Before Captain Jake Baylor became the leader of Task Force Raven, Texas' elite counterterrorism unit, he was a Green Beret with ODA 911, fighting on the front lines of America's longest war. Raven’s Wrath is a relentless, high-octane military thriller that takes readers deep into the brutal, unforgiving battlefields of Afghanistan—where only the strong survive, and the mission always comes first.
Assigned to disrupt enemy supply lines, Baylor and his Special Forces team uncover intelligence that reveals a far greater threat: a ruthless warlord with ties to international terrorist networks. As ODA 911 hunts their target through the treacherous mountains, what begins as a surgical strike escalates into an all-out fight for survival. Ambushed, outnumbered, and cut off from support, Baylor must rely on his leadership, combat skills, and the unbreakable bond with his team to complete the mission.
This gripping prequel sets the stage for the Task Force Raven series, showcasing the origins of Jake Baylor’s relentless pursuit of justice. Raven’s Wrath is an explosive, heart-pounding journey into the mind of a warrior—before the battle followed him home.
Before Captain Jake Baylor became the leader of Task Force Raven, Texas' elite counterterrorism unit, he was a Green Beret with ODA 911, fighting on the front lines of America's longest war. Raven’s Wrath is a relentless, high-octane military thriller that takes readers deep into the brutal, unforgiving battlefields of Afghanistan—where only the strong survive, and the mission always comes first.
Assigned to disrupt enemy supply lines, Baylor and his Special Forces team uncover intelligence that reveals a far greater threat: a ruthless warlord with ties to international terrorist networks. As ODA 911 hunts their target through the treacherous mountains, what begins as a surgical strike escalates into an all-out fight for survival. Ambushed, outnumbered, and cut off from support, Baylor must rely on his leadership, combat skills, and the unbreakable bond with his team to complete the mission.
This gripping prequel sets the stage for the Task Force Raven series, showcasing the origins of Jake Baylor’s relentless pursuit of justice. Raven’s Wrath is an explosive, heart-pounding journey into the mind of a warrior—before the battle followed him home.
The heat pressed down like a smothering hand. Fine Afghan dust clung to sweat-soaked skin, seeping into every crevice, filling nostrils, coating weapons, and turning water bottles into mud. The convoy snaked its way through the valley, armored gun trucks kicking up plumes of dust that swirled under the relentless sun. Steel groaned under the weight of gear and weapons, the engines humming against the silence of the mountains.
Jake Baylor stood inside the lead Humvee's turret, scanning the ridgeline through the Trijicon optics of his HK416. The rifle rested firm against his shoulder, his Staccato 2011 P secured in his chest rig, ready to be drawn in an instant. He'd been here before—different valleys, same enemy. And this place? It felt wrong. Too quiet.
Baylor's Wiley X ballistics rode high on his nose, the matte black frames and polarized lenses hiding eyes that never stopped scanning for threats while cutting the brutal Afghan glare that could trigger his occasional migraines.
The frames had taken shrapnel twice and saved his vision both times, earning them a permanent spot in his kit alongside the clear pair he'd swap in for CQB – both pairs scratched to hell and permanently smudged with fingerprints, sweat, and God-knows-what else from three deployments of constant wear.
Jake wasn't the kind of man you'd miss in a crowd, even without the hardware. Six-two of hard-earned muscle stretched across a lean frame, the kind that came from hauling ass up mountains rather than pushing weights in some air-conditioned gym.
Years under Afghan and Texas sun had baked his skin a deep bronze, making those ice-blue eyes stand out like chips of frozen lake against his weathered face. His sandy blond hair curled past regulation length, spilling out from under that beat-to-shit Longhorns cap he refused to retire – the burnt orange steer on the front so sun-bleached and sweat-stained it was barely recognizable anymore.
His beard was pure operator – thick and untamed, a messy blend of dirty blond shot through with surprising streaks of copper and scattered silver threading through like he'd earned every damn one. His Crye Precision combat shirt hung loose enough for movement but snug across shoulders that had carried too much for too long, the MultiCam pattern disappearing into matching UF Pro battle pants scarred with Afghan dirt and who-knows-what-else. The dusty, salt-sweat-stained level 4 plate carrier served to protect his vital areas of the torso, as well as provide real estate to house his combat load of magazines- eight 30-round mags of .556.
