Showing posts with label Israeli Commandos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Israeli Commandos. Show all posts

Monday, July 13, 2020

Israeli Commandos #3: The Kamikaze Assignment


Israeli Commandos #3: The Kamikaze Assignment, by Andrew Sugar
No month stated, 1975  Manor Books

I really enjoyed this third volume of Israeli CommandosAndrew Sugar follows sort of the same vibe he used in The Enforcer, focusing more on suspense and tension than outright action, but it’s all done very well. The characterization is a notch above the genre average, and there’s also a little bit of development for the overall series storyline – shame, then, that there was only one more volume to follow. Plus, there’s a part where our titular commandos are attacked by ninjas! 

Our protagonist this time is Dov Abrams, who starred in the first volume; Sugar seems to have developed the template of Abrams featuring in one volume and Gershon Yelinga, another Israeli Commando, featuring in the next – Yelinga was in the previous volume and mentioned in the first one, but we don’t hear a thing about him this time. I assume though he’ll return for the final volume. Otherwise Abrams is the central character, and he’s much more likable this time, less hot-headed. The plot also takes advantage of Abrams’s status as a famous heavyweight boxer – as we’ll recall, he’s known as “The Israeli Muhamid Ali,” which is just wrong on so many levels.

While Abrams is the central character, as with The Enforcer there are recurring characters who add to the storyline. For one there’s The Major, Abrams’s taciturn spy boss. There’s also Abrams’s boxing trainer and his entourage of sparring partners and the like. Most importantly there’s also Ronit, Abrams’s famous model girlfriend, Abrams being one of the few ‘70s men’s adventure protagonists with a steady girlfriend. Ronit gets to take part in this installment’s mission; there’s a humorous part later in the book where she informs a surprised Abrams that she’s suspected for a long time that he’s a secret commando for Israel, as it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out why he’s always calling for matches in unusual locations – locations which turn out to experience heavy terrorist-blasting action soon thereafter. Abrams wonders if this means that Ronit too will eventually be drafted into the commando network, but unless Abrams figures into the next novel we’ll never find out.

Abrams and Ronit are on vacation in the South of France and enjoying some fine dining when a pair of local racists come over and start badgering Abrams for being a famous Jewish boxer. This leads to a nice fistfight in the street, with even Ronit getting in on the act. This will serve as our only action sequence until much later in the novel, though. In fact this one might have the least action yet in the series, but as stated this doesn’t take away from the enjoyment factor. While I found the previous two volumes a little patience-trying, The Kamikaze Assignment moves at a fast pace and keeps you turning the pages. And as the title suggests, this one takes place in Japan; per The Major, a Japanese explosives expert with radical leanings has offered the PLO some newfangled guidance systems for mini-atomic warheads or some other such Maguffin, and Abrams’s mission is to head on over to Tokyo and get one of the prototypes before they can be shipped to Iran…and be used posthaste on Israel.

Abrams’ only cover for going to Tokyo is to challenge an upstart Japanese boxer, one who is well below him on the boxing totem pole…sort of like Apollo Creed challenging Rocky Balboa in the first Rocky. It is of course a highly unusual move, and further casts doubt on Abrams’ entire cover identity; both Ronit and his coach reveal later in the book that the only possible way Abrams could even want to challenge this guy was if it was because he needed to go to Japan on some sort of “secret” commando mission. As I say, the novel at least ends with Abrams’ entire team being aware of his secret operative status, which promises further series developments – something Sugar was known for in The Enforcer.

But one thing Sugar doesn’t bring to this series is the sleazy and lurid vibe of The Enforcer, which was almost fixated on breasts and nipples and the like, with hardcore sex scenes in the earliest volumes. Israeli Commandos is comparatively tame. Abrams’s few sex scenes with Ronit all occur off-page, and she’s barely exploited at all. I mean what the hell? This could potentially have something to do with the fact that Andrew Sugar supposedly became a woman sometime in the mid to late ‘70s; way back when I reviewed The Enforcer #1, a few people left varying comments that Sugar was really a woman, or that he was a man with a wife and kids, etc. Around 2012 I was briefly in touch with a guy who had met “Andrea” Sugar and who told me he’d been called as a witness in a trial Sugar had put together against Clint Eastwood, claiming that the Dirty Harry flick The Enforcer infringed upon Sugar’s series of the same title! This was in the late ‘70s and of course the trial was thrown out.

