Operator Down

Pike Logan #12

by Brad Taylor

• A New York Times Bestseller • Former Special Forces officer and New York Times bestselling author Brad Taylor delivers a heart-pounding thriller where Pike Logan's search for a Mossad agent and ally puts him on a collision course with a ruthless military coup in Africa—and tests his loyalties to the Taskforce .

It was supposed to be a simple mission. Nothing more than assessing whether a merchant in the fabled Israeli Diamond Exchange was involved in a scheme that could potentially embarrass the state of Israel. But nothing is ever simple in the world of intelligence, as Aaron Bergman—a former leader of an elite direct action team under the Mossad—should have known. Executing the operation as a contractor, a cutout that gave the State of Israel plausible deniability, he disappears without a trace.

Pike Logan and his team know none of this, but he's tracking an American arms dealer in Tel Aviv who may—or may not—be attempting to sell sensitive nuclear weapons components to the highest bidder. When Pike's team breaks up an attempt at killing Shoshana, Aaron's partner, they stumble upon much more than they expected—a concerted conspiracy to topple a democratic African country.

Beginning to untangle a web that extends through both the American and Israeli intelligence community, Pike is forced to choose between his Israeli friends and his Taskforce mission, even as the coup begins. But Aaron's disappearance is the one mistake the plotters made. Because Shoshana is the greatest killing machine the Mossad has ever produced, and she will stop at nothing to help Aaron, even if it means killing Pike Logan.

Genres: Thriller, Fiction, Espionage, Action, Audiobook, Military Fiction, Spy Thriller

544 pages, Paperback

First published January 9, 2018

About the author

Brad Taylor served for more than twenty-one years in the U.S. Army, retiring in 2010 as a Special Forces Lieutenant colonel. During that time he held numerous infantry and special operations positions, including eight years in 1st Special Forces Operations Detachment—Delta, popularly known as the Delta Force, where he commanded multiple troops and a squadron.

He has conducted operations in support of U.S. national interests in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other classified locations. His final military post was as Assistant Professor of Military Science at The Citadel. He holds a master's of science in defense analysis with a concentration in irregular warfare from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA.

When not writing, Brad serves as a security consultant on asymmetric threats to various agencies. He currently lives in Charleston, SC, with his wife and two daughters.

Reviews

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do What’s Right

Pike Logan is on a mission in Israel and called their friends Aaron and Shoshana to go out to dinner, yet neither answered their phone. A day later they see Shoshana bolting across a street with men on her trail. Her chasers have obvious bad intentions.

When Pike and Jennifer catch up with Shoshana they find that Aaron is missing and in trouble, though saving him is not a task force mission. Kurt, the task force liaison to the oversight council, managed to work at his end to roll in finding Aaron with a sale of nuclear triggers. Pike will always do what he believes is the right thing, and that doesn’t always align with the mission.

How does Brad Taylor come up with these amazing stories? Are these altered versions of reality or is he just really good at winding military actions into great tales? We had so many double crosses and take downs that my head was spinning, and all our favorites from past missions are here. Five star military spec ops thriller… again!

[Pierre Tassé (Enjoying Books) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book and love the Brad Taylor explaination at the end of how he developed the story.

[Tim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Brad Taylor wrote this using a different philosophy than his past stories. While he may feel good about it, I don't believe it helped. This story was a bit muddled and leaves this listener empty. 3 of 10 stars

[L.A. Starks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Operator Down follows in Brad Taylor's series of global, exciting thrillers with inside knowledge of operations and a carefully-modulated plot moving between South Africa and Lesotho.

Recommended to all thriller, military, and action-adventure readers.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always enjoy Brad Taylor's Pike Logan series...some more than others, but I think this is probably my preferred story...a favorite part of all this series, for me, is the maturing relationship between Jennifer & Pike...an added plus, in this book, is Aaron & Shoshanna & their now multidimensional connection coupled with Shoshanna's fervent desire for normalcy...both are no longer simple cardboard cutouts...starting at different points, Aaron in South Africa, investigating shenanigans, involving the Israeli Diamond Exchange & Pike & his crew following a shady American arms dealer, they end up in the midst of an effort to topple the enclaved Kingdom of Lesthoto...plenty of slam-bang action & page-turn intrigue to make all the fans of this genre delirious...Great Stuff!!!

[Mojo Shivers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another good installment. This one felt a bit like Taken in that it was a rescue op and also didn’t incorporate as much glove-trotting as other installments do. What was also a deviation from the norm was that there was less politicking involving the Oversight Committee. As a result this was a very much boots-on-the-ground novel.