His beloved Staccato pistol was seated on his Viking Tactics battle belt, on his strong side hip. Baylor's sidearm wasn't one of those plastic fantastic Glocks the Army handed out like candy—he carried the P 2011, the kind of pistol that made other shooters stop and stare at the range.
The gun was essentially what happened when gunsmiths took the century-old 1911 platform and modernized the hell out of it with a double-stack 9mm mag that packed 20 rounds instead of the traditional seven. The damn thing felt perfectly balanced in his hand, like it had been custom fitted, the grip texture aggressive enough to maintain control even with hands slick with sweat or blood.
That bull barrel delivered the kind of accuracy that made qualification courses boring, able to stack rounds inside an inch at 25 yards while the trigger broke like fine glass at just under 3 pounds of pressure. The pistol wasn't cheap—running north of two grand without the Trijicon RMR red dot he'd mounted on top—but Baylor figured his life was worth the investment.
He'd caught shit from the old-school guys for abandoning the traditional .45, but he'd shut them up at the shoothouse when he put 20 rounds on target in the time it took them to dump 8. His four reserve 20 round magazines of 9mm were secured in High Speed branded pouches on his left side.
The CSAT Scalpel rode horizontal on Baylor's belt—not some mall ninja bullshit but seven inches of purpose-built lethality that didn't reflect light even under a full moon. Unlike the standard-issue blades most operators carried; this Texas-made beauty had been a gift from a Tier One guy he'd pulled out of a hot LZ outside Kandahar.
The full-tang construction meant the damn thing could pry open doors or stab through an engine block without snapping, while the modified tanto tip punched through body armor like it was cardboard. Its handle was wrapped in textured paracord that Baylor had redone himself with a subtle pattern that gave perfect grip orientation by feel alone—crucial when you're working by touch in the dark.
The sheath had a satisfying "snick" when the blade seated properly, with a retention system that meant the knife stayed put during a firefight but drew silent and smooth when needed. Most guys on the team carried whatever Gerber the supply sergeant handed out, but this wasn't just a tool for opening MREs—it was the kind of blade that had saved lives and taken them with equal efficiency, the faint marks on the handle revealing where Baylor had notched it after Helmand.
Finally, his ancestral War Tomahawk, rode the left rear of the belt. The original tomahawk had that weathered patina only time could grant—its hickory handle worn smooth where seven generations of hands had gripped it, the head showing subtle hammer marks from some nameless blacksmith who'd forged it around 1825.
The iron had darkened to the color of old blood, with a simple but elegant pipe bowl opposite the blade that Sam Houston had supposedly used to smoke with Cherokee elders during his time among them. The eye where the handle passed through bore the telltale widening from years of use and rehanging, while the cutting edge, though dulled by age, still hinted at the violence it had witnessed when Texas was fighting for its independence.
Winkler Knives had approached the restoration like archaeological surgeons, documenting every nick and wear pattern before beginning their work. They'd reinforced the eye with modern metallurgical techniques invisible to casual inspection, while forging a new blade that perfectly mimicked the original's profile but used 80CrV2 carbon steel that could hold an edge through hell itself.
The handle remained authentic hickory, but they'd subtly stabilized it with modern resins that prevented splitting without changing its appearance or feel. The pipe feature still worked—Baylor had smoked a cigar from it once on a particularly dark night in Helmand—but now housed a small survival kit accessible by unscrewing a nearly invisible seam.
The leather sheath was hand-stitched using techniques from the period but incorporated a quick-release mechanism that allowed for silent, one-handed drawing. The result was a weapon that honored its bloody heritage while being fully capable of splitting a Taliban fighter's skull—exactly what Houston would have wanted for his descendant.
The HK416 strapped on his back with the Viking Tactics VTac padded combat speed sling might as well have been an extension of his body – the 5.56 battle rifle customized with an ATPIAL PEQ-15 laser system mounted on the right-side rail, the INFORCE weapon light tucked underneath, and that sweet Trijicon ACOG that'd helped him put rounds through guys' faces at distances that'd make most shooters piss themselves. Finally, the SureFire SOCOM 300-SPS suppressor rounded out his advanced Sop Mod boom stick.The rifle and its furniture had been airbrushed to a tan/brown/green MultiCam pattern to reduce its visible signature.
