been discovered underneath the floor of a ruined temple near Mount Hebron by a British archeologist. It turns out that these scrolls were written by Judas Iscariot and as the back of this book says, the information they contain "could undermine the entire Christian world" and "bring the Vatican to its knees". But how can the scrolls be smuggled out of Israel?

Author Joseph Rosenberger lays out a somewhat complicated backstory that includes the scrolls being stolen by members of the Palestinian Resistance League and offered to either the Vatican or the KGB for $30 million, and then eventually hidden in a cave in the Arqā Mountains. Rosenberger explains the backstory of the scrolls, which state, among other things, that Jesus survived his ordeal on the cross (being a master yogi, he was able to "turn off" the pain) and lived to the age of either 51 or 64 - depending on where in the book you are reading.

Once again, I am amazed at the lengthy digressions that Rosenberger adds to his action narrative. I don't know that much about the men's adventure genre, but I'm assuming that no other writer did this kind of thing and certainly not to the extent Rosenberger did. His asides usually fall into one of two categories: philosophical/mystical or racial/social.

As the expedition team is assembled, Richard "Death Merchant" Camellion jokes, "Welcome aboard, Follmer. I hope you can get used to A-rabs. You're going to see plenty of sand crabs before this deal is over and done with." And in a blink of an eye, the narrative veers off into a long segment of right-wing racism and paranoia.

Follmer, who had walked over to the liquor and was pouring another vodka, said, "Almost anything would be better than the mess back in the States. I don't have to tell you about the race policy of the current crop of idiots in D.C. You know how we're being invaded by aliens. For example, 80 percent of the babies born in Los Angeles County hospitals in 1981 were to illegal aliens, to illegal immigrant mothers, almost all of them from Mexico—and all their medical expenses were paid by taxpayers."

Kelly Dillard laughed sinisterly. "Why you shouldn't talk like that!" he chided. "After all, the nonwhite trash mean more votes for the politicians, more money for businessmen, more souls for the two-faced clergy, and more opportunities for the goddamn race mixers to destroy America's white heritage."

"Ordinarily, I'm a fair-minded person," Phil LaHann said thoughtfully. "I must agree with you. We can see what the nonwhite morons have already done to the American educational system. The lowering of scholastic and disciplinary standards in order to accommodate the huge influx of black and Chicano students into previously all-white schools has resulted in one big mess. Whites are learning less, while the coons and spics are learning nothing, which is normal enough. But no one should be surprised that white students do not learn in a school system that sees more than 5,000 of its teachers assaulted each month. What a joke! One might as well try to 'educate' apes!"

The Death Merchant, who seldom involved himself in useless discussions, felt like saying Folks! You ain't seen nothin' yet! Knowing world history as he did, Camellion was only too aware of the road the United States was taking—For the federal government, for America's teeming nonwhite minorities, and even for a very substantial portion of the white majority, the choice is clear: they will continue straight ahead—

And into oblivion!

They will continue to clamor for more racial mixing in the schools, in residential neighborhoods, and on the job. They will continue to allow millions of nonwhite aliens to pour across the U.S. borders from Mexico, the Caribbean, and the Orient; and the U.S. economy and the standard of living will grow steadily worse. They will continue to push for more handouts for those who will not work, more indulgences for the least productive elements of society, more of the same permissiveness and lack of discipline that have helped bring on present problems.

The massive influx of aliens is rapidly transforming the character of America's population and the appearance of its cities. The principal beachheads of the foreign swarms—New York City and its environs, Florida, southern Texas, and California—are in the process of acquiring nonwhite majorities. The intruders—with the morals of camels—are taking over entire neighborhoods that once were home to native Americans of European stock.

It will end in a race war. The nonwhites will lose. They have neither the intelligence nor the firepower to win.

First of all, it's hilarious to read that the Death Merchant doesn't get involved in these political/social "discussions". In truth, he's often leading them! It's also interesting that Rosenberger, who regularly uses footnotes to back up various bits of arcane information, presents no citations here.

This is merely the first of several racist polemics found throughout The Judas Scrolls. While Rosenberger has always included this type of material in his books, there are more of them in this volume than I can recall reading in any earlier DM book. And the rants are longer and seem more serious, angrier. Long gone is any trace of the goofiness that used to characterize Rosenberger's rants.

Only five pages after this section, Rosenberger shows off another authorial quirk, writing a 12-page conversation between Camellion and two Jesuit priests who are accompanying the search for the scrolls. Earlier books have had off-topic philosophical discussions but nothing of this length and breadth. Rosenberger mentions the Shroud of Turin, the supposed ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah, Nostradamus, the Essenes, Giovanni Pettinato, the Santorin volcano, the thoughts of Plato in his dialogues Timaeus and Critias, Saint John Bosco, etc.

During this discussion, Camellion points out that "a new glacial age has begun":

Camellion proceeded to explain that the experts' alarming forecast was based on a number of incredible factors:

—The sun is shrinking at a rapid rate—much faster than scientists have predicted over the years. Already, over the past 400 years, the sun has lost a total area equivalent to that of 80,000 earths!

—The temperature of the earth is falling. A drop of only 4.9 degrees would result in the same freezing temperatures as those of the last Great Ice Age.

—The growing season is the food-producing temperate zones has shortened by three weeks in the past forty years.

—Sizzling summers and vicious winters have killed more than 1,000 people during 1981 in the United States alone, and there are not any signs that the freakish weather will subside over the next decade.

—Shifts in the position of the sun, Earth and the other planets will change terrestrial climate dramatically. The result will be a new Ice Age. Colossal cold will creep throughout the Northern and the Southern Hemispheres, killing off agriculture altogether in many areas and severely reducing food production in others. Result: a worldwide famine. ...

