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    Far From Mercy: Faith-Based Action Thriller Books — Short Reads Fiction, #1
    Far From Mercy: Faith-Based Action Thriller Books — Short Reads Fiction, #1
    Far From Mercy: Faith-Based Action Thriller Books — Short Reads Fiction, #1
    Ebook165 pages2 hoursFaith-Based Action Thriller Books — Short Reads Fiction

    Far From Mercy: Faith-Based Action Thriller Books — Short Reads Fiction, #1

    By Alex Ander

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    About this ebook

    Perfect for Christians and American patriots who love action thrillers with a good and decent main character — family values — suspense — clean language — no graphic sex — a little romance — and a message of redemption.

    • Former deep-cover ICE agent is called upon to help dismantle a human trafficking ring.

    Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Mercy Sands' last official assignment for the agency almost got her killed. The scars crisscrossing her body are daily reminders of that botched operation.

    Now, a decade later, the redeemed 35-year-old is a new person, having left behind her action-packed career, ten years earlier, to get married and start raising a family.

    But when her onetime boss at ICE shows up with a job offer, Mercy feels the urge to serve her country one more time, to return to what she did best all those years ago.

    However, unbeknownst to this ex-undercover agent—a woman who once walked among vicious gang lords and human traffickers—is that this return to action will be unlike anything she has ever encountered.

    Contemporary, Christian-centered, patriotic action thriller featuring a woman who puts her faith in God and her family first.

    CONTENT: This book has clean language and no graphic sex; however, since it is an ACTION THRILLER, there are action scenes involving death, guns, fighting, and the like.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAlex Ander
    Release dateJul 3, 2024
    ISBN9798227566775
    Far From Mercy: Faith-Based Action Thriller Books — Short Reads Fiction, #1
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    Author

    Alex Ander

    A big-time fan of thrillers (books and movies) for over 40 years, Alex Ander writes globe-trekking action thrillers packed with fistfights, gunfights, and heart-pounding excitement and adventure...all with clean language, no graphic sex, and an undertone of faith from a Christian worldview. Alex has written more than 30 books in the military/law enforcement genre. And as an avid gun enthusiast, he cringes right along with you when a magazine is called a "clip." That's why you can always trust him to get the firearm terminology correct. Currently, Alex has produced five different series with main characters from the U.S. Marines, Army Rangers, FBI, U.S. Marshals Service, and the CIA's Special Operations Group. And a possible sixth series is in the works featuring an ex-military man putting his deadly skills to use as a private contractor helping others. Living in Michigan with his wife, Alex spends some of his spare time painting landscapes, playing the harmonica, reading books, and watching action thrillers.

    Read more from Alex Ander

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      Book preview

      Far From Mercy - Alex Ander

      Chapter 1

      About to Die

      Ten Years Ago

      The Caribbean

      North of Venezuela

      Gripping a folding knife in her right hand, Mercy Sands yanked the knife’s four-inch blade from a man’s neck before watching him fall face first to the floor. Staggering, she listed leftward to lean against a wall. The rough cinderblock’s cold, wet surface permeated her left shoulder and arm, sending a shiver down her spine. Dirt and grime from the basement wall mixed with her blood and sweat. She didn’t care, though. Maybe the dirt would stop the bleeding. In fact, maybe she should roll her back across the wall to ‘treat’ the ten or twelve—or twenty or fifty—open lacerations she had there. She had lost count after the first left cross slammed into her right cheekbone.

      With the back of her right hand, Mercy touched her swollen right eye, wincing at the ‘electricity’ the act delivered to the right half of her head. Her cheek was inflamed, too, possibly broken. That was fine. In time, everything would heal. Right now, however, she had to get out of this place and off the island. As to how she would escape from a private island in the Caribbean Sea, she didn’t know. But first things first, she needed to evade her captors.

      Mercy glanced over her right shoulder to spy a dead body sprawled on the dark concrete floor between two ropes suspended from eyebolts in the floor joists above. The fasteners were ten feet apart from each other, and the rope attached to the left one was still wound around the dead man’s neck.

      On her four o’clock, two feet away, her second torturer—the ‘Southpaw’ who had done his best to break her face—lay dead from knife wounds to his neck and chest.

      An hour earlier, while her outstretched arms were being bound—at ten and two o’clock—with the ropes hanging from the overhead floor joists, a kneeling, naked Mercy had identified the guy, the one now wearing the rope as a necktie, as the weaker of the two men. And whenever her chance presented itself, she vowed to go to work on him.

      Minutes ago, after Southpaw had left the chilly, musty, barely lit room, Mercy’s divide-and-conquer chance had come. She proceeded to charm and plead with ‘Necktie’ for a drink of water, to loosen her restraints—even just one. What am I going to do—overpower a big, strong man like you? she had said to him before spitting out a string of blood, her lower-right molar bouncing off the floor ahead of her knees.

      It wasn’t true, though. Necktie was a short man—if he was a man at all. The acne on his face had suggested he wasn’t yet out of his teens. At any rate, her charm had wooed him into slackening the left rope and giving her a bottle of water.

      After taking a swig, she had held the bottle low while thanking him. When he had bent over to retrieve the refreshment, she had sprung to her feet, looped the left rope around his neck twice, and fell backwards. Using her bodyweight, her shoulder muscles feeling like they would tear at any moment, Mercy had arched her back and pulled with all the strength she could muster.

      For nearly two minutes, Necktie had thrashed around before slowly succumbing to his fate.