Those L3 panoramics strapped to his Team Wendy EXFIL Ballistic helmet hanging from his plate carrier had cost more than most people's cars, but they'd saved his ass more times than he could count, giving him that 97-degree field of view when things went dark and deadly. He'd broken in his Salomon Forces Quest boots to the point they fit like second skin, the team silently envying how he moved like a ghost while they were still breaking in their own footwear choices.
Joe "Joker" Garza, sitting behind the M240B machine gun mounted on the side of the vehicle, leaned over and spat a stream of tobacco juice into the dust. "This place smells like goat piss and gun oil. Means either we're about to get ambushed or I need a new cologne."
Garza was built like a fire hydrant that could kill you sixteen different ways – five-nine of compact muscle packed onto a frame that seemed even more powerful for its lack of height.
Nothing about the man was subtle, from those full-sleeve tattoos crawling up both arms in a chaotic blend of spec ops insignias, traditional American eagles, and intricate Aztec warrior patterns done in stark black and white that popped against his deep brown skin. That ridiculous sweat-ringed straw cowboy hat sat permanently tilted back on his head like some kind of Texas halo, only coming off when bullets started flying and his brain bucket needed to go on.
As the team's senior Weapons Sergeant (or as he called it, the “senior Señor), he babied that M-110 sniper system like it was his firstborn, cleaning each piece with a reverence that bordered on religious, the long-range tack driver always wrapped and ready despite the brutal conditions they humped through.
But it was the M1A SOCOM that truly had his heart – that shortened, modernized descendant of the M14 with its 16-inch barrel that spit 7.62 rounds with what Garza called "proper fucking authority." He'd spend hours arguing with anyone who'd listen about how the .308 dropped tangos like God's own hammer while those skinny little 5.56 rounds just poked holes. The massive rifle fit his stocky frame perfectly, like the weapon had been waiting its whole existence for hands that understood what it was meant to do.
Jake didn't answer. He kept scanning, his grip tightening on the rifle.
Mason “Bull” Turner, the team's Operations Sergeant and senior NCO of ODA 3324—call sign TEXAS 45—riding shotgun, flicked his gaze to Jake. Turner had been around long enough to know when Jake got that look, it meant trouble. "Something's off."
Turner carried his thirty-eight years like geological strata – each deployment, firefight, and blown op forming visible layers in the deep lines around his eyes and the permanent furrow between his brows.
At six-one and a hard-packed 225, the Master Sergeant had the build of someone who'd been lifting ammo crates since most of the team was still watching Saturday morning cartoons. He called himself a "barrel-chested freedom fighter" with that gravel-gargling voice of his, but the self-deprecating humor masked a tactical mind that had kept his men breathing through shitstorms that would've killed lesser operators.
The ever-present horseshoe of Copenhagen in his lower lip seemed as much a part of him as his calloused hands, and the way he'd casually spit that black juice while dropping wisdom had become the team's most reliable constant. Behind Baylor's back, the boys called Turner "the Shadow Commander" – the steady hand who'd guided their Captain through those early halting years of team leadership, teaching him when to hammer and when to finesse.
Unlike the loud-mouthed glory hounds that infested some teams, Turner was economy of motion personified, eighteen years as a Green Beret distilled into a man who'd forgotten more about unconventional warfare than most would ever learn. The faded Horse Soldier tattoo on his right forearm told a story few could claim – one of the original ODA 555 operators who'd ridden alongside Northern Alliance fighters in those first desperate months after 9/11, calling in airstrikes from horseback while Taliban positions disappeared in clouds of dust and death. When Turner spoke, even Baylor shut the hell up and listened.
Jake nodded once. "No shepherds. No kids. No movement." He adjusted his optics, shifting to thermals. Nothing but hot rocks.
Garza exhaled. "Well, shit."
Jake glanced at Joker before going back to his surveillance. He thought back to his pre-deployment world.
***
The mesquite-scented breeze rolled over Co-Lo-Neh Ranch, the golden Texas sun painting the land in amber hues. Jake sat tall in the saddle, guiding his horse along a worn trail. The rolling hills stretched far and wide, untouched by war, undisturbed by the burdens he carried overseas.
This was home.