"I'm thinking of a similar prediction," said Father Norton, "made by Johann Friede, a thirteenth-century Austrian monk. He said that toward the end of the world, mankind will face its last, hard trial. That the end would be foreshadowed by striking changes in nature, that the alternation between heat and cold will become more intense. He said storms will have more catastrophic effects. Earthquakes will destroy many lands and the seas will overflow into many lowlands."

LaHann said easily, "I'd be safe in saying that we can find clues to these troublesome times to come in a study of the zodiac. History—"

"Astrology is superstitious claptrap!" Father Gatdula said flatly.

"History and legend show an analogy between the archetypal temperaments of man and the twelve signs of the zodiac. A lot of historians feel it is these analogous relationships which underlie the twelve tribes of Israel, the twelve apostles of Christ, the twelve nights [sic] of King Arthur's Round Table, and the twelve labors of Hercules."

I can't help but wonder what Rosenberger, who died in 1993, would have thought of climate change and global warming. Also, Rosenberger has mentioned the recurring number of 12 in previous books, so I wonder how much of that he actually believed.

At one point, someone mentions how nice the United States government is to Israel:

"They're right about our being 'nice' to everyone," [Follmer] said in an unpleasant voice, his eyes raking Camellion. "Look how 'nice' we've been to the blacks. Since World War II, we've made fools of ourselves by restructuring our entire society in a stupid attempt to uphold the myth that we're all 'equal.' We've handed billions to those brillo heads to finance their idle ghetto loungings—and look at the result. Our streets and parks have been turned over to black punks, and then they plea-bargain and are turned loose on early parole so they can prey on us again. We've handcuffed our policemen, lest they make the slightest infringement of blacks' rights. We've forced our kids to go to school with those moron asses, and we've rubbed our kids' nose in lies about white guilt. And when none of it has worked, when the blacks remain as far as ever from 'equality' but are ten thousand times more surly, we bow our heads, go into a white Step'n' Fetchit act, and humbly beg their forgiveness—and give them still more. Yeah, we're 'nice' people. We're unrealistic idiots!"

"Oh, we're suckers in other ways too," Dillard said. "It's not just the jungle jigs we're 'nice' to. We've let millions of aliens swarm into the States and deprive our people of jobs. Spics, those gooks from Vietnam—you name it! We let 'em come in. The only Orientals who have any intelligence and culture are the Japanese—and they have too much sense to want to live in the United States."

While the Death Merchant totally disagreed with Follmer and Dillard, he was not putting on an act when he got in his six-and-a-half cents' worth.

"You're forgetting the traitors in our midst," he ground out. "All the scum who ran off to Canada; and when mobs of demonstrators—during the Vietnam years—paraded in the streets behind the banners of the Vietcong and spattered our nation's flag with filth and dragged it in the gutter, the police had to stand by and be careful not to violate the 'civil rights' of the scum. Later, the Washington, D.C., idiots welcomed home with open arms and forgiveness the thousands of traitors and deserters."

"They should have been shot," growled LaHann.

"Wrong!" snapped Camellion. "They should have strangled slowly with piano wire. There's nothing lower on this earth and in any society than a yellow belly who deserts his country."

Elsewhere, Dillard and Camellion have a talk about President Ronald Reagan and how someone should murder Senator Ted Kennedy (... but but but I thought the DM avoided such "useless discussions").

In two footnotes, Rosenberger describes Haitians as "murderous savages lacking in both conscience and morals" and Cubans as drug dealers responsible for the high murder rate in Dade County, Florida. Elsewhere, Rosenberger writes: "Like African blacks, Arabs are prone to become utterly bloodthirsty and sadistic during battle and to revert to instincts far lower than those in so-called animals. Controlled by such insanity, an Arab, or a black, will commit any murderous act. No atrocity is too cruel."

On the next-to-last page of the book, Camellion thinks to himself:

The United States was being flooded by an alien invasion from Southeast Asia, India, Burma, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Maylasia, Israel, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Mexico. U.S. Education Commissioner Ernest Boyer had revealed during the winter of 1982 that only 28 percent of Americans eighteen and younger are Anglo, while 36 percent are black and 41 percent Hispanic. Only 39 percent of Anglo families have children in school, against 61 percent of Hispanic families who have children in public schools. It was only a matter of time before white Americans would be a minority in what was their land. Already the nation's schools were becoming obsolete and the United States was becoming a nation of undereducated citizens. Another fact was clear: if the taxable incomes of the rapidly increasing minority groups did not keep pace with their growth in numbers, the whites would either be taxed to death or the entire system would collapse—The latter is more likely because the white people are not going to take it. There's a lot of truth in what Bob Follmer says. One can look at the problem in terms of a diminishing upper and middle class having to support a lower class of ignorant, lazy trash. Right now there are more El Salvadorians as illegal aliens in Los Angeles than the total population of San Salvador! But the trash have a technique—any person who gives the facts is called a racist.

So regarding Follmer's views on immigration: Camellion is "more than a little disgusted" on page 71, "totally disagreed" with him on page 78, but admits on page 198 that "there's a lot of truth" in what he says. I don't think Camellion had a racist epiphany; it seems more likely that Rosenberger couldn't keep straight what he had written earlier in the book.