But anyway, this person told me that Andrew Sugar had become “Andrea Sugar” shortly before the trial, and made for a “handsome woman.” He didn’t know anything else about Sugar and was only called as a witness on the artistic aspect of the case, as he himself was a writer. What I found most curious is that nothing else was ever published by Sugar after the trial; the last thing credited to him is the 1979 Manor paperback The Cult Breaker (which curiously features a Clint Eastwood lookalike on the painted cover!), and so far as I can tell there’s never been anything by an “Andrea Sugar.” Prior to “the change,” Sugar had been fairly prolific (and always published under his own name), so I wondered why he would’ve stopped writing even if his gender had changed. I was going to do a post about this on the blog at the time, but just never got around to it, so these two paragraphs will have to suffice.

So off our heroes go to Japan, where Sugar doesn’t beat us over the head with the cultural differences or arbitrary travelogue stuff. The flight over begins the suspense and tension vibe that will continue for most of the novel, as Abrams is summoned to the cabin of the 747 and informed a bomb’s been discovered onboard. Abrams has been called because it’s known by the public at large that he grew up dismantling bombs and stuff, just part of the daily life of being a kid in postwar Israel. He defuses the bomb in a nicely-done scene, only for one of his entourage to die regardless, thanks to some cyanide in a mixed drink. Later at the airport there’s a bomb in a briefcase; at this point Abrams knows one of his people is a traitor, and of course it turns out to be some minor character we’ve never met before.

It’s more on the suspense tip as Abrams and entourage are hooked up with a training facility outside Tokyo, but his concern is how to get off the premises without their police security detail not seeing them. Abrams’s lack of training for the upcoming match – ie, the very reason the world thinks he’s even here in Japan – becomes humorous (intentionally so), and serves up another reason for his coach in particular to suspect that Abrams is here for another reason entirely. And here come the ninjas – one night Abrams and his group are roaming the camp grounds when Japanese men in black suits bearing swords come out of the shadows and attack them, leading to a taut action scene where Abrams and his boxer pals defend themselves with their fists. It’s not until later that Abrams is told they are ninjas, which he’s never heard of. The various attacks make Abrams suspect there are two different factions trying to kill him, and he turns out to be correct, but the main threat centers around the Eijiro Electronics headquarters, owned by the radical who plans to sell his missile tech stuff to the PLO.

There are interesting scenes throughout, like a late-night soft probe Abrams makes on Eijiro, where he discovers the grounds are guarded by giant mastifs in addition to high-tech sensing devices. Sugar brings something else to the series that he did The Enforcer: a theme, something you don’t often find in the men’s adventure world. The theme is “Israelis are born survivors,” and Sugar successfully displays it throughout, from Abrams’s childhood familiarity with defusing bombs to the various members of his entourage willing to put their lives on the line for Israel. It’s especially displayed in the taut (but brief) climax, in which a battered, beaten, and bloody Abrams gets in the ring with the Mike Tyson-esque Japanese boxer, about the only thing fueling Abrams his fiery will to survive.

The action doesn’t really pick up until Abrams and team make an attack on a terrorist hideout, a very well-done scene which has them setting up some oldschool tricks like wiring up a door so that it electrocutes whoever touches it. The biggest action scene is on the night of Abrams’s big match; he rightly suspects it’s the only day the police guard won’t expect him to try to sneak off the training compound – given all the attacks on his life, Abrams has been placed under 24-7 police guard. They hit the Eijiro facility, wiping out hordes of terrorist scum, with Abrams delivering brutal justice with a .357 bast to Eijiro’s face.

This is where most novels would end, but Abrams still has a heavyweight boxing match to attend! Even though his right arm has been so injured he can’t use it and he’s got shrapnel wounds on his ass. In a half-daze he’s driven to the arena, where he demands that his coach give him some painkiller shots and stitch up his ass wound, insisting that he can still fight. I thought Sugar would have the fight called off, but it really happens – and not to blow any spoilers, but it is very much in the Mike Tyson mode, as Abrams has that Israeli fire in him and basically destroys the dude, using just his left hook, in a couple seconds.

