Table of Contents
COPYRIGHT
In the Company of Snipers
IN THE COMPANY OF SNIPERS
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Epilogue
Preview of Harley’s story
About the Author
Jameson
IN THE COMPANY OF SNIPERS
Book 22
IRISH WINTERS
COPYRIGHT
Jameson; In the Company of Snipers, Book 22
Copyright ©2020 by Irish Winters
All rights reserved
First Edition
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, dialogues, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
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.
Cover design: Kelli Ann Morgan, Inspire Creative Services
Cover image: Paul Henry Serres Photography, www.paulhenryserres.com
My gorgeous cover model: Francis Brunet
Interior book design: Bob Houston, eBook Formatting
Editor: Linda Clarkson, Black Opal Editing and Proofreading
ISBN Paperback: 978-1-7348097-8-7
ISBN eBook: 978-1-7348097-9-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020918414
In the Company of Snipers
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IN THE COMPANY OF SNIPERS
This series revolves around former Marine scout sniper, Alex Stewart, and his covert surveillance company, The TEAM, home-based out of Alexandria, Virginia. An obsessive patriot and workaholic, he created the company to give former military snipers like him, a chance at returning to civilian life with a decent job, security, and a future.
This is not a serial with each book ending at a cliffhanger. In the Company of Snipers is a collection of passionate love stories involving strong women and men who are tough enough to take on the world alone. Each is a stand-alone read, complete in itself.
Spoiler alert: Every story contains adult scenes including sexual situations (some explicit), language, and violence. I don’t write sweet romance, so be forewarned.
Book 1, ALEX, reveals how The TEAM came to be, as well as how Alex met Kelsey, how they fell in love and fought all odds to stay together. Each of the following books is a complete romance in itself, where, in the course of an active TEAM operation, one agent comes face to face with his or her demons. The men and women I write about are all patriots and warriors, dealing with what they’ve lived through or mistakes they’ve made.
It’s my hope that you will come to realize along with my heroes...
Love changes everything.
Prologue
Five Years Earlier
USN SEAL Chief Petty Officer Jameson Tenney stopped firing at the cunning band of ISIL soldiers hidden behind boulders and rocks up ahead. He couldn’t believe what was taking place behind him. Two happy go-lucky boys, maybe six or seven years old, had appeared out of no-damned-where. Giggling and squealing from the bony back of a stout, three-foot-high, miniature donkey, they spurred it across the desert like a couple mischievous cowboys, away from the firefight Jameson was currently waging, and straight into no man’s land, the unforgiving desert.
Jameson and his six-man SEAL team had been inserted into the southern Iraqi desert Al-Hajarah, at zero-three-thirty hours this morning. Best time of day to do business. Undercover on a moonless night. Easy orders. Locate Professors Murdock and Upton, two United Kingdom geologists taken captive by ISIL extremists, preferably before they were beheaded.
The good professors had naively come to Iraq to study its harsh, arid topography, specifically the wadis, ravines, and channels that filled with spring runoff. They believed underground rivers ran deep beneath those wadis, sources that could ultimately be tapped to provide drinking water and irrigation for the poorer, more desolate parts of one of the most backward countries in the world. They also thought they were immune to the current political unrest sweeping that part of the planet.
But after three tours in this godforsaken, ruined land, Jameson knew better. These people didn’t want anything from the rest of the world but for civilization to leave them alone. That old saying: ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime,’ didn’t apply here. The more dollars and experts the world’s talking heads poured into this country, the more the tribal leaders, village elders, and villagers hated them for it. ISIL owned them now. It was past time to leave.
But not yet.
“You’re shittin’ me,” Ensign Pierce Steed, handle Derby, hissed, his head also cranked around at the unbelievable sight. “What the fuck are they doin’ way out here?”
“Playing,” Jameson breathed into his helmet’s headset, his throat as dry as the air in this damned country. “They’re just kids. That’s what kids do.”
“In the middle of a gawddamned war? Now?”
“Looks like it. I’m going after them.”
“Damn, LT just called in an airstrike!”
“Understood. But I’ll be back before the Warthogs show.” With the kids, by hell.
Warthogs, aka USAF close ground support, the A-10 Thunderbolt attack aircraft.
“Gawddamn it, Saint. Don’t do it.”
Saint was the SEAL handle Jameson hadn’t chosen and never wanted. He’d been tagged that because of his choirboy looks and his early promotion, what some guys called a miracle. What others considered a pain