Interestingly, at one point, the Death Merchant defends poor blacks:

More than a little disgusted over Follmer's racism, Camellion sank to a chair and said in a cold voice, "You might have a different opinion if your skin were black. Consider for a moment what's happened recently. The rich got big tax breaks, but poor people—black and white—lost jobs, food assistance, training opportunities, and a lot more. As for the blacks—they exist in a cocoon of poverty and defeatism that's been handed down, from generation to generation, like some deadly inherited disease. The entire pathetic mess has congealed into a Lumpenproletariat of female-headed families, jobless men, and bitter young people. In short, my friend, don't profess to know all about another people until you've walked for a while in their moccasins."

However, the only footnotes included in this section offer validation for the racists' comments:

3 The FBI's Uniform Crime Report reveals that blacks commit violent crimes 8.5 times as often as whites, relative to their numbers in the overall U.S. population. Blacks are 7.2 times as likely to commit rape, 11.2 times as likely to commit murder, and 14.1 times as likely to commit robbery. Violent black crime is typically spontaneous rather than planned and reflects a general lack of inhibition and foresight.

4 In a newly published study, "Black-White Contacts in Schools: Its Social and Academic Effect," Purdue University sociologist Martin Patchen concludes: "Available evidence indicates that interracial contacts in schools does not have consistent positive effects on students' racial attitudes and behavior or on the academic performance of minority students." Italics mine—JRR.

Similarly, Camellion tells one member of his force to calm his hatred. "The Israelis are neither good nor bad. They're only 'the Other Side.'" Of course, that bit of advice comes only two pages after Rosenberger writes "the Death Merchant was still wanting to strangle—very slowly—every sand crab in Araby-land".

Rosenberger offers some extremely purple prose when it comes to describing Jabal Arqā:

The minutes raced by and all twelve of the birds were soon over the Jabal Arqā. In actuality, they were flying over the lower foothills of the actual mountains that were, in spite of their lack of height, jagged for forbidding, as though they were ill-omened tombstones in a disguised necropolis of hate. ...

Very suddenly he felt the cold, insidious evil of the Jabal Arqā, of these ancient mountains sick with spiritual putrescence. He could hear in his mind the shouted blasphemies in sixty different dialects from men who, over the long crawl of centuries, had fought and killed each other for possession of this barren real estate. Within their silent sobs and shouts, 10 million ghosts gave off a stench far more terrible than all the sins that humanity could commit, all the bitter maledictions thunderously denounced by holy men who lived in ape ignorance.

These mountains were actually crypts; and nothing, not even the breath of God Almighty could erase the blood that had flowed over the rocks and down through titanic arcades. Shapes of Hell howled and laughed and strode monstrously within the valleys, flitted across the face of the cliffs, and danced in mockery on the high peaks. The Cosmic Lord of Death had reigned supreme here, and nothing faintly holy would ever dare approach his kingdom. He still reigned within the mighty rocks and still held unhallowed rites with minions of the doomed, with incubi and succubi. There they were, all gathered in hideous abomination—Moloch and Beelzebub, swollen toads and ten-headed Moon calves—all singing the ghastly glories of eternal damnation.

And ... we get some nutty Camellion stream-of-consciousness:

This whole damn business is similar to abstract art—a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered. But Grojean does have talent for intrigue. Ha! We're still the unprincipled, and the Jordies are more than bewildered! They're angry and afraid. Join the club, boys. So am I. ...

Parrot poop! We can't turn back. Let's hope none of these Jordanians get crazy-brave or stupid-foolish. What the hell! This still beats being in L.A. or New York City, where rats crawl over babies and all civilization has stopped. Crazy-brave? I don't think they will! ...

God Save the White Sox and damn the Mohawks if there are any left! ...

Yeah! And tuna fish is up 60 percent! Holy mackerel!

There is the inevitable martial arts segment in the climatic battle:

An expert, in thanatology, Camellion was no longer concerned about the gasping, gagging, choking Luvirol as he spun and concurrently used a double-handed Gedan barai to stop the leg of Gideon Alal Padon, who was trying to ace him out with a Mawashi geri roundhouse kick, and let fly a Mae geri kekomi that caught Josef Gann (who was also a secret Mossad agent) in the solar plexus, the vicious slam paralyzing Gann's central nervous system and almost making his eyes pop out of his head.

Padon was not as easy to terminate. Camellion barely managed to block a right Shuto knife hand aimed at his left temple and a Yon bon nukite four-finger spear thrust directed at his lower chest. He countered with a Tsuma-saki tip-of-toes kick, aimed at the testicles, combined with a right Herabasami inside-ridge-hand feint that was coupled with a left Yubi basami knuckle-fingertip strike that wanted the center of Padon's throat. Padon wasn't fooled. He made Camellion fail by using a Sukui uke scooping block. He then twisted and tried a right Ushiro kekomi geri rear thrust kick. Fatal mistake! Camellion stepped aside, snarled, "Geharget zolstu veren!" grabbed Padon's right ankle, and twisted as hard as he could to the left, Padon yelling in pain and anger as Camellion flipped him over and he fell heavily on his stomach, the fall knocking the wind out of him. He didn't have the time or the strength to jerk away. And he was in agony from his twisted leg, the pain shooting through his hip.

The Death Merchant released the leg, kicked Padon savagely in the left side of the rib cage, the slam breaking four ribs and bringing another howl of pain from the Israeli commando.

Victory! Camellion jumped high and came down on Padon's back, the heel of his left foot smashing into the Israeli's neck, his right foot slamming into the small of the back. There was a sound like two sticks being snapped. Padon shuddered and lay still.

Rosenberger translates "Geharget zolstu veren" as "Drop dead", literally "You should be killed". (However, a website translates this Yiddish phrase as "You should get killed.")

