A Hired Kill by Steven Konkoly

Garrett Mann has assembled a nearly off-the-books team of FBI experts along with some Mexican law enforcement to do a deep dive into the drug and human trafficking trade across the southern US border. They answer only to an Assistant Director of the FBI who runs interference for the team any time someone gets a whiff of their activities.

They’ve learned about an underground training facility in the New Mexico desert (originally built by the CIA for training purposes). The raid results in the death of dozens of cartel types who’ve been training Mexican natives as sleeper agents on how to blend in. A lone survivor tells them of a coming action in the Sacramento area.

Mann takes his team to Sacramento. Reinforced by local and state law enforcement, they surround a mansion in a gated big-bucks community. While the home is empty, it’s not a walk in the park. The property is heavily mined. The house is wired to its foundation with explosives. All of it triggered remotely once agents are on the property and inside the house. Someone knew they were coming and were watching for the perfect time to detonate. Dozens upon dozens of law enforcement agents were killed.

The hunt for the cartel leaders behind all this is now massive. California, Sacramento, and the FBI are frothing at the bit to administer some serious revenge. It’s up to Mann to keep all in line to track down who is responsible and, importantly, the obvious presence of leaks. some to the highest levels of federal law enforcement.

The key to finding the bad guys lies deep within the mind of the survivor who is doing his best to work out a deal to save his own skin despite his own pro-cartel history.

Now this is what we at MRB live for. Slam bang, gnashing of teeth, speed of light plotting and action. Believable (somewhat) characters with righteous motivation. Just keep a notepad handy to keep track of all the acronyms and initialisms tossed around. Konkoly has a long history of writing mysteries and thrillers. Two earlier titles were favorably reviewed by MRB (by moi). Wouldn’t be a stretch to want to expand into his other titles. One never knows. 

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance reader copy.

Available May 27. 2025

ECD

The Raid by Steven Konkoly

This Part 2. Looks like Part 1 (The Rescue) was about megalomanic named Harcourt attempting to take over the private mercenary business using Aegis Global, his security company. He didn’t, but he did get away to hatch another plan to make him wealthy and win back his lost power.

Part 2 picks up sometime later on the USA-Mexico border. A couple border patrol agents find a half dozen young kids in the desert. And they aren’t Hispanic. European by looks. When checking out the surrounding desert, an explosion takes one agent and the other is killed. Their jeep is incinerated, and the kids are never heard from.

The loss of agents stirs up Senate and House committees. Senator Steele, who lost her husband and child at the hands of Harcourt, has her own private little army and sends Ryan Decker and Harlow McKenzie (and crew, all of whom have a history with Harcourt) to the border to look at the explosion site. What they find is unnerving.

An underground bunker with crates of Javelin anti-tank missiles that have gone missing from some Army ordinance supply. Someone is preparing for war and it ain’t the USA or Mexico. Only other option at this location is a war between the cartels that control drug, money, and human trafficking across the border.

Harcourt has somehow convinced some Army brass, a Senator and a Congressman that the problem with the drug trade is that it is uncontrolled. So why not start a war amongst the major cartels, supply one group with advanced weaponry, and sit back to watch the well-armed cartel take over and then control border crossings while laundering money to the officers and elected officials.

Almost sounds like Iran-Contra from the 1980s. Konkoly’s bio says he is former military and the plot is replete with street and desert battle details that lend considerable authenticity to the story. And he has over 20 books to his credit meaning a mature presentation. Maybe not having read The Rescue is at issue, but I really didn’t get much of a feel for Decker, Harlow, Senator Steele or any of the other supporting characters (except maybe Garza and he appears to be new to the series). The other thing that nagged me was the dialogue. We all hear about the banter that goes on in stressful situations, but to me, this ‘banter’ seemed forced, bordering on juvenile. Just before a parachute jump, Decker says to a buddy, ‘See you on the ground.” His buddy says, ‘Not if I see you first.’ That kind of stuff is all over the story. Good grief. Read some George V. Higgins or Charlie Stella or Brian Panowich or Chris Offut to see how dialogue is meant to be delivered. Having said that, I did like the story. A lot. 

East Coast Don

 

Black Flagged by Steven Konkoly

On a typical summer night up and down the east coast, eight prominent Muslims living in the US are murdered. Mostly businessmen. Within about an hour, the FBI’s Taskforce HYDRA no longer has anyone to watch. This taskforce had been working for a couple years doing the painstaking work of tracking the flow of Muslim money from the US being laundered and funneled into Al Qaeda. And these 8 victims were suspected of being the traffickers of millions. The quiet life in the greater Portland, Maine area is about to come to an abrupt halt for financial analyst Daniel Petrovich and his wife Jessica.

General Terrence Sanderson, US Army (ret.) used to run an off the books outfit for the Pentagon called Black Flag. That’s the term spy agencies use to identify bad guys targeted for execution. And his unit was good, really good. They’d taken out leaders of organizations unfriendly to the US all over the world, most recently in the former Yugoslavia. Problem in that some do-gooder found out about Black Flag and informed Congress. To avoid the publicity, Black Flag was shut down, Sanderson retired under suspicious circumstances and the operatives mostly tried to go home and live ordinary lives. Problem is that most had done some pretty bad things using some even worse methods.

Daniel gets a call from Sanderson. One job. Quick. Local. Then come down to DC for a meet. Daniel knows that if he does the job, he’ll have to go completely off the grid and that includes leaving Jessica, which he isn’t happy about. Not one bit.

As Daniel heads to DC, some adroit detective work by both the FBI and the CIA have tracked Daniel to Baltimore and start to close the net around him. But old skills die hard and Daniel escapes multiple attempts at his capture eventually meeting the reclusive Sanderson who has a proposition.

Consider this book to be the back story to a series of books about Black Flag by Konkoly. And if the next ones are a slickly presented as this one, it should be one helluva ride. This would’ve been another one sitting book if life hadn’t interfered. The story jumps quickly and smoothly between the FBI, CIA, and Pentagon in DC to Baltimore, West Virginia, Connecticut, Boston, and Maine as the chase accelerates and the noose tightens, but never quite catches Daniel. Some of the strings pulled by Sanderson might be a bit hard to fathom, but as Johnny Carson used to say about some of his rapidly failing bits, “buy the premise, buy the bit.” And if you buy the premise, the payoff comes in the numerous reveals as the author ties up the story. This is my first book by Konkoly, which is surprising considering the body of work he’s published is right up my alley, especially a series he has on what can only be considered as being about apocalyptic preppers. That sounds interesting too. The guy’s got about a dozen novels, novellas, and singles and the idiots who manage purchasing at my county library have seen fit to buy not a single title. Aggravating, indeed. I’ll find more. Count on it.

ECD

get it at Amazon