Born to Rescue: How Leon Gilmour Became the CIA's Top Extractor

By Mike Wells

Note: This story is taken from Book 6 of the bestselling series Lust, Money & Murder. If you have read that series, please do not buy this book unless you want the story in stand-alone form.

Paid by the CIA in cash but otherwise operating totally off the grid, Leon Gilmour has an unusual job: professional extractor. His highly specialized expertise is rescuing American “assets” who are trapped in enemy territory. Trained in a top secret program developed during the Cold War, Leon is put through grueling instruction that is part espionage, part law enforcement, and part military black ops. His skills are finely honed to deal with virtually any situation, from rescuing hostages held by international terrorists to helping political prisoners escape from secret prisons. Leon is not only an expert automobile driver, but can also pilot airplanes, helicopters, hot air balloons, bobsleds, locomotives, and just about any other vehicle known to man. In other words, he can do whatever it takes to play the hero and whisk the endangered operative to safety.

Successful extractions demand quick thinking, creative improvisation, and balls of steel.

Leon Gilmour has all three.

This is the story of how he became the CIA’s top extractor.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mike Wells
• Release date: Jun 5, 2016

Mike Wells

Mike Wells is an author of both walking and cycling guides. He has been walking long-distance footpaths for 25 years, after a holiday in New Zealand gave him the long-distance walking bug. Within a few years, he had walked the major British trails, enjoying their range of terrain from straightforward downland tracks through to upland paths and challenging mountain routes. He then ventured into France, walking sections of the Grande Randonnee network (including the GR5 through the Alps from Lake Geneva to the Mediterranean), and Italy to explore the Dolomites Alta Via routes. Further afield, he has walked in Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Norway and Patagonia. Mike has also been a keen cyclist for over 20 years. After completing various UK Sustrans routes, such as Lon Las Cymru in Wales and the C2C route across northern England, he then moved on to cycling long-distance routes in continental Europe and beyond. These include cycling both the Camino and Ruta de la Plata to Santiago de la Compostela, a traverse of Cuba from end to end, a circumnavigation of Iceland and a trip across Lapland to the North Cape. He has written a series of cycling guides for Cicerone following the great rivers of Europe.

Book preview

44 of 44

Born to Rescue

How Leon Gilmour Became

the CIA’s Top Extractor

by

Mike Wells

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2016 Mike Wells

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblances to persons living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.

NOVELS BY MIKE WELLS

Baby Talk

Blind Scorpion (Farsheed Ferdowsi)

The Drive-By Wife

Forbidden (with Devika Fernando)

Lust, Money & Murder (series)

The Mysterious Disappearance of Kurt Kramer

Passion, Power & Sin (series)

Secrets of the Elusive Lover

With Mother’s Approval (with Robert Rand)

The Wrong Side of the Tracks

Wild Child (series)

CHAPTER 1

Bogalusa, Louisiana

If there is such a thing as a born speed freak, Leon Gilmour was one of them. According to his mother, the first word he uttered was not mama or dada, but go! as in go faster!

This singular moment occurred when little Leon was sitting in his mother’s lap, riding aboard a Louisiana Bayou fan boat that was flying across the alligator-infested marshlands at forty mph. Leon’s dad owned and operated a tour company—Bayou Bob’s Real Swamp Tours. It didn’t matter that there was nothing real about Bayou Bob, including his name. Though he did have Cajun ancestors, Richard Gilmour had been born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee and only moved to Louisiana to start the tour business.

In any case, with the wind blowing through his hair, the roar of the fan boat motor in his ears, and the Spanish moss hanging from the trees, whipping within inches of his chubby face, little Leon felt like he was moving at light speed.

As Leon grew up he had little interest in his father’s business, despite Richard’s best hopes. Leon harbored dreams of becoming a fighter pilot, an astronaut, a race car driver, and any other profession that involved high velocity and significant risk. He was a hyperactive kid, and with his long, swept back hair, his mother often joked that he looked like he was going a hundred miles per hour standing still.

Leon was curious about all forms of vehicles, and his curiosity often got him into trouble, sometimes with the police. One night he scaled the fence of a construction site and drove a bulldozer around the lot, just for the fun of it, and when he couldn’t figure out how to bring the monstrous yellow tractor to a stop, he ended up leveling a chain link fence. When he went on a vacation with one of his friend’s families to Colorado, he stole a bobsled and nearly got himself killed barreling down a mountain ice-run unchecked. One of his classmate’s father was a crop duster and, impressed with Leon’s mechanical ability, taught him how to pilot the small single-engine airplane. The man also owned a helicopter, a hang-glider and a hot air balloon, and taught Leon how to pilot those, too. But once Leon mastered the operation of any given vehicle, he became bored with it, no matter how fast it went.

He was also fascinated by the sheer power and weight of locomotives. He often hung around the local railroad yard, watching the wagons be connected and disconnected and occasionally placing a penny to be flattened on the rails. One of the engineers eventually taught him how to operate one of the huge, two hundred ton diesel engines.

The idea of transforming the awesome, cost-free power of the wind into high speed travel over water also interested Leon. Although his family owned no sailboats, he found that it was easy to get himself aboard one on Lake Pontchartrain by volunteering to crew in the regattas. He learned to sail a variety of vessels, everything from a fourteen foot catamaran to a thirty-six foot yacht, but eventually got bored with that, too.

He also liked building vehicles that would go fast. By the time Leon was twelve, he had constructed a go-kart, a mini-bike, and a motorized skateboard from scratch. He enjoyed tinkering with gasoline engines and was good at fixing them up and taking off the governors to raise their RPM. He had what one of his teachers called natural mechanical aptitude.

But Leon Gilmour was no more interested in school than he was his father’s swamp tour business. Going fast, or building things that went fast, were the only things that touched his hot button.

Or so he thought.

* * *

When Leon was seventeen and began his last year of high school, he decided that he had no choice but to go to college. It was a last minute decision, prompted one hot and humid August evening when his dad pointed at the front door and said, Boy, if you decide not to study past high school, the moment you graduate, you’re on your own. You got that?

His father’s words were like a splash of cold water in the face. Leon realized that he had to do something practical, so he buckled down and started studying hard, making A’s in his math and physics courses. At the time, he had gotten involved in stock car racing and his father had painted a grim picture of his possible future as a Formula One racer, his latest dream. That profession required money, loads of money. Leon slowly and painfully accepted the fact that his vision probably would never manifest itself, and so the next best thing would be to be an automotive engineer.

He decided that he would go to Louisiana State University and major in mechanical engineering. That way he at least might be able to get a job on one of the F1 teams and be close to the sport.

* * *

Leon’s college experience was a disappointment, to say the least. He was assigned a room with a hairy, roly-poly pothead with