Drummer Boy

Former Australian Special Forces soldier turned mercenary Roman Nix is out on a limb. His mission completed he arrives back at the estancia of his employer, shifty millionaire Vitali Danako in the Caribbean lowlands of Costa Rica, to find that Danako’s model daughter Katya is returning to New York, leaving him effectively off-contract and unlikely to be paid. Without a regiment and his true identity compromised by a cyberattack on the defence servers in Canberra, Nix tries to find solace in the arms of his lover, the quixotic Mishka, Katya’s twin sister. But the couple are disturbed by armed intruders from one of the drug cartels and Nix needs to dispose of the bodies.

In the second of the Roman Nix series, Dank arrives with the news that Nix is to report to this former commander, Masters, now First Assistant Secretary with the Australian Security Intelligence Service, at Quepos on the Pacific coast, where the headless corpse of a missing operative and former mate of Nix’ has been dumped in the mangroves. While Dank whisks Mishka away on his catamaran the Buenaventura for a business trip Nix is left to piece together his friend’s final hours, bringing him up against the ruthless and deadly duo Emil and Ariana López, and their muscular Australian henchman.