That’s a good thing as each book was getting more predictable as the series wore on. I’m looking forward to getting #13 ready to go.

[Shawn Cross · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brad Taylor is an amazing writer. I love reading his books because he always delivers on the action I crave and Operator Down definitely does NOT disappoint in that area. Shoshana is probably my fave character in the series, so I really enjoyed experiencing her journey in this heart wrenching story.

Above all, I appreciated how every single subplot seemed to come together perfectly like several roads merging. The only issue with that was a couple of moments of traffic congestion, so to speak, in which the flow was interrupted with what felt like repetitive dialog. But with everything going on I think LTC Taylor did an incredible job keeping up the pace. Pike Logan continues to be one of my favorite book boyfriends. And I can't wait read the next one!

[R J Mckay · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Black Ops thrillers. I’ve enjoyed several Pike Logan books so far and plan on reading many more. My main reason for enjoying Brad Taylors novels is easy to explain. He knows what he’s talking about. When you write from your own experiences, it always comes across better than those who are just day-dreaming. Very thrilling and easy to follow, this book kept me on the edge of my seat.

[Glen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pike and Jennifer are on a supposedly easy mission, following some black market arms dealer, when their Israeli friend Aaron, is captured by a faction executing a coup in Lesotho. Pike and Jennifer get on the trail, while Shoshana goes crazy with worry. Pike and Jennifer and the rest of the team stumble around, eventually finding their way to Lesotho, where they waste a lot of wimps.

Pretty good, although very busy.

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nearing the end of the binge read of the Pike Logan books, and not enjoying them any less! Here we have an awful lot of moving parts, nuclear triggers to Iran, coups in a small African country, Aaron and Shoshanna, ex-Mossad, back (and Aaron in massive danger, with Shoshanna likely to kill everything in her path). Plus the return of Johan, the mercenary with, sort of, a conscience. There's a giveaway there in that Taylor has steadily grown his cast of characters that move through his shadowy world, and I suspect most readers (me included) like them all.
To be critical the ending of this book is all a little pat, but the ride let's Taylor get away with it. Solid five star entertainment.

[Pop · Rating 5 out of 5]

A little different than Taylor's previous books but certainly entertaining. Look forward to his next.

[Mike Worley · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 Stars

[Viviane Crystal · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Taskforce is back again with Pike Logan, Knuckles and Jenny actively working a simple surveillance mission. Their job is to find out if a certain party involved in the Israeli diamond business is involved in a plot that could seriously embarrass and damage Israel’s reputation on a world-wide scale. But the simple mission blows up and goes awry, winding up with Pike’s good Israeli friends, Aaron and Shoshanna in serious trouble.
Aaron is kidnapped by South African forces who believe he is spying for America or Israel against their takeover of the government in Lesotho, South Africa. Shoshanna is a secret Israeli, former Mossad, agent who is a hot-tempered killing machine who turns deadly at the slightest attempt at deception.
The plot thickens and it turns out the Taskforce has wandered smack into a military coup in Lesotho and a plot by an American arms dealer to sell “triggers” for putting together a nuclear bomb to the right bidder. The latter must be stopped and that part of the plot is told in fragments as the kidnapping of Aaron takes precedence. Shoshanna doesn’t believe the group is doing enough to rescue her husband Aaron and so spends most of the novel alternatively going rogue when inflamed and cooperating when the Taskforce proves they are being trustful and loving.
The Taskforce follows its usual game plan of tracking the multi-layered group of “bad guys” who are either involved in nuclear arms dealing or government takeovers. At times it’s a bit drawn out and too long. However, bones break, bodies fly, and death is an ever-distracting moment away for all the characters involved in this mission.
Shoshanna prevails as the main character here, at points even turning against Pike and Jennifer. The force of her character leaves the readers breathless. Indeed the ending of the novel will also leave the reader stunned, far distant from what one expected. Again, a thriller that’s great adventure and a true international spy story to rival its counterparts in the genre!