So if this is the last we’ll see of Dov Abrams, it’s at least a bad-ass way to go out. As mentioned there’s a lot of opportunity as Abrams’s entire entourage is now aware of his being an Israeli Commando, with the potential that they’ll now be able to help him out on his future assignments. But it seems that Sugar developed a revolving protagonist setup for the series, so I suspect this will indeed serve as our farewell to this particular Israeli Commando. Overall though, The Kamikaze Assignment was a lot of fun.

Monday, April 2, 2018

Israeli Commandos #2: The Fireball Assignment


Israeli Commandos #2: The Fireball Assignment
No month stated, 1974  Manor Books

Here’s another series I took too long of a break from. The second Israeli Commandos is more entertaining than the first, and also proves that the series title should be plural, after all; it appears that Andrew Sugar intends to focus on a different “Israeli Commando” each volume, rather than the “team” concept I assumed from the series title. Last time it was “Israeli Muhammad Ali”(!!) Dov Abrams, this time it’s former American turned Israeli citizen Gershon Yelinga.

Abrams opens the book, lending the impression that he will again be the protagonist; he’s in Syria, taking out a machine gun nest, not aware that this latest Israeli-Syrian war has ended within the past hour. He’s assisted by a young man with no experience; this is a recurring theme in The Fireball Assignment, as both Abrams and Yelinga consider themselves “old” and surrounded by young, inexperienced Israelis. This is a taut scene, more thrilling than any in the previous book, as Abrams worms his way through barren terrain toward the machine gun emplacement while the kid acts as a diversion. Abrams succeeds, killing the two Syrian soldiers, but the kid ends up setting off buried mines after all, killing himself and injuring Abrams.

Here's where we learn Abrams won’t be the star of the show; when next we meet him, he’s in the hospital and temporarily blinded. The Major, Abrams’s intelligence boss, mourns the fact that Abrams won’t be able to go on this little assignment that just came up. No big deal, though; the Major will send Gershon Yelinga, who as we’ll recall appeared in the previous book as a supporting character. After this Sugar drops Abrams, still fretting in his hospital bed over all the people he’s had to kill in his military career, and we never go back to him. The ball’s firmly in Yelinga’s court, and to tell the truth I think he’s a more likable protagonist.

Like Abrams Yelinga is “older,” at least so far as his fellow Israelis are concerned: he’s 41, and has spent his career on the field. But as with most Sugar protagonists, Yelinga is plagued with self-doubt and occasionally tempts himself with the thought of falling in love and quitting the warfare game. This is a common trend in Sugar’s work, and even a glue-sniffing kid could tell you that tradition demands that something bad will happen to the woman in question before book’s end. Surprisingly enough, this doesn’t happen here – Sugar delivers the expected emotional gutting in a different manner.

Another thing about The Fireball Assignment is that it’s packed with action, particularly when compared to Sugar’s Enforcer novels. While I loved them – but unfortunately a re-reading of The Enforcer #1 the other year didn’t thrill me nearly as much as my first reading did – those books were methodically-paced at best. Given this I wondered if Sugar would be able to do a more action-based series. He proves without a doubt that he can, but be warned that The Fireball Assignment is too long for its own good, coming in at 190 pages of small print – meaning that, while it does feature frequent action, too much of it is of an arbitrary nature.

Yelinga’s assignment is to head back into Syria and detain a former CIA operative who has gone over to the Arabs. His name is Morris, and, like Joaquin Hawks, his belt buckle is a disguised .38. Yelinga, like Abrams, is given an untried youth for his comrade, and together they venture to Latakia and collect Morris, catching him in bed with a young hooker; yet another taut scene. And a scene that ends similarly to the previous one; Yelinga’s kid partner pulls a dumb move and ends up dead, the whore too. But Yelinga gets Morris, takes him aboard a sub, and there a ghoulish Israeli intelligence doctor breaks the former agent with heavy-duty drugs.