Finally, one dope no longer has to worry about his speech impediment:

Shuberinski had thrust his arm and hand inward for the stab he thought would end the life of Majid. Jumping back slightly, Majid had promptly brought down the heavy blade of the bi'rang and cut off Shuberinski's right hand. Only for a flashing second was the horrified Israeli able to witness the gush of blood pumping from his right wrist. He then felt the hidious pain—but again only for a moment—as Captain Majid slid the bloody blade of the bi'rang into his stomach and ripped upward. Never again would Shuberinski have to worry about his stuttering. H-H-He w-a-sss de-de-de-de-dead and si-si-si-si-sink-inggg into e-eter-nity.

Etc.:

Rosenberger lived in Arizona in the early 1980s and he includes two mentions of the area: "Nuts to that joker. If I didn't know better, I'd think he was an ex-member of the New York City—or Mesa, Arizona—Police Department!" and "This is almost as bad as going into a bar in Phoenix on a Saturday night!"

"The policeman went down in death faster than an Appalachian moonshiner running from an Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent."

"As careful as a cow chewing a cud of cactus, he jumped from the starboard opening and started to move toward the nose."

"Belief in a god never requires logic, only superstition and a desperateness against the obvious, against oblivion. That kind of madness is called 'faith.'"

"Dillard, Follmer, and LaHann, having expected the worst kind of trouble (short of having hemorrhoids in Sydney, Australia) were not caught with their reflexes and attention span napping."

"[The Death Merchant] let fly a deadly right-legged Tae Kwon Do Hyung Chungdan Ap Chagi middle front snap kick that made the astonished Markek think he had run into an invisible steel wall."

"A holy man he was, but Allah didn't prevent a big 20mm projectile from opening up his chest the way a blast from a shotgun shatters a watermelon."

Death Merchant #52: The Flight Of The Phoenix

As the Phoenix X-2, an incredible cargo carrier that will change the face of the twentieth century, nears completion in Great Britain, a strange series of deaths and accidents escalate into a vile and mysterious pattern. Camellion isn't one to believe in coincidence. If there's anything illicit behind this X-2 operation he'll root it out and tear it apart.

The Phoenix X-2 is scheduled to make her maiden voyage, stopping at each major urban center across the globe. It's a perfect opportunity for sabotage - unless the Death Merchant can weave together all the clues and deliver a show stopping surprise ...

***

As The Flight of the Phoenix begins, Richard Camellion and CIA agent Sandra Irella are posing as journalists touring the hangar containing Phoenix II, an airship that is 1,300 feet long and over 400 feet high, shaped "like some gargantuan silver whale". (And kudos to artist Dean Cate for making the ship look whale-ish on the cover.) (Actually, the book opens with a three-page prologue, kind of an extended footnote from author Joseph Rosenberger, that recaps the history of the zeppelin.)

Camellion knows there have been a series of mysterious accidents surrounding the construction of the airship, which will make its first voyage in one month. During the tour, a truck arrives in the hangar unloading oxygen and acetylene cylinders. However, these employees are actually bad guys bent on destroying the Phoenix (some of the cylinders contain explosives). Camellion senses that something is not right and a shootout follows - "The Cosmic Lord of Death snickered and all hell broke loose" - with five of the seven "employees" dead and two taken away for questioning.

The Death is not happy to be working with a woman because they "don't have the necessary realism. They tend to hesitate." However, Camellion is assured that she is "almost as trigger-happy" as he is. (Also, he has worked successfully with women in previous books, so his reluctance doesn't make total sense.) Naturally, Sandra is an attractive blonde who fully expects Camellion to make a pass at her.

She had yet to meet the man who hadn't tried to get her between the sheets ... Thus far, during their two-day association, [Camellion] had been polite, though distant, yet totally self-assured. ... Let's face it, she told herself, he hadn't had the opportunity to make a pass at her. That opportunity would come later when they were alone in the Safe House, later that night. To the left of the sitting room was Camellion's bedroom. Sandra's was to the right of the sitting room. Furthermore, there weren't any locks on the door. Rape? No. He wasn't the type.

Then again, she thought, maybe balling with him might be a memorable experience. ... If he was half as good in bed [as he had been at the hangar], he'd be able to send her to paradise and back a dozen or more times. Yes indeed ... maybe it was a good thing the doors didn't have any locks ...

That night, when she expects Camellion to make his move, the Death Merchant is happily unpacking his beloved firearms and doing his Pranayma breathing exercises. (Later, they do sleep together, one of the few instances in the series of the Death Merchant getting laid. Sandra soon disappears from the narrative, however, and plays no role in the big showdown.)

The Death Merchant's mission is to find out who wants to sabotage the Phoenix II. The CIA believes it is an "international combine" named SCULL. The CIA has wiretaps on various SCULL locations, but have gathered no information.

The two captured gunmen confess and tell who recruited them for the job. One of the recruiters (Maurice Peronne) owns a jewelry shop in Paris, so Camellion and Irella fly off to France to black-bag him and see what they can learn. After a bit of torture, Perrone says he was given his orders by Abram Koznik, a member of the Israeli Mafia. And as luck would have it, Koznik owns a decorating business right there in Paris - and if they hurry, they can get over there before it closes for the day! Camellion and Irella pose as an elderly couple (the DM is a master of disguises, you'll recall) who want to have their 23-room house renovated. Once alone in the office, they pull their guns. There is another shootout as they escape with Koznik.

Rosenberger's insertion of information about the weapons and caliber of the various slugs gets in the way of the action:

Lowe's body almost exploded from the crossfire, from six of Captain Seibert's 9-millimeter slugs and ten of Sebastian's 7.62 x 51mm boat-tailed bullets. His entire front a mess of blood and gore, Lowe fell backward.

