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Casca #16: Desert Mercenary

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Casca and Gus Beidemann are recruited as mercenaries into attempting a rescue mission. An American arms dealer's daughter and her fiance; have been taken prisoner by a group of desert Tuareg and the two will be executed unless the terrorists receive arms and ammunition. Casca learns that their hideout is deep within a particularly nasty part of the Sahara, so he recruits a number of tough guys - including Dominic who he knew from his days in the Foreign Legion - to help him. They drive across the desert to a rendezvous with the others of the group. Casca finds and recruits a former ally of his, Sharif Mahmud, into the group as a guide for the area they are going to. The leader of the Tuareg, Sunni Ali, is in fact a former German officer who deserted during the war and embraced Islam, organizing the tribesmen into units on German lines and using discarded weaponry found in the desert. He hopes to create an Islamic state in the desert away from what he sees as the corrupt Arabic nations along the coastline of North Africa. Casca's group is split into two; some are flown across the desert to the area Sunni Ali's hideout is near, while the others set out in landrovers. They ascend a mountain to the Tuareg hideout and in a bloody gunfight rescue the two prisoners but a number of the mercenaries die. The Tuareg pursue the group off the mountain hideout to the pickup zone and destroy their plane before the mercenaries can be rescued. Casca and the survivors decide to drive out of the desert but most of the group have dreadful wounds. Eventually three of the mercenaries choose to remain behind to delay the chasing pack in order to let the rest escape. Two of these are Dominic and Sharif Mahmud and it is Dominic who eventually kills the Tuareg leader at the cost of his own life. Casca, Gus and the few survivors take the rescued couple back to safety.

A book which I felt Sadler really enjoyed writing; it was after all, a story about men who did the same job as the author, and the realism he brings into the story is very clear. I think he took the films 'The Dirty Dozen' and 'The Wild Geese' and combined them into this tale which would seem to take place around 1962 or so, judging by the comments in the book. Another packaged story which would fit neatly into one episode of a TV series in one go, but very action packed and enjoyable nonetheless. After this story it would appear Casca drops his 'Carl Langers' persona and picks up the 'Casey Romain' identity and enlists into the US army in Vietnam, for the next story takes place in 1970, although flashbacks place him in Vietnam as early as 1965 (see book 8: Soldier of Fortune).

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