Morris was in Latakia as he’d been contacted along with other foreign agents by the PLO, which has something nefarious in mind; all he knows of it is the codename “Fireball.” The Major now tasks Yelinga with a new assignment – he’s to go back to Latakia, but this time posing as Morris. So back goes our hero to Latakia – which us men’s adventure die-hards know as the place where Nick Carter gets the tobacco for his specially-made cigarettes – and meets Morris’s contact in a sleazy bar. Sugar does a good job of capturing the uncertainty of Yelinga’s actions, of how he carefully wades into this dangerous situation, relying on his experience while fretting over how “old” he is for this stuff – another theme of the novel, and perhaps Sugar’s oeveure in general.

The PLO thugs reveal that “Morris” is part of a team of foreign mercs, and each member is being given a female minder – and of course it’s a sexy Arabic babe. Yelinga’s is named Marta and our boy is checking out her “large breasts” posthaste. Sugar doesn’t seem too privy on the workings of radical Muslim terrorists, as he has the PLO crew drinking champagne in a toast to “Morris.” But it conceals a knockout drug, and Morris wakes up on a plane bound for Mexico. Turns out his PLO contact Ald wasn’t as trusting of Yelinga’s story as he claimed; this even after Yelinga has killed a captured CIA man to “prove” he was really Morris. In reality, Yelinga was putting the poor tortured bastard out of his misery.

One of those arbitrary action scenes occurs here, and indeed is the incident depicted on the cover; the contact at the private airfield in Mexico turns out to be a hijacker, one who has incorrectly guessed that the secret cargo coming in on this chartered plane must be some sort of valuable contraband. This leads to a big firefight, Yelinga getting badass with an appropriated grease gun. Sugar as ever gets pretty gory in his action scenes, with nice detail of exploding guts and heads. Curiously though he keeps referring to an Uzi as an “Ubi,” but that could just be the usual subpar Manor copyediting at work.

There follows an interminable sequence where Yelinga and Marta have to sneak across the Mexican border into the US (we’ve gotta build that Wall, man!). It just sort of goes on and on, Yelinga racing against the clock to get to the secret meeting house in Corpus Christi in time for the pre-arranged meeting with the other mercs. That being said, he and Marta still find the time to finally get around to screwing; Sugar doesn’t get as explicit as he did in some of the earlier Enforcer novels, but you at least know something naughty is happening. Upon their arrival at the meeting house Yelinga meets the other mercenaries hired by the PLO; they’re from all over the world, and each of them have their own female minders. The boozer Irish merc tries to swap babes with Yelinga, but our boy says no – per the usual Sugar template, Yelinga has begun to fall in love with Marta.

Yelinga though is quickly outed as not really being Morris – the nervous former CIA agent in charge of the plot hired everyone personally, thus knows Yelinga is an imposter. Not that he kills Yelinga straightaway. Instead he keeps him on ice, figuring the CIA has hatched onto the plot and sent Yelinga to spy. And it turns out the “Fireball” plot is to blow up some Texas refineries in Galveston, the team operating out of a chartered ship. But Marta, herself in love with Yelinga, frees him: “Yelinga finally realized that Marta was committed to him. To him and not to America, politics, ladies’ liberation, or any other ideal.”

The climax sees Yelinga in desperate battle against the mercs who have become his sort-of friends; that hidden belt-buckle gun comes into play in a memorable moment. But Sugar rushes through the part where Yelinga stops the refinery destruction – not even killing the guy behind the plot, who ends up going soft at the last moment and unable to proceed with his plan. Even more bizarrely, Sugar completely leaves off-page a part where Marta takes on and captures the other five female minders; Yelinga finds her holding a gun on them and easily keeping them in line. Instead the finale is more focused on the growing love between Yelinga and Marta, a love that is blown when she accidentally learns Yelinga’s an Israeli.

Going insane that she betrayed her people over a “filthy Jew,” Marta has to be pulled kicking and screaming out of Yelinga’s hospital room. This after she’s spit in his face and tried to claw at him. For his part Yelinga takes it all quite pragmatically, figuring theirs was a love that could never last…then he starts to think maybe it could last, at that. Marta, thanks to his request, is to be given a US citizenship and a clean slate, given her aid in stopping the Fireball plot, so who knows, she might cool off after a time.