But Andy Sebastian had also bought the Big One. While four of Lowe's Ruger 5.46 x 45 (or .223 Remington) projectiles were stopped by the lower part of Sebastian's bullet-proof vest, two of the 5.46mms struck several inches below the vest ...

Odum, Bruthers, and Grovington fired like fanatics bent on a mission - which they were. Odum's High Standard 12-gauge boomed. The German H/K MP-5 of Grovington and the Austrian MPi-69 SMG of Bruthers snarled in unison.

I'm upset that the brand name and model number of Sebastian's vest was not included.

From Koznik, they get the name of Sidney Jensen, who is the director of SCULL's London office. There is some of Rosenberger's classic stream-of-consciousness on pages 107-08, as Camellion and his force ("men made tough and patient by the treacherous jungles of Vietnam") are on two helicopters flying to White Plains, New York, to invade Jensen's estate in a "total-kill operation".

Their warning strobe lights flashing, their Lycoming T53 free-turbine turboshaft engines roaring, the two Bell Iroquois helicopters moved northwest at 118 m.p.h., at an altitude of 7,840 feet, the gun-ships flying parallel to each other at a distance of 200 yards apart. ...

One fact was evident: within 25 hours, White Plains would make headlines in newspapers all over the world, not to mention TV newscasts in thirty different languages.

A nice little residential and retail-trade center, White Plains, mused the Death Merchant. Well, what must be must be. ...

On the banks of the Bronx and the Hutchinson Rivers, White Plains was an established settlement by 1735, its name derived from the Siwanoy Indians who called the village "Quarropas"—"white plains"—for the white balsam that grew in the area.

With a population of slightly over 50,000 and connected to New York City by railroad, White Plains already had its secure place in American history. The New York Provincial Congress had met there in 1776, approved the Declaration of Independence and proclaimed the creation of the state of New York. On October 28, 1776, General George Washington outfoxed British General Lord Howe at the Battle of Chatterton Hill—commemorated as White Plains National Battlefield Site.

Inwardly, the Death Merchant smiled. Within hours, White Plains will become famous. It will be the city, where the first major "terrorist" attack in the United States took place. The irony is that it is supposed to be "for the good of the American people."

The American people? Self-centered, materialistic unrealists, who were letting themselves go down the drain, all evidenced in the disturbing trend in the U.S. of the rise in irrationalism, a stupidity that was feeding off the nation's decrease in science and mathematics education. The contrast with foreign nations was downright embarrassing. All students in the Soviet Union receive five years in biology. Only one-half of American students receive as little as one year!—And the "Creationists" are trying to dilute even that pathetic amount.

Camellion wondered what any intelligent person could think of a nation in which a man in Little Rock, Arkansas, publicly stated in a courtroom that Unidentified Flying Objects were manifestations of "Satan?" Or a group of loonies selling all their belongings to advertise the date of something called a "rapture," when all the "saved" (?) will overcome the force of gravity and float bodily upward to "heaven?" Or a nation in which astrologers vastly outnumbered astronomers by roughly a 12 to 1 margin? Donkey dung!

This "terrorist attack" - the invasion of Jensen's White Plains estate and the kidnapping of Jensen - is blamed on a Cuban Nationalist group known as OMEGA-17 (after someone notes that they "can't blame what's left of the Weathermen and those goofy Black Liberation Army morons"). One member of the DM's team, Gene Morlog, expresses reservations about the 219 people that died because of this raid, including dozens of police officers who came to the scene after reports of gunshots and explosions. (Camellion berates Morlog for not seeing "various shades of gray involved", but that is exactly what Morlog is doing. It's the Death Merchant that has an all-or-nothing mentality, saying, "We will kill anyone who gets in our way.")

How could they have told the real truth, even if they had wanted to. They didn't! Watergate had been bad enough.

The Death Merchant sensed preternaturally that there was a single individual who might not conform to the rule of complete silence. That person was Gene Morlog (He would have made a wonderful Fundamentalist minister!). ...

For almost a week, ever since the crash operation against the estate, he had tolerated Morlog's increasing self-righteousness. Now, Morlog's remark about "three more murders" had made up the Death Merchant's mind about the man. Morlog had to go. The man was definitely dangerous. Sooner or later, he'll blab to the press and stir up a hornet's nest.

"Since you're such an expert on good and evil ..." Camellion's voice was pleasant enough and he looked directly at Morlog, "perhaps you could give us the answer to the theological problem of evil. It's an antilogism that stems from assuming three things, only two of which are compatible—the omnipotence of God, the omnibenevolence of God, and the existence of pure evil."

Traw gave an ugly little laugh. "You should be asking Jerry Falwell that one, Camellion!"

"Good and evil do exist," Morlog said guardedly, feeling that he had walked into quicksand. "But what does theology have to do with the problem of evil?"

"Epicurus presented it this way," Camellion said with relish. "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able to prevent evil? If that's the case, then He's not omnipotent. Or again: is God able to prevent evil, but not willing to prevent evil? Then He's not omnibenevolent? Or—is God both willing and able to prevent evil? If so, then why does evil exist?"

Interjected Marvin Kennedy, who was a sturdy man with a narrow, short-nosed face and slightly curly brown hair, "David Hume presented the same problem. According to Hume, if evil in the world is the intention of the Deity, then He is not benevolent. If evil on this planet is contrary to His intention, then He is not omnipotent. Hume's final conclusion was that evil is either in accordance with God's intention or is contrary to His intention. Therefore, either God is not benevolent, or He is not omnipotent."

