The Men
Jacques Sauvage aka Jack Sauer
Founder and Force du Sable head honcho — a man who seldom smiles. A man with a mission. The secret behind his cool Arctic eyes? He’s supposed to be dead. And he intends staying that way – until he is forced to confront the woman he was once going to marry – a woman destined to be the First Lady of the United States. And she becomes key to saving the country… and fulfilling his mission.
Hunter McBride
Casting call — Clive Owen
One of the FDS founders. A man who has buried his empathy in a vault of emotional armour. His secret? This mercenary – now an expert at guerrilla warfare in some of the most inhospitable regions of the globe — was once an Irish surgeon. He stands accused of killing his own fiancée, the woman he loved with all his heart, and for the rest of his life he’s been on the run for something he didn’t do.
Rafiq Zayed
Casting call — Oded Fehr
One of the FDS founders. A hotly passionate man with desert fire in his eyes and the blood of ancient warrior sheiks coursing through his veins. His dark secret? He is the rightful heir to a kingdom … a legacy he has disowned. But to meet this mission, to save a nation and the shape of the world’s future – he must confront his destiny, along with a woman who will challenge him in the most profound ways possible.
December Ngomo
Casting call — Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje
FDS operative. A South African Zulu, ex-Umkhonto we Sizwe – the military arm formed to fight the Apartheid regime. He is a technological genius, as well as a consummate warrior. This man has no secrets. December is what meets the eye. He will kill to protect those he loves. But December will have to pay the ultimate price…
Grant McDonough
Casting call — George Clooney
FDS operative. Scottish. Straight up – like he drinks his whiskey, like he shoots his weapons. He kills smoothly. Smiles easily. Loves hard. Hates mind games. His dark secret? At age 19 Grant took the law into his own hands when the law failed his family. And he’s been on the run ever since.
Luke Stone
Casting call – Josh Holloway
FDS operative. A rough-around-the-edges ex-Australian Secret Service bodyguard who wasn’t able to protect what was most dear to him. He has vowed never to take another protection job. Until it becomes clear a woman will die…if he doesn’t.
THE BIRTH OF THE FORCE DU SABLE
The Original Team:
Jacques Sauvage, Hunter McBride and Rafiq Zayed come from diverse backgrounds but they have one thing in common. Fate had been unkind to them. Fifteen years ago each had been bitterly betrayed by love. It devastated their lives in the most fundamental ways possible, and it drove the three young men in desperation to the gates of the Legion Etranger at Fort de Nogent, Paris France in search of a new beginning and a reason to keep living.
The Legion Etranger, or French Foreign Legion — established in 1831 by King Louis Philippe — has long welcomed refugees, revolutionaries, poets, princes and criminals from all corners of the globe to sacrifice all in order to serve, bleed and die for France. This has made it one of the greatest mercenary units of all time and earned it the nickname, the Legion of the Damned.
In some cases young men have been drawn to the gates of the Legion by the promise of exotic adventure in a man’s world where the sun it hot, combat victorious, desert nights cool, the wine passable and females compliant — romantic notions popularized by classics like P.C. Wren’s Beau Geste. More often it is the Legion’s anonymity rule that draws the disparate and frequently desperate men. Because after serving a five-year contract, if they survive, Legionnaires can choose to be ‘rectified’ receiving a new name, new identity and new French passport – the past buried forever.
It was this promise of a cloak of official anonymity that brought Sauvage, McBride and Zayed to Paris, ready to give up everything that had ever defined them.
Sauvage, McBride and Zayed served in the Legion’s 2nd Parachute Regiment, the elite of the elite, a rapid intervention unit used to spearhead commando assignments in an unsettled world of limited-intensity conflict and terrorism. These paras have a fearsome reputation of being among the most skilled and dangerous soldiers on earth, of being ‘warrior monks’ and a model for future rapid action units in a modern world.
While nearing the end of their contract, the three men made a blood vow over the body of a dying colleague in the sands of the Sahara desert. Once ‘free’, they would use their newfound skill and mindset to form a formidable private fighting force in the name of global justice. They would give honor back to a time-old profession and these new soldiers of fortune would become global ‘cops’ for hire in a new world order where the rules of war and justice have changed and where the enemy knows no borders.
Ten years later they had made it so. Force du Sable, or FDS, a crack private military combat services company(PMC) modeled on the Legion’s lean and mean para operation was up and running from a base on the island of Sao Diogo, a tiny independent nation off the west coast of Africa. Contracts had been signed with Sao Diogo natives, industry established and a corporate office had been set up in New York, near the United Nations building in order to bid on future UN contracts. All the men wanted now, was for the UN to endorse the legitimacy of their often maligned profession. Already, FDS, under the fierce, courageous and innovative leadership of these three men, had amassed a small fortune and earned the attention of the world’s leaders … and villains.
When ordinary channels failed countries or organizations like the CIA, MI-6 and Mossad, they now turned to Force du Sable, to the secretive men who were prepared to fight and die for a greater global good.
But fate has one final ace up its sleeve for Sauvage, McBride and Zayed. One impossible mission and three women come their way. Each man must handle one leg of this mission and each man is forced to confront his carefully buried past, the very thing that drove him desperate to the gates of the Legion of the Damned. And in doing so, each of the powerful, hardened, world-wary and cynical men will come full circle and find love … something they had absolutely given up believing in. In turn, each woman will need to dig deep and find within herself the strength to rise and meet an extraordinary challenge … with an extraordinary man.
Each book in the original SHADOW SOLDIERS series tells one man’s story. And over the course of the three books, the three men and their women will need to find a way to save a president and his nation. The shape of the world’s future. And themselves.