Jake smiled as he passed the small herd of Longhorns grazing lazily in the morning sun. Three of them—named Whiskey, Tango, and Foxtrot in a moment of military humor—raised their massive horned heads to watch him pass. Beyond them, several goats clambered over the rocky outcroppings that characterized the Devil's Backbone region. The llama, a temperamental beast named "Tony Lama", stood guard over his domain, eyeing Jake with what could only be described as measured suspicion.
The name "Co-Lo-Neh"—Cherokee for "The Raven"—had been Sam Houston's nickname among the Cherokee. Jake had kept the name not just out of respect for his ancestor, but because it had become his own callsign in Afghanistan. The symmetry felt right—one warrior honoring another across generations.
His mind drifted back to San Antonio, to the vacant lot behind his childhood home where neighborhood kids played cowboys and Indians, war games sprawling across half-built construction sites. Little Jake, always the ringleader, covered in dirt and sweat, organizing tactics even then. He'd come home with scrapes and bruises, his mother worried, his father just nodding—"Boys will be boys, but a Baylor boy needs to be tougher than most."
The horse snorted beneath him, bringing him back to the present. Jake patted the animal's neck, feeling the strong muscles ripple. He'd always been more comfortable outdoors than in classrooms. Football had suited him fine, but wrestling—that was where he'd found his purpose. The discipline, the raw individual combat, the strategy. State champion at 182 pounds his senior year, the scholarship to UT that followed.
His tomahawk, a gift passed through his family since the days of Sam Houston, rested in a leather sheath on the saddle. The weight of history, of blood and battle, of a legacy few understood, rode with him. The Tomahawk still appeared pristine, if well-used. Baylor spent more time on its loving care and maintenance than he did on himself. He could breathe here, away from the sand and the noise.
He passed a group of local FFA students tending to the animals—part of an arrangement where they helped maintain the ranch in exchange for using the land and boarding their project animals. Jake nodded to them, grateful for their help keeping the place running during his deployments. The oldest student, Miguel, raised a hand in greeting before returning to repairing a fence post. The kids understood that Jake wasn't one for small talk, but they respected what he did both here and overseas.
Jake guided his horse toward the river, where the water cut through limestone, creating the dramatic valleys that gave the Devil's Backbone its name. He'd grown up hearing stories of how Henry Weidner Baylor had first settled this land, how the physician-turned-soldier had recognized its strategic value and natural beauty. The Baylor medical tradition hadn't continued with Jake—he'd chosen a different kind of service—but he sometimes wondered if his ancestor's fighting spirit lived on in him.
The forty acres of Co-Lo-Neh Ranch sprawled across the rugged limestone shelves of the Texas Hill Country, a gem tucked just outside Fischer, not far from the artist haven of Wimberley. Jake had inherited the place almost three years ago, after his father's sudden heart attack, though the land had been in Baylor hands since his great-great-great grandfather Henry Weidner Baylor had claimed it back when Texas was its own republic. The Little Blanco River cut through the property like a silver ribbon, curling past stands of ancient live oaks and twisting cedar, pooling in places to create swimming holes that ran ten feet deep in the limestone bedrock.
Come summer weekends, Jake opened the back pasture gates to “his” FFA students who'd haul their inner tubes down the footpath, whooping and hollering as they splashed into the cold, spring-fed water, floating lazily downstream past the sun-dappled banks. He'd watch from the porch of his home—a two-story German-style log cabin with a limestone chimney that jutted from the metal roof like a sentinel—nursing a cold Shiner Bock while cicadas buzzed in the mesquite trees. The cabin, built by German immigrants in 1873, had sloped pine floors that creaked underfoot, and thick cedar beam ceilings stained by a century of woodsmoke. Jake had painstakingly restored it room by room, leaving its soul intact while updating the plumbing and electrical.
The land spoke to him in ways Afghanistan never could—in the white-tailed deer that grazed at dusk in the back meadow, in the scissor-tailed flycatchers that darted above the wildflower-choked pastures each spring, in the sweet scent of mountain laurel blooms that reminded him of his mother's perfume.