      Mercy had then cut herself free, using the folding knife she had spotted clipped to Necktie’s front pocket. She had then padded barefoot across the frigid floor to stand with her back to the wall, the door to the room on her right.

      Seconds later, when Southpaw entered, with the fingers of one hand pinching two soft drink bottles, while his other hand gripped a brown paper bag, she had lunged forward, thrusting the point of the knife up through the man’s neck and into the back of his mouth.

      Dropping everything after his prisoner’s initial strike, Southpaw had then clenched his throat while she stabbed him multiple times in the chest, finally felling him with a deathblow to the back of the neck, sending him face first into the floor.

      Now, bent over, her butt pressed against the wall, her hands on her knees, Mercy took a moment to rest. But only a moment, for any second now, another hostage-taker could walk into the room. She commandeered a Beretta 92FS pistol from Southpaw’s pants and looked at it. It was a little big for her smallish hands, but in single-action mode, the pad of her right index finger fell nicely on the trigger. But using the weapon, however, would surely draw in the rest of the gun-toting thugs she knew were roaming the grounds. The further she could make her way out of the compound, before having to set off a round, the better.

      Mercy stood tall and arched her back. She was rewarded with a satisfying crack from somewhere lower on her backbone. Half ambling, half limping, she headed toward a pile of clothes near a wall.

      After stepping into black panties and black leggings, Mercy eyed her red high heels before examining Necktie’s tennis shoes and sighing. He may have been small, but he had big feet, much bigger than hers. Opting to leave behind her footwear and go barefooted, she picked up her bra and her designer lightweight sweater dress. The cuts on her back came to mind as she contemplated strapping on the bra. A quick glance at her 32-Bs told her she could forgo the support for comfort.

      Raising the red sweater dress above her head, she let it glide down her body, grimacing when the prickly yarn grated across her open wounds. A tick later, with the stretchy, body-hugging garment in place, its hem settling around her thighs, Mercy claimed Necktie’s pistol, another Beretta 92FS, and headed for the door.

      Stopping in the doorway, she peeked out to scan left and right. The way was clear. Fortunately, having infiltrated Nestor Romero’s criminal organization a year ago—as an add-on to the female entourage that sauntered around the grounds, lounged by the pool, or accompanied Romero on visits to nightclubs—the 25-year-old, five-five, long-legged and curvy undercover ICE agent knew the layout of the trafficker’s Caribbean hideout. The downside of that knowledge, however, was she also knew the multitude of armed gunmen stationed between her and her way off this island.

      After blowing a lock of dirty-blonde hair out of her face, hair stained with more of her blood and sweat, Mercy cut a length of shoelace from Necktie’s tennis shoes, clipped the dead man’s wood-handled COAST FX411 folding knife inside the waistband of her leggings, then tied her long hair into a ponytail.

      With a Beretta in each hand, pointing each pistol upward, the muzzles near her temples, she closed her eyes, the swollen right one throbbing as she did so. She took a deep breath, held it, then slowly exhaled. A couple beats later, she opened her eyes, steeled herself for what was to come, then took a step forward, her mental voice saying to herself, A lot of people are about to die.

      Chapter 2

      Tiara

      With her bare feet on the wooden planks of the basement steps, Mercy peeked through the gap at the bottom of the door leading to the main floor. Seeing a pair of shoes facing away from her, she used the muzzle of the Beretta 92 in her left hand to slowly push open the door while pointing the other 92 to the right as she cleared that side of the kitchen.

      In Spanish, a man’s voice: "¿Eres tú otra vez, Johan? — Is that you again, Johan?"

      After glancing through the vertical crack to her left, and confirming the rest of the room was empty, Mercy laid the right 92 on the floor, sneaked up the stairs, snaked around the half-open door, and approached the seated Venezuelan, a scowl on her face as she tried to recall his name. Angel? Adrian?

      Holding a sandwich in his hands, ‘Angel-Adrian’ slowly turned his upper body clockwise.

      Withdrawing her right hand from under her sweater dress, Mercy thumbed open the COAST knife, stuck the drop point blade into Angel-Adrian’s right ear, then drove his face forward into a bowl of thick soup to stifle any involuntary cries.

      His body went limp, and his sandwich plopped onto the white tile flooring.

      Mercy folded the FX411, stowed it inside her leggings, then reclaimed the second Beretta. Bypassing her victim, while heading for the kitchen archway, she spotted a bowl of mixed fruit on a counter beside her. She plucked a few grapes from a sprig, popped them into her mouth, then advanced deeper into the home before stopping at a hallway. Andrés, she thought while chewing, grateful her beating hadn’t damaged her memory at least. That was his name. Lifting her arms to point her guns straight out at nine and three o’clock, she stepped into the intersection and whipped her head back and forth.

      Clear.

      Rotating her arms and guns inward, she moved forward, aiming the Berettas ahead of her as she came to a wide archway, an archway that led to a cavernous living room with a ceiling two stories up. On her ten and two o’clock, staircases built into the walls took people to the second and third floors. And anyone looking down from those upper floors would easily spot her.

      Outside, loud and upbeat Latin music and rowdy screams poured in through open main-floor windows, most likely coming from the backyard pool. Daytime highs had been expected to hit eighty, and the girls had been talking about an impromptu pool party. In fact, Mercy had been seconds away from trading her leggings and sweater dress for her bathing suit when two of Nestor Romero’s goons had burst into her room and dragged her down to the basement.

      Mercy cast a backward glance before surveying the massive living room again. After squatting, to get as much of a look at the upper level as she could, she stood tall and planned her path around the many household items—couches, easy chairs, end tables, and floor lamps—that lay

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