Doubtless Marta will never be mentioned again, anyway, as there were only two more volumes in the series, and if the first two are any judge, they might feature a different protagonist than Gershon Yelinga. Overall though I enjoyed The Fireball Assignment, but it could’ve used a little pruning.

Thursday, June 5, 2014

Israeli Commandos #1: The Aswan Assignment


Israeli Commandos #1: The Aswan Assignment
No month stated, 1974  Manor Books

When Lancer Books when out of business in September 1973, the Enforcer series was in limbo (that is, until Manor Books brought it back in ’75, reprinting the Lancer originals as well as two new installments). In the meantime it appears that Andrew Sugar took his services proper to Manor, and created for them this obscure, four-volume series that was “as timely as today’s headlines,” per the hyperbolic back cover.

Israeli Commandos is much different from The Enforcer, and judging from this first volume, not as good. On the plus side, it’s more action-focused than that earlier series, but on the negative side, it just isn’t as compelling or interesting. This series just has a completely different feel – and hell, protagonist Dov Abrams doesn’t even smoke, which is a huge difference from the cigarette-loving Enforcer books!

Abrams is 28, Israeli born, and a world-class heavyweight boxer. In fact we learn the press has dubbed him “the Israeli Muhammad Ali,” which is just wrong on so many levels. Also, you’d think a top-secret commando would have a less-visible cover, but whatever; every few months Abrams’s handler, The Major, comes out of the woodwork to task him with some impossible mission. Then Abrams shaves off his full beard (the Major’s idea of a disguise), gears up, and goes out into the field to fight for Israel. The series title is plural, but really it would more accurately be called “Israeli Commando,” as Abram works solo, being provided with different contacts on his various assignments.

The current mission, Abrams contacted by the Major seconds after having won a heavyweight match, has our hero venturing into Egypt, where intel reports that Arabic terrorist faction Black February plans to blow up the Aswan Dam. Abrams, an underwater demolitions expert, knows that the dam can’t be blown up by normal means, but the terrorists merely intend to make it appear that the dam was attempted to have been blown up – by Israelis. And to do so they will plant the corpses of two Israeli frogmen there, so it will seem clear that they were behind the plot.

Per the Major’s briefing, Israel isn’t held in high esteem in the current world view, mentioning the “recent” downing of an Egyptian airliner in Israeli airspace (an event which happened in February 1973). Therefore, Black February hopes to sow further dissent against Israel by making it appear that the Israelis tried to blow up the Aswan Dam. Abrams’s mission is to head into Egypt’s Eastern Desert, find the two terrorist convoys which reportedly will be converging on Aswan, and to rescue the two captured Israelis (both of whom are friends of his) who will be turned into decoy corpses as part of the plan. If Abrams can’t save them, he’s to kill them, something which causes much gnashing of teeth…and even the desire to be a smoker!

The middle section is heavy on the desert action, with Abrams parachuting in and hooking up with two young contacts, Chaim and Ben-Al. After lots of camel-riding and sandstorm-evading they come across a group of Black February terrorists, most of them Arabic-American mercenaries. These are old-school terrorists, by the way, more concerned with public opinion than killing innocents; when Abrams poses as a lost American and stumbles into their camp, the terrorist leader requests that, when he returns to civilization, Abrams make it clear that he was saved by Black February. Also throughout the novel there is repeated efforts by the various parties to treat their captives well, and etc. All of which is to say, the entire affair comes off like a gentleman’s sport when compared to the modern day.

Anyway a firefight ensues, and here Sugar proves the major difference between this series and The Enforcer, with Abrams blowing away terrorists with his .357 Magnum and the two contacts whittling them down with Galil rifles. The leader survives, though, and here begins the first instance in which Abrams ensures he’s well tended-to with treatment and bandages. Also here Abrams hooks up with Gershon Yelinga, New York-born and raised soldier who has immigrated to Israel to become one of their top commandos. Older than Abrams by a few decades, Yelinga provides the novel’s humor, poking fun at Abrams amid the mayhem.