[Tom Tischler · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was to be a simple mission for Aaron Bergman a former leader in an action team
under the Mossad. He was to assess whether a merchant in the Israeli Diamond Exchange
was involved in a scheme that could potentially embarrass Israel. He was a contractor or
cutout offering Israel plausible deniability and he disappears without a trace. Pike Logan
and his team know nothing of this, they are in Tel Aviv tracking an American arms dealer
who may or may not be trying to sell sensitive nuclear weapons components to the
highest bidder. When Pike's team breaks up an attempt to kill Shoshana, Aaron's
partner they stumble upon much more than expected. A conspiracy to topple a democratic
African country. Beginning to untangle a web that extends through both the American and
Israeli intelligence community Pike is forced to choose between his Israeli friends and his
taskforce mission even as the execution of a coup begins to form. At the heart of it is Aaron
and his disappearance which is the one mistake the plotters made. Shoshana is the greatest
killing machine that the Mossad has ever produced and she will do everything in her
power to help Aaron even if it means killing Pike. This is book 12 in the Pike Logan series
and it's a pretty good story and well worth reading. I gave it a 4

[Felicia G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating of 4.5 stars. I have always enjoyed listening to this series and each installment is better than the last. You must read the first installment, "One Rough Man" in order to follow this series. Character development occurs with each story. I enjoyed this particular tale due to the fact at the end, the author explained how he came of with the premise of this storyline and the effort he experienced in researching it, i.e. he and his interpreter-guide actually getting arrested in a foreign country, detained and questioned. Hats of to Brad Taylor. Can't wait for the next installment of the Pike Logan saga!

[wally · Rating 3 out of 5]

finished this one the 28th of april 2019 sunday evening good read three stars i liked it. getting busy for me so i couldn't devote as much time to it as i could the previous taylor brad reads. and it's supposed to snow tonight. good thing i put the blower away. (i'd have time tomorrow save that list i generated over the last two days)

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very exciting!

[Jeffrey Burton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I grow bored giving Brad Taylor five stars after five stars, but what can you do when the guy keeps writing such page-turning thrillathons.

[Belita · Rating 2 out of 5]

Think this is the last Brad T book I will read - not very good

[Douglas Misquita · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was expecting Mr Taylor's books to be like the other American hero-special-forces books. Boy, was i disappointed. First, it's got the most spoken text I've ever encountered in a thriller. Second, it's detailed, in a good way. Other thrillers focus on the action; here there was a lot of build up to the action and in reality I suppose that's how it is and Mr Taylor should know. Hours and weeks and months of prep before a few minutes of action. But perhaps too detailed. Some like that, some don't. For me, it made the book way too long, but I get it, it's how this particular mission would actually unfold. In the end, the length is what held me from a 3/5.

[Steven Jr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The 12th entry in the bestselling Pike Logan series, OPERATOR DOWN, continues the adventures of the series' eponymous protagonist and his activities with the extrajudicial Taskforce. This time, their target is a bro-vet who has made a living for himself as an arms dealer. Said bro-vet/arms dealer is in bed with certain folks who want to obtain nuclear triggers for Iran. Those folks were under surveillance by former Mossad operative Aaron Bergman, who is compromised and captured. As part of their clean-up operation, they make the mistake of targeting Bergman's wife, the enigmatic former assassin named Shoshanna. The Taskforce's mission conflicts with Shoshanna's mission to recover Aaron, and Pike is forced to choose between loyalty to the mission or loyalty to his friends.

This novel is a bit different from other novels in the series in that the main conflict is not ripped from the headlines. Nonetheless, it still possesses the hallmarks of realism for which Taylor is known. We see character development primarily from Shoshanna, who is the star of the novel, though we also see character moments from Pike and Taskforce commander Kurt Hale, as well. The action is a slow burn, with low-visibility action pieces building to an eventual flurry of kinetic action in the climax. All in all, it is an excellent entry in the series and shows that Taylor has genre longevity, keeping his characters and plots fresh where others have become stale and repetitive.

Highly recommended for genre fans.

[Angie Reisetter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first Pike Logan I've read, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's one damn good adventure. I was expecting a fairly standard genre piece, and it surprised me. There's so much research and info in here. Way more cultural and landscape description than I would expect (resulting in it being a little wordy, but in a good way). Better development of characters and relationships than I expected for a serial, especially this deep into the series. I expected to be lost but wasn't beyond the first 15 pages or so. And there is lots of time explaining how things work. Most things here I'm not an expert on, but the technology explanations were specific and on the mark, so that let me trust the other stuff. The result is that it drags here and there and is longer than is strictly required, but it made the read much better for me -- there was a richness here to dig into.