Morlog looked like a man about to have his testicles dropped into a vise! "There's nothing sillier than trying to decide what God wants or doesn't want," he said frigidly. "Discussing problems in philosophy doesn't have anything to do with the fact that we deliberately murdered a lot of people so that a new kind of dirigible can fly across the Atlantic. Let's face it: it's not as if we killed those people in defense of the nation. It's not as if the U.S. and the United Kingdom were being invaded by the Soviet Union! All of you know it."

"The chap would seem to have a valid point," Joel Hampton said in measured tones. He looked at Gary Spickler who was sitting not far from Morlog in a Merrimack chair. "However, there are certain facts that invalidate your thesis, Mr. Morlog." His steady gaze swept into a nervous Gene Morlog. "First of all, the prestige of our respective nations is at stake. There has been a lot of publicity about the Phoenix in the Western world. That airship must fly. Second, we are fighting The Brotherhood. Any victory against The Brotherhood is a victory for my nation—and for yours, Mr. Morlog. Or don't you consider it pure terrorism for the Phoenix II to be destroyed by a missile?"

Chimed in the Death Merchant sweetly, "If we hadn't made the raid on Jensen's estate, we wouldn't know about Hoghead Island. We wouldn't know about the missile."

Presented with such irrefutable facts and logic, the half-angry, half-embarrassed Morlog knew he was trapped. Yet he knew he couldn't remain silent; he had to give some kind of rebuttal. "Naturally it's terrorism to shoot down the Phoenix II," he admitted stiffly. "But let me ask you: do you believe that scores of wrongs on both sides can ever add up to one gigantic right. I personally don't think so."

The Death Merchant hooted in derision. "The trouble with you is that you're indulging in a form of epistemological solipsism. You've taken it upon yourself to decide what is total good and what is absolute evil. Survival makes its own laws because it has to."

"And now for something different from the eight-ball almanac!" laughed Phil Traw.

Without trying to, Sandra Irella saved face for Morlog by saying, "I've watched the biggest bunch of nonsense that I've seen and heard in years." She switched off the television set, turned and started back for her chair, all the while smiling. "They had an antiterrorist 'expert' on the Dave Bufflin program. The expert was attached to the New York police department. He said the answer to terrorism is gun control! Now I ask you, have you ever heard of anything more ridiculous? The ignorant son of a bitch reminds me of those spineless cowards who say 'Better Red than Dead!'"

The Death Merchant smiled. Traw and Spickler guffawed.

Putting down the binnacle, Traw growled, "Didn't Bufflin ask the nut why there are so many handgun murders in New York City, in a city where an honest man can't even own a twenty-two pistol for target practice? Almost every day some piece of trash is blowing up someone."

"Yes, Bufflin asked that question," Sandra said. "The answer of the 'expert' was that weapons are being brought in from out of state. For that reason he advocates National Gun Control—a Federal ban on all weapons! Handguns and long weapons both!"

"The poor damn fool!" sneered Spickler. "I'll bet the 'expert' didn't say one damn word about stiff sentences and the death penalty for dirt-bags who use handguns in crimes?"

Sandra, having lighted another cigarette, feigned shock and threw up her hands in mock astonishment. "Oh, my goodness! Of course not! The death sentence for some subhuman animal would be 'cruel and inhuman punishment'. You know how liberals and ACLU types are—forever blinded by their own emotionalism and forever twisting facts to suit their own stupid beliefs."

The Death Merchant leaned back and locked his hands on top of his head. "Antiterrorism is fundamentally a matter of developing good intelligence," he said firmly. "It's not enough to be prepared for a terrorist attack. The very essence of combating terrorism is to prevent it from starting—an almost impossible job." ...

Traw remarked, "There is also some question of how well local and federal forces are prepared in the intelligence area. It's not an easy proposition. First, you have to determine whether any particular group is in fact a genuine threat. Then you're talking about infiltration of the group by undercover operatives or informants, and all too often that is impossible." His gaze grabbed Morlog. "You talk about the FBI! Why its domestic intelligence division can't even get the goods on the Mafia!"

"It's mostly a matter of supposition and luck," Camellion said. "Without advance intelligence, it's hardly possible to stop well-trained foreign terrorists smuggled into the U.S. Into any country for that matter. Only in a well-guarded police state, where the borders are closed, can it be done."

"We can't even keep the damned wetbacks out," grumbled Traw.

Once Camellion learns from Jensen that a missile will be launched from Hoghead Island, off the coast of Maine, to take out the airship as it nears the American coast, he forms a commando team to storm the island and kill every member of the Brotherhood before they can fire the missile. (Afterwards, to their surprise, they discover two missiles on the island and suspect that one was going to detonate more than 200 pounds of nerve gas over New York City.) But that's immediately forgotten as Camellion's CIA boss Courtland Grojean wants to talk to the Death Merchant about his next job: The Vatican Assignment.

Etc.:

"Thanks to bungling and inefficiency, the American people don't get as much government as they pay for. For the same and other reasons, the American people never get the full truth from the media. They don't because the press only prints what it is told. News is also slanted."

"Double fudge and tacos!"

"They're either playing it very cool or scared diarrhealess."

The mansion was "as dark as the bottom of a sealed mine shaft".

"The sky was as black as the inside of a sealed bucket."

"Camellion rushed back into the office with more movement than a country girl at her first square dance."

"Like hypocrites the world over, Walberg always called upon God to help him in times of danger."

[In Camellion's mind] "Hoc est corpus meum! Dominus Lucis—I need your help!'

"The Alaskan roared, the big .44 flat-nosed bullet blowing up the goon's face and skull the way double-o buckshot would explode a tomato."

"The first .44 flat-nosed to leave the twelve and a half inch Mag-Na-Ported stainless steel barrel hit Flores with all the force of a runaway locomotive and opened a hole in his chest, into which a coroner could have dropped a quarter."