Just fifteen minutes up Ranch Road 12 lay Wimberley proper, where gallery owners knew him by name and saved up gossip about which glassblower was feuding with which metalsmith, where he could get hand-rolled tamales at the Saturday Market Days that would make a grown man weep. The ranch wasn't just land to Jake—it was blood memory, it was heritage, it was the ground that held him steady when the nightmares came, and the faces of the dead visited in the dark hours.
Here, among the limestone and cedar, the cactus flowers and turkey hens, Jake Baylor wasn't a warrior—he was just a man, rooted deep as any live oak that had weathered a century of Texas storms.
Then the phone rang. The phone display identified the caller as his Group adjutant. Never good news.
Jake pulled the reins, the horse shifting under him. He already knew. The war had called him back.
***
The makeshift outpost smelled of sweat, CLP, and burnt coffee. Jake's ODA, Operational Detachment Alpha-3324, call sign TEXAS 45—a mountain warfare specialization team assigned to 3rd Special Forces Group out of Fort Bragg—moved with fluid efficiency, each man locked into his routine.
The twelve-man team, carrying the proud motto "De Oppresso Liber"—to free the oppressed—was a well-oiled machine. Chief Warrant Officer Lucas “Cool Breeze” Wells, the team's deputy commander, was busy at a table reviewing intelligence reports. The seasoned 180A had been with Jake through two previous deployments.
Chief Wells moved through life with the unhurried precision of a man who'd seen everything twice and wasn't impressed the first time. His lean six-foot frame carried maybe 180 on a good day, but nobody mistook that wiriness for weakness – not after watching him outlast men fifteen years younger on mountain climbs with a full combat load.
The gray that had taken over at his temples seemed to perfectly match the gunmetal shade of his eyes, eyes that caught everything and forgave nothing. Where Baylor led from the front with charisma and Turner steered with experience,
Wells operated in the shadows, quietly untangling intelligence puzzles and navigating the bureaucratic nightmares that would've driven the others to violence. His weapons were spreadsheets and satellite imagery as much as his meticulously maintained HK416.
The team joked that his blood was actually coffee after catching him sipping from that battered titanium mug at all hours, the bitter brew practically an IV drip that fueled his legendary three-day intelligence binges. Twenty-three years in service had left him with a twice-rebuilt knee that barked like hell in cold weather and a talent for knowing exactly which colonel to call when the mission needed something impossible.
Sean "Doc" Miller, one of the team's 18D Medical Sergeants, sat on a wooden crate, stitching up a gash on Rick "Saint" Martinez's forearm. Martinez was the newer of their two 18B Weapons Sergeants, with Garza being the senior.
Miller's hands told his whole story—steady as a statue when threading IV lines into collapsing veins under fire, but perpetually fidgeting with something when idle, like they couldn't forget the lives they'd held together.
The 18D wore his brown hair cropped tight on the sides but longer on top, a rebellious holdover from his pre-Army days in Seattle's grunge scene. His kit weighed nearly seventy pounds with the extra medical gear he refused to leave behind, earning him a permanent hunch and a right knee that popped like bubble wrap on cold mornings.
Unlike the traditional monikers most medics adopted as callsigns, he'd insisted on just "Doc". Where other team members collected war trophies, Miller kept a small notebook with a tally mark for each life saved, never mentioning the second book where he tracked those he couldn't.
Martinez—"Saint" to everyone except his mother—was still growing into his callsign, earned after surviving an IED that had somehow left him untouched while shredding two local interpreters walking beside him. His right forearm bore a massive tattoo of Saint Michael spearing a demon, the ink still vibrant against his caramel skin, unlike the faded work on the senior guys.
Where Garza approached weapons with brute expertise, Martinez handled them with an engineer's precision, able to disassemble and rebuild almost anything that fired a round while rattling off specs and ballistic coefficients like most guys discussed sports stats. The wide scar Doc was stitching up would join three others on that same arm—Martinez's body collecting damage the way teenagers collected concert tickets.
"This is why I told you not to hug grenades," Miller said.
Martinez smirked. "It was getting lonely out there."
Eric "Soup" Campbell, one of their 18E Communications Sergeants, hunched over a comms setup, adjusting frequencies. "Sat uplink's clean. We'll have coverage even if we go into the deep end."
Campbell earned the callsign "Soup" his first week in Group after puking Campbell's chunky soup all over a colonel during a particularly brutal HALO jump, and the name stuck like a burr to wool despite his desperate attempts to outrun it.