One thing this book doesn't have is a whole lot of suspense. After reading the first 100 pages or so, I knew what had to happen and in roughly what order. Sometimes thrillers are an extension of the mystery genre, and this one certainly isn't. The thrills lie in the tactics, how exactly they do what they do, not that it has to be done. Despite the lack of plot-point surprises, it was a wild ride and I relished it. And the fact that there's a chase scene on the Baha'i garden terraces in Israel blew my mind -- he had me at Haifa. Just a solid great read.

I got a copy to review from First to Read.

[M. Conway · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've enjoyed all of Brad Taylor's books, but this one was my least favorite. I gave it 3.5 stars, technically.

The characters were great and were in their typical "operator" mode, but the premise just lacked that oomph. It was believable but kinda boring. I couldn't get into the whole Lesotho/regime change/threat to the US vibe the book was trying to get out. The question I ask myself about these books is, "If they fail or failed, how would it affect the country?" Usually you can answer with, "We're all dead, the country is ruined, Terrorism wins, etc..", but with this book the answer would be, "Well, Lesotho - which is a country within South Africa, by the way - has a new leader and regime." Oh. Really? Well, that sucks, I guess?

Sure, the element with Aaron and Shoshana was good, but too much "operation" was put into it. I felt like Brad was really pushing the Shoshana/Pike relationship and tension a bit too much.

Still, though, it was worth the read, as are all his books.

[Max · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely the least worthy contribution to this series, which has generally been very good. Oddly, this is the second book I've read this month which involved Project Circle - the collaboration between Israel and South Africa to develop nuclear weapons. The plot had no urgency, and no vital American interests at stake. The Taskforce's ability to engineer complicate political change to a small, corrupt African nation in mere hours was just not credible and, frankly, did not make for a good mission for Pike Logan and friends. The dialogue was really bad, with a lot of "he said", then "she said", then "he said", and so on. Eyes roll, mouths open wide, and lots of uninteresting text like that. Except for Shoshana, their Israeli friend, all of the characters are one-dimensional, and never add any elements of tension. After so many adventures together, I would think that the member's of Pike's team should contribute more than they are asked for in this book. Their are no surprises, as the story crawls forward to its expected conclusion.

[Charles Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pike, Aaron, Jennifer and Shoshana do good!

The set up was not ripped from the headlines so it was an adjustment getting into the story. Having said that once we got the foundation built it became an enjoyable and mostly believable premise.

[Kelsie Maxwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hate reviews with spoilers so you won't read any here. All you'll get is my humble opinion about the quality of this novel.

I am a huge fan of Brad Taylor and I especially enjoy the Pike Logan series. For me, Operator Down is one of his best efforts. Even though this book is part of a series, Mr. Taylor made it as easy to follow as a stand-alone. This is a thriller from start to finish. Pike is as intriguing as ever and Jennifer, Aaron and Shoshana are an exciting support cast. Because of Taylor’s extensive research, the backstory and surroundings are all beautifully rendered and richly detailed. Mr. Taylor has firmly entrenched himself on my favorites list with this endeavor. This is a definite must-read.

I was chosen to read an advance copy of this book as part of the Penguin's First to Read program. However, the opinions expressed in this review are 100% mine and mine alone.

[David C Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Better than the last one; 2.75 stars. The plot starts small with a Mossad mission gone wrong and
then escalates into a hunt for nuclear triggers wrapped inside a coup attempt in Lesotho. These books would be better if everything wasn't overdescribed-there's just too much close detail and exposition about everything. Also the inter personal relations - especially the hysterical Shoshona (who is so unstable she'd never be employed by anyone let alone Mossad) - are too cartoonish. The more interesting character in this one was the conflicted mercenary.

[Ken Biel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not sure if this particular Taylor novel did not resonate with me, or the writing just got lazy or sloppy the last 80-100 pages. Not my favorite Pike Logan story, and it even got a little awkward at the end as Shoshana and Jennifer were discussing sexual favors on other men, and how Pike would react. Looking forward to the 13th book in the Pike Logan series as I am sure Brad Taylor will deliver once again.

[Drw · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shows an advance in the writing of Brad Taylor as this is a more complex story-line with more movable parts. That increasing complexity also makes it easier to go off the rails occassionally.

I was delighted to see Shoshanna and Aaron back - but the Shoshanna character was even more a caricature because she was much more present.

[Gerri · Rating 2 out of 5]

Based on previous novels in this series, I found this one to be a bit boring, very slow read at times and lacking suspense through much of the book. This novel left me feeling very let down. Certainly not a typical Pike Logan novel.