Road to War Series

1935: Cal Jardine is a soldier of fortune. Forced to leave Hamburg, he is recruited by a secretive British committee to smuggle guns to Abyssinia. But first Jardine must procure the weapons from Romania. Taken to the Horn of Africa, the arms are then transported over a harsh landscape into the hands of the Ethiopian Army. On his travels Jardine acquires more baggage than he anticipated, including a beautiful, but difficult American female in search of her archaeologist mother, a determined reporter and a daredevil French flyer, while missing out on a painful death by sheer good fortune. But the Ethiopians are ill-equipped to a face a modern Italian army using tanks, bombers, and poison gas. Trained for war, can Jardine simply walk away? (web)

When a favour to a friend leaves Cal Jardine caught up in the Spanish Civil War, he finds that he must take a bunch of athletes and turn them into fighters. He meets the revolutionary, Juan Laporta, and if they do not make a perfect combination as fighters they form an effective one, both in Barcelona and then as they advance into the interior. But trouble is brewing in the person of communist diehard Manfred Drecker which threatens the fight and Cal himself. From the street battles of Barcelona to the fighting in the countryside, Cal finds action as well as friendship, but following a murderous betrayal he must have suitable revenge. (web)

1938. As Hitler sets his sights on the Sudetenland, not everyone in Britain is willing to appease him. Convinced that the fürher’s land hunger is insatiable, the head of the SIS recruits Cal Jardine to help him prove that Czechoslovakia is threatened with invasion. Before heading undercover to Prague, however, Jardine must first extricate himself from France, where his attempts to smuggle guns to Spain have been held up by a group of fanatical fascists. Finally arriving in Czechoslovakia, working undercover for the SIS proves no less dangerous. As jealousy and mutual suspicions within Secret Service ranks make it impossible for Jardine to tell friend from foe, he rediscovers old friends of dubious loyalty and makes new enemies of untested ruthlessness.