Lanky and pale with wiry strength, he looked more like an IT guy who'd wandered into the wrong career field until you saw him hump a ninety-pound rucksack through mountain passes without breaking stride.
His fingers moved across keyboards and comm equipment with the same reverent precision a concert pianist might use, those long digits able to coax signals from equipment that the manufacturer had declared impossible. The team's resident tech wizard had two engineering degrees he never mentioned and a collection of modified radios the NSA would've immediately classified if they knew about them.
Beneath those perpetually sunburned ears (no matter how much sunscreen he applied), Campbell hid a savant-like ability to memorize frequencies and encryption patterns, along with an oddly encyclopedic knowledge of 80s heavy metal that provided the soundtrack for most of their pre-mission prep. When he wasn't monitoring comms, you'd find him hunched over his personal laptop, tapping out letters to a girlfriend back home that the guys were half-convinced he'd invented.
Mike "Boomer" Jensen, one of the team's 18C Engineering Sergeants, inspected equipment with methodical precision.
Jensen earned his "Boomer" call sign long before joining the team, but nobody asked about the college bar incident that spawned it—the tight-lipped engineer shared details about his past with the same reluctance he showed toward wasting explosives.
Built like a competitive swimmer with broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist, he moved with an unsettling quietness for a man who specialized in making things loud. Unlike most demo guys who approached explosives with manic glee, Jensen worked with the calculated precision of a surgeon, his weathered hands never rushing, never fumbling, even with detonators that could turn him into pink mist if mishandled.
The thick burn scars mapping his left forearm told stories of lessons learned early, while the reading glasses he reluctantly pulled out for calculating explosive formulas betrayed the secret that kept him from HALO school—eyes that had seen too many flash-bangs up close. Each night before sleep, he obsessively arranged his demolition tools in the exact same pattern, a ritual the team recognized as the only visible crack in his otherwise unshakable calm. Jensen spoke maybe thirty words on an average day, but when he did open his mouth, even Turner shut up and listened—the quiet ones always saw what everyone else missed.
A short time later, Jake stepped inside their outpost, brushing past the hum of quiet conversations, the shuffle of gear being packed, the unspoken camaraderie of men who'd bled together. His eyes locked onto a satellite image pinned to the wall—Shok Valley, marked with fresh intel.
Raven’s Wrath by Sam Stone is a pulse-pounding military thriller about a Green Beret mountain warfare specialization team on a recon assignment in Afghanistan’s Shok Valley. The novella lays the groundwork for the relationships and shared experiences of the team members for the author’s upcoming Texas-set Task Force Raven series.
Captain Jake Baylor and his brothers-in-arms are ambushed by a large, organized force of Haqqani fighters while on recon, traversing the mountainous passages of the Shok Valley. While gravely outnumbered and not in the best defensive position, the team is holding its own, but in order to make it out alive, they must somehow turn the tables, making their hunters the ones who are hunted.
Jake Baylor is a born warrior and leader whose natural skills are honed by intense training. He’s also a true son of Texas with generational roots in the state going back to Sam Houston himself. I liked how Houston’s history is woven into Baylor’s with the hand-me-down war tomahawk and the use of Houston’s Cherokee moniker of “The Raven” for his present-day descendant. Jake is all business and keeps the welfare of his command in mind, even as he must make life-and-death assignments.
While action-packed and heart-poundingly exciting, the descriptions of each man on the team to the cinematically envisioned desert-to-mountain settings are amazingly detailed and realistic without slowing the story down one iota. I could almost feel their surroundings and smell the fumes of destruction and the results of their fighting.
The foreshadowing of the danger ahead on the team’s mission gave me eerie prickles on the back of my neck as Jake and Turner both sensed something was “off.” Their nighttime trek on foot toward the Haqqani stronghold was riveting, edge-of-your-seat suspenseful. The Special Forces team is absolutely resolute in the face of the onslaught by opponents who are persistent but with ill-placed determination. Sergeant Joe Garza comes by his nickname of “Joker’ honestly and has some stellar quips to alleviate a little of the tension throughout their ordeal. Considering this is just the introduction, I can hardly wait for the meat of the series to get underway.
I recommend RAVEN’S WRATH to readers of military thrillers.