"It was like wearing a white suit and suddenly developing black dandruff."

"I'm drier than a baptist picnic."

"Tenacity and total ruthlessness were two traits that Grojean and Camellion shared in common, two attributes that linked the two together. Both men "lived" their jobs, their lives revolving totally around their work. Much of that work was Death. There wasn't any other way to keep the United States safe."

Death Merchant #51: The Inca File

In the deepest heart of the Andes mountains, surrounded by the thick dark jungles of Peru lie the ancient medical secrets of the Incas. The Soviets send in a mission to get their thieving hands on this priceless information, new drugs with the capacity to increase Soviet world power one hundred percent.

The CIA hears of the Russian expedition and sends out its own team to investigate, a team that vanishes without a trace. It becomes frighteningly clear this is no ordinary crisis - it's time for the Death Merchant to go into action, the kind of unparalleled destruction no one is ever prepared for.

***

The Inca File has Richard Camellion once again working with Mad Mike Quinlan and his Thunderbolt Unit: Omega kill-specialists. (Omega has been called in to assist the Death Merchant in a few recent end-of-book battles, but here they are doing some wet work right as the book opens.)

The Incan "ancient medical secrets" mentioned on the back cover are located at Pachu Ittu, an ancient site in Peru meant to be a stand-in for Machu Pichhu. Rosenberger lays out the plot. Hundreds of years ago, Incan priests made use of certain drugs that could reputedly cure cancer, insanity, and "nervous disorders" like Parkinson's disease. (How the Incans knew about Parkinson's disease is not explained.)

What intrigued the CIA was the technique that was used to cure all forms of cancer: the Inca priests would "manipulate" a human being's qupa capac hu-tiqu, an individual's "earth spirit of light." ...

[The CIA had learned that the KGB] was sending an expedition into the Andes in an effort to learn these secrets. How? By searching for a treasure trove of quipus that, mathematically, would reveal exact scientific formulas. Although the Incas had not had a written language, they had had a system called quipus—knotted strings, often of different colors and lengths.

CIA scientists were convinced that the "earth spirit of light" was actually the "human aura, the electromagnetic charge generated by the M-Field that is part and parcel of every living thing, animal and vegetable". Rosenberger fills the next two pages with mumbo jumbo that explains the M-Field.

The M-field could also explain many paranormal events. Past-life experiences (as well as deja vu) might be just a thin layer of an individual's M-field. ... [T]he theory could explain many things that had puzzled scientists for hundreds of years. It could explain such discrepancies as inequitably distributed knowledge and cultural patterns among human beings. ...

Thinking about it, sitting there on the couch, the Death Merchant knew it would be a long time before scientists in general would accept the concept of the M-field. Their specialist mentalities were too small, taking a form of mental and spiritual eclecticism, whether in philosophy or electronics. What was actually needed: that which could expand scientific concepts beyond the capacity of the universities; to endow people with the necessary capacity. Yet there weren't the instructional or pedagogical resources to change and expand scientific thought in the proper way—Man is an eternal intelligence walking around, for the moment, in a body. Try telling that to establishment scientists!

Anyway ... so it's up to Camellion and his team to trek to Pachu Ittu, get rid of the Russian "pig farmers" who are already searching the ancient site, and secure the valuable quipus for themselves.

On the journey to the temple, however, Rosenberger offers too much description of minor events, like setting up a radio transmitter one evening. Nothing happens while the men set it up - and the equipment works when they turn it on. Episodes like this seem written simply to fill pages.

Camellion's force gets near the Inca city well before the end of the book, and they engage in at least two big battles with the Russians before taking over the site. Camellion and the others have absolutely no problem blowing the holy hell out of this ancient site with all manner of grenades, explosives, and gunfire. I was hoping Rosenberger would tell us a little more about the quipus, but the book ends with the CIA preparing to continue digging under the Temple of the Sun.

One interesting moment: After some small squabble before the team sets out on its journey, Camellion demands that the men cease any and all racist comments. "Just remember that I'll slap silly the first man who starts trouble with any racist bullshit!" Quinlan backs him up, saying, "There isn't going to be any trouble due to racism on this damned plateau. If Canyon* doesn't break the back of the man who starts it, I can—and will." They must mean canning racist comments directed at each other, because even after Camellion's stern warning, various members of the team refer to "spics", "chili-peppers", "Jose-boys", etc., and the Death Merchant doesn't do shit. [*: Camellion's alias is "Dean Canyon".]

In one footnote, Rosenberger makes reference to an upcoming Death Merchant book: #53, The Vatican Assignment. At the end of the next book, The Vatican Assignment is also mentioned. However, DM #53 was actually titled The Judas Scrolls.

According to one of the few interviews with author Joseph Rosenberger, the man behind the Death Merchant did not like to travel. That makes his extensive research for these books even more remarkable. Apparently, he used old issues of National Geographic as part of his research. (If he ever simply made things up, he did a good job of hiding it.)

They made camp that night in a grove of coigüe trees, beautiful, graceful formed trees native to Chile. The Chilenas porters made a fire and heated water for Yerba maté tea; they would eat humitas, a mass of corn and husks boiled, and charqui, a good-tasting meat, sun-dried flesh of the llama. The scientists unpacked their sleeping bags and prepared to make a meal of powdered milk and Compo-Rations.10 For desert [sic] they would have coffee and hi-energy survival candy. ...

Footnote 10: Composition Combat meals—packed exactly like C-rations. There are 12 meals with 6 menus: brunswick stew, beans with chicken franks, turkey and dumplings spaghetti with beef, chicken hash, turkey loaf plus accessory packet.

