Tom Young - The Renegades

One specialty I’d like to learn more about is working with military dogs. I’ve often flown dogs on airlift missions. When the animals get loaded on board, they usually bark constantly in their kennels until takeoff. Then they go right to sleep. On landing, the barking starts again. Those canine passengers inspired the Belgian Malinois that survived the Mi-17 crash landing in The Renegades . That breed makes good military dogs. I met one several years ago at a base in the Middle East while waiting for cargo and troops to show up at my aircraft. A dog handler and his bomb-sniffing Malinois arrived early. The rest of the troops got delayed for several hours. We passed the time by playing with the dog and feeding it pizza.

Sergeant Major Gold’s high altitude/low opening parachute drops also come right out of the real world. Back in my C-130 days, I got more of a kick out of HALO drops than any other flight operations. I have especially fond memories of a training mission well before 9/11 at the former Indian Springs Auxiliary Field, Nevada (now Creech Air Force Base). My crew flew Army Special Forces jumpers on HALO drops for about a week.

Each day we’d do two drops, break for dinner, and come back for a night drop. All at high altitude, unpressurized, on oxygen. With no higher rank present than a captain, we had no adult supervision at all. Just a bunch of young guys who thought we were bulletproof, and an airplane and parachutes to play with. It was glorious.

As it happens, I got my first look at a Predator drone during that training mission. The Predators were still fairly new then, developed in a program at Indian Springs. I saw them next in Bosnia, and later in Southwest Asia.

Like my previous novels, The Mullah’s Storm and Silent Enemy , I wrote The Renegades for two reasons: First, I wanted to create a compelling story that readers would find entertaining; I’ve always loved fiction. But through these novels, I also wanted to convey something about the motivations and mind-sets of American servicemen and -women. I hope my books do justice to their dedication, and to the expertise their work requires.

If you enjoyed reading The Renegades , thank my wife, Kristen, who took pen in hand, put her feet up on the ottoman, and ripped the manuscript up one side and down the other. She’s done the same for all my books. Thanks also go to my parents, Bob and Harriett Young, for a little help copyediting and a lot of help getting the word out.

I also received helpful input from Barbara Esstman, Jodie Forrest, Liz Lee, and Robert Siegfried. A special tribute goes to Dick Elam, who has given me good writing advice for thirty years. Even now I look at his comments on my manuscripts and think, Damn, I should have thought of that.

My squadron mates in the 167th Airlift Wing, West Virginia Air National Guard, have provided inspiration, moral support, and comradeship. Joe Myers enjoys a well-earned retirement now, and he edits copy with the precision you’d expect from a military instructor pilot. Pete Gross offered generous descriptions of his time as an adviser to the Afghan Air Force, and his observations were tremendously helpful. James Freid-Studlo also gave valuable descriptions from his experiences in Afghanistan—and darn near wore me out on a bike ride through rural Germany as we waited for our airplane to get fixed.

Like Parson, all of my helicopter time has been as a passenger, so I called on some experts to keep me straight on rotary-wing flying. They included Adam Albrich, Keith Olson, Sean Roehrs, Michael Adair, and Rob Tatum.

Brandon Forshaw and his colleagues at the 920th Rescue Wing, Patrick Air Force Base, Florida, schooled me on the pararescue career field. I received other valuable medical tips from my cousin, Billy Perry, and from the world’s greatest flight nurse, Sandie Duiker.

If the novel contains any errors about medicine or helicopters, those errors are mine alone. With other technical aspects, I have taken artistic liberties. For example, some of the operations described in The Renegades would probably involve more personnel, and especially more officers, than depicted. However, I chose to limit the number of characters for the sake of the narrative.

Were it not for my agent, Michael Carlisle, my novels would be nothing more than files on my computer. Thanks also to Lyndsey Blessing, who has helped bring my stories to readers in Europe and Asia. Author and professor John Casey helped me get this adventure started, and I owe to him continued thanks.

As always, it’s a pleasure to work with Putnam publisher and editor-in-chief Neil Nyren and company president Ivan Held, as well as Thomas Colgan at Berkley. Thanks also to Michael Barson, Victoria Comella, Sara Minnich, Kate Stark, Chris Nelson, Lydia Hirt, Caitlin Mulrooney-Lyski, Alexandra Israel, and everyone at Penguin Group.

Tom Younghas logged nearly 4,000 hours for the Air National Guard in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, and elsewhere. The author of The Mullah’s Storm and Silent Enemy , Young has studied writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, among other places, and lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

The Mullah’s Storm

Silent Enemy

The Speed of Heat: An Airlift Wing at War in Iraq and Afghanistan

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Copyright © 2012 by Tom Young

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Published simultaneously in Canada

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Young, Thomas W.

The renegades / Tom Young.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-101-58654-9

1. Parson, Michael (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Gold, Sophia (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 3. Soldiers—Fiction. 4. Afghan War, 2001—Fiction. 5. Earthquakes—Fiction. 6. Disaster relief—Fiction. 7. Taliban—Fiction. 8. Afghanistan—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3625.O97335R46 2012 2012010954

813'.6—dc23

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.