Another action scene soon follows, with Abrams using plastique to blow up an Egyptian tank. In the melee the captured American terrorist escapes on a jeep, and Abrams and Yelinga split up, Yelinga heading for Aswan and Abrams for the small town of El-Bemi Saff, where the terrorist has apprently fled. Here Abrams meets up with another contact: Zohra, a fellow sabra (ie Israel-born) who poses as a dancer in an Arabic cafĂ©, where she sleeps with the owner and clientelle as part of the job. She immediately throws herself on Abrams, telling him he’s the first non-Arab she’s been with in months. Cue a fairly explicit sex scene, though nothing to the level of the early Enforcer volumes. 

Zohra later informs Abrams that not only was the Arab-American who escaped a well-known terrorist who goes by the name Al-Sakr (ie, “The Falcon”), but also that he is behind the entire plot to blow the Aswan Dam. But when the Falcon gets the jump on the two, the book begins to drag, even though it goes from one action sequence to another. It’s all just sort of drawn out. First we get this over-long firefight in Zohra’s apartment, with the Falcon and a few comrades with AK-47s blasting away at the pair, and since Abrams only has 3 bullets in his Magnum, he has to pull off some MacGuyver moves to rig up explosives with whatever junk is at hand.

There follows more plodding stuff as Abrams and Zohra first steal a truck and then try to steal a small airplane, to catch up with the perennially-escaping Falcon. While waiting for the plane to be repaired, Abrams and Zohra go at it again, right there on the desert sand. The best action sequence in the novel follows, as they take the plane and, while Abrams flies it, Zohra blasts down at the terrorists from her window with an AK-47. This whole section is pretty gory, with even camels buying it in graphic detail. However Zohra herself gets hit by the flying bullets, and Sugar delivers one of the most comically-overdone deaths of a female protagonist I’ve yet read in a men’s adventure novel:

At four thousand feet, [Abrams] leveled off and reached for Zohra to see how badly she was wounded. But his hand went right through what was left of her face and his fingers scooped out handfuls of bloody brain matter as he quickly withdrew his hand. One of the Arab blasts had caught Zohra in the face and chest, and the once-beautiful and exciting face was gone, shattered into red splotches covering the inside of the cockpit. Where her sensuous eyes had been, there were now empty sockets. Empty holes where blood puddled and congealed. 

All of which is to say, she’s dead. Abrams crashes the plane and survives it, managing to fling himself out with Magnum blazing, but he still gets caught…and wakes up in a room facing the Aswan dam, where the Falcon and an obese comrade have Abrams tied to a chair in rawhide ropes. They’ve also captured Yelinga, who is similarly tied. The two are informed that when the rawhide dries, Abrams and Yelina will die horrific, excruciating deaths. However Black February has been whittled down to just three men, and the Falcon goes off with the third member to plant the bombs underwater. 

It’s the climax, but it’s just kind of boring. Abrams and Yelinga get loose and appropriate scuba gear, using icepicks to kill the frogmen terrorists. One of them of course is the Falcon, and it’s one of the more anticlimactic villain deaths I’ve ever read; even Abrams feels disappointed, and jumps back in the water to confirm that not only the Falcon is dead, but also that it was Abrams himself who killed him! The two captured Israeli frogmen are saved, the plan is thwarted, and that’s that.

One of the main problems with The Aswan Assignment is Dov Abrams himself; he just comes off as too rough around the edges, too immature and prone to throwing temper tantrums. It seems like every other paragraph Sugar is informing us of Abrams’s “bitching” and “cursing” about some setback or inconvenience. There are many moments where he’ll curse and mutter to himself for like an entire paragarph before he comes up with an idea. I mean, he just comes off like an annoying hothead, and he’s nowhere in the category of Alex Jason, who was actually an interesting protagonist.

Sugar’s writing, which I usually consider to be great so far as the genre goes, comes off as uninspired. Despite the plethora of action (at least when compared to the Enforcer books), The Aswan Assignment just plods along, with nothing really making it stand out. That being said, I’ll still of course be sure to read the ensuing three volumes.