Black Berets

The Black Berets learned their lethal skills on the secret battlefields of Vietnam. In the first volume of this classic series of wartime adventure, once the Black Berets start fighting for themselves, what will it take to be able to stop them? This set includes Deadly Reunion, Cold Vengeance, and The Black Palm.

They were the most elite team of interservice fighters America’s government had ever formed. As war raged in Vietnam, the Black Berets took on the most secret—and most heinous—of covert operations. Now they’re back, and they have a new mission. Eight years after their bloody exploits across the battlefields of Asia, the five-man team is reunited at the behest of their scheming CIA handler, a man none of them trusts after a dirty war of lies and betrayals. However, word has it one of their own, thought long-dead, is alive and being held prisoner in Laos.

The Black Berets had to hand it to Parkes, their former CIA case officer. First he’d sent them on a suicide mission to Vietnam. Then he’d sent some CIA hitmen to finish them off when the enemy couldn’t. And the moment they set foot stateside, the world’s meanest mercenaries found that Parkes had arranged another lethal welcome. Well, they’d never liked Parkes much. But how were they going to tell him? First they had to find him, and that would take Beeker, Rosie, Cowboy, Harry, and Marty, from the bayous of Louisiana to an academy of terror in the Libyan desert.

The Black Palm called themselves a nation, though their own people had cast them out. They called themselves an army, but made war on unarmed men, women and children. And in their fanatical crusade, they might strike anywhere. Even in the tiny Caribbean republic of New Neuzen. The only thing that stood between New Neuzen and a terrorist bloodbath were five American tourists.

Letting a struggling Chicano gas company run its pipeline across their Louisiana land struck the Black Berets as a good idea—especially once Cowboy got an eyeball on Isabella Cifuentes, its stunning, sultry president. But the contract, it seemed, contained some very fine and lethal print. A Texas oil magnate allied with a fanatical right-wing cult had made an unholy alliance to keep the territory free of Mexicans and competition—even if it meant taking his grievance to the people next door.

Someone wanted to overthrow the government of San Sebastian, a country whose tiny army, nonaligned status, and location on the deadly curve of Central America made it ripe for subversion. The first try was an attempted hit on its president on a crowded street in Washington. The second was an invasion from the sea. Both times the Black Berets were there to keep the worst from happening. But how long could five men and one boy hold out against an army of the world’s most skilled assassins? An army with limitless resources—and the patience to keep on killing?

In Mesa County, Nevada, the tide of history was about to change. A tiny tribe of Indigenous Americans had just beaten the white man in his own court—and won title to some of the richest land in America. But some people were poor losers. And if they couldn’t hold on to the land … they’d simply eliminate its rightful owners. With a handful of poorly armed Native Americans facing a lynch mob led by the county sheriff and backed by corporate millions, Mesa County might be the setting for another Wounded Knee. Until the Black Berets get in on the action and show how professionals handle a massacre.

To the average citizen, the Lion of Salvador was a national hero, a military general of such renown that his accolades spanned two continents. To those in the know, however, the man was the cruelest of drug lords, a savage despot building an unstoppable empire that ranged from the Central American jungle to the bustling streets of New York.

When a bloody raid in Libya turns up nothing but a camp of terrorists who know nothing about any bombs, the elite American fighters find themselves ordered to Portugal to follow up a new lead. Once there, they learn every undercover agent from every country working in Portugal has been taken out of play, leaving the door wide open for staging an apocalyptic attack. If the Black Berets fail to locate the bombs and take out the merciless cabal that stole them, it could mean the end of the world as they know it. For these five warriors, the stakes have never been higher.

In the arms race against Russia, the United States has eked ahead with their superior advancements in computer technology. All that changes when Russia recruits some of Japan’s finest scientific minds to build their greatest weapon yet: a supercomputer capable of annihilating the US’s formidable Star Wars defense system. Destined for the land of the Samurai, the Black Berets know just how much is riding on this latest mission. If Russia succeeds in its quest for world domination, the future of the warriors’ countrymen—and their loved ones—is bleak indeed.

India is a country divided, torn by religious strife and hounded by potential invaders on all sides. The world’s most powerful governments believe that whoever controls India holds the strategic advantage for global domination. As the chaos spins out of control, a name resurfaces after centuries of obscurity: Akbar.

Key Isabella might be small, but it has become a hub for the drug trade into the United States. For the Black Berets—the world’s fiercest mercenaries—the issue of a billion-dollar heroin smuggling operation hits a sore spot they can’t ignore. Arriving in the West Indies, the five-man team of American heroes is tasked with overthrowing Key Isabella’s evil dictator without anyone finding out they’re involved. To make matters more difficult, they soon bump into the additional problem of a police force just as violent and corrupt as the nation’s tyrannical leader.