The Chileans sat as quietly as statues, huddled around their fire, one of them occasionally tossing a piece of wood into the low flames. Unlike the other members of the expedition, the ten bearers wore their own "native" costumes—heavy woolen chamantos (pull-over shawls), under which was a short poncho, a short-cut jacket; a fajas, or sash; leather pants and high leather boots; and a toctos, or floppy brimmed hat. ...

There was more than the "Sun Mountain" to the haunted panorama. There was the valley, Our Lady of the Pains, covered with mist as thick as whipped cream. Below the mist would be the forest. But not a rain forest. There would be abundant araucaria pine, rauli beech (both well known for their wood) and the unusual quillay tree (whose bark could be used as soap). There would be numerous birds, such as the garza and the queltehue. The jilguero would still wail in the darkness and parrots would hatter in the daytime. There wouldn't be any insects. the dirt wouldn't wiggle. Creepy, crawly things could not exist at this altitude. ...

In the dim past, hundreds of years earlier, the Indians had cultivated potatoes on these terraces, and quinua, the heavily-seeded stalk that could grow well above the timberline and tolerate frost and drought and turned every color of the rainbow as it ripened. The Incas used the quinua as cereal for making flour and thickening soups. This along with sara (corn), and Chuno (dehydrated potatoes) had fed the Inca people and their armies.

Towards the end of the book, Rosenberger gives us his usual highly-detailed descriptions of hand-to-hand combat:

As fast and deadly as Mad Mike was Ali Bassam Safadi, who had killed three MIRs with lightening-fast Nukite, Shuto and other hand strikes, not to mention a variety of front or rear spin, thrust, and snap kicks. Safadi gave Arnaldo Lacosti a Kakato Geri heel kick that sent the Fracción Roja yokel crashing back into Bull Wohlwebber who instantly snapped Lacosti's neck with a Commando Break—left palm heel to the chin, a right palm heel to the right side of the head and a quick, powerful twist. Snap! Crackle! Pop! That's all there was to it. The dead Lacosti hadn't even decorated the ground with his dirty corpse when Wohlwebber used a Sokuto Geri sword-foot-kick aimed at a fat, ugly slob who had a bandanna tied around his black greasy hair. Fat Boy jumped back. Wohlwebber's kick missed. But Fat Boy's backward movement put him within striking range of the deadly knife expert, José Jesus Santino who had a Colt AR-15 bayonet in each hand and had just sliced the left side of a terrorist's neck and was pulling back on the bloody blade. Twice as fast as a striking cobra irritated during the mating season, Santino used the left bayonet to stab Fat Boy in the right armpit while he used the left AR-15 to stab the joker in the back of the neck, the sharp blade going all the way through and tickling the top of Fat Boy's Adam's apple. When Santino stopped pushing on the bayonet, three inches of the steel was sticking out the front of the man's thick throat, the blade dripping blood. Santino lowered his arm as the dumb-bell fell and let the weight of the corpse slide the 200 pounds of dead meat from the blade. Sí. A fine kill.

Not far from Santino, "Iron Glove" Hyde was a whirlwind of pure destruction, although he was not wearing on his right hand the Middle Ages gauntlet, made of chain mail over leather, for which he was famous. Instead he was swinging not only an octagon rosewood Nunchaku, but also using a thirty-six inch long Japanese Manrikigusari chain to attack, block, defend, throw, lock, and disarm. Whenever one of the "bolts" made contact, an enemy howled in pain and bones were broken. Or a man died instantly, such as Captain Paul Radam Chorfniff, one of the Soviet GRU advisers. One of the end bolts slammed into his left temple and smashed through the temporal bones as though they were toilet paper. The pig farmer blinked his eyes and dropped dead.

Rosenberger also mentions that Quinlan was "a man few others could match in hand-to-hand combat. Camellion was one of those few—but only because of his iron-clad agreement with the Cosmic Lord of Death".

At the very end of the book, his mission completed, Camellion acts drunk and stumbles around, falling onto two military officials (who he had vowed to kill earlier in the book). Several days later, the two men die within hours of each other, apparently from heart attacks. CIA chief Cortland Grojean demands that Camellion tell him what really happened, but the Death Merchant feigns innocence and says nothing. Only Rosenberger's lengthy footnote clues us in:

The Death Merchant used DIM-MAK—Chinese-sometimes called "The Poison Hand of Death" or the delayed death touch. On the human body there are 308 nerve points, which will adversely affect the body; 72 of these points are considered extremely harmful, comprising what are known as the "running nerves"—not that they go anywhere, but they are the time-related ones. Typically, they are associated with a major nerve of the peripheral nervous system or of a blood vessel. Attacking the DIM-MAK points causes a "damning" of the Ch'I energy, and there are various methods of attacking the points.

When the Death Merchant fell against Barella and Prado, used the Bye-Mak technique—and it takes an expert. This method is the pinching off of a vessel that results in a blocked blood flow and blod clots, which, in time, travel to the most unfortunate places—for the victim.

The Death Merchant used the Bye-Mak method because Barella and Prado were heavy eaters of meat and lots of food high in cholesterol. Knowing also that the victim is one of those super-ordered people who goes to bed and rises on schedule also helps: his meridian clock-time will be "dead-on."

A Bye-Mak strike at the proper time, on a vessel near the Fee Ti Hsueh point will break off a chunk of cholesterol, which lines the veins, and this piece will lodge in the heart days or weeks later depending on how the Bye-Mak strike is delivered. In later books, we will inform the reader how this deadly strike is accomplished.

So stay tuned!