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Old soldiers never die... except inside, when they lack a reason to live.

Wes Stauer, a retired US Army Colonel, is slowing dying inside from a lack of purpose, when he receives a plea from help from an old friend: "Our leader's son and heir has been kidnapped. We don't know where he is. We need you to get him back for us. The people who have him are numerous, warlike, and well armed. But money is no object."

Reinvigorated, Stauer assembles his force - old soldiers, sailors and airman - and finds his purpose.

Written by Tom Kratman, the author of the Carrera's Legions books, the Countdown series follows a professional mercenary company as it forms up firstly to mount a hostage rescue, and then later as it becomes embroiled in conflicts not entirely of its choosing.

The books in the series, as of May 2012, are:

  • Countdown: The Liberators
  • Countdown: M Day
  • Countdown: H Hour


This Series uses the following tropes:

  • Combat Medic: M Day's medics are trained to shoot and heal; the initial cadre was several Green Beret medics.
  • Crapsack World: It becomes clear that the world is slowly but surely going to hell, and that civilisation is crumbling.
  • Helicopter Blender: As a self-inflicted injury, in Countdown: H Hour a British doctor ran towards a helicopter that landed on the beach to retrieve a critically wounded soldier, only to run into the chopper's tail rotor. As the book put it: "Think: Cuisinart."
  • Private Military Contractors: The protagonists, who form the company M Day Inc. However, it's simply referred to as "the Regiment", and acts like a proper army. An excursis, with a publishing date following the period of the novel series, also talks of the rise of other PMCs in the face of the governments commanding national militaries becoming unwilling to act against the rising tide of barbarism destroying civilization.
  • Multinational Team: M Day initially began as an all-American force, but then slowly picked up various nationalities; by the time of book two, they have American, British, Canadian, Chinese, Guyanan, Russian and Gurkha soldiers.
  • Sergeant Rock: A great many of them.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: His other series, Carrera's Legions is pretty cynical, but the Countdown series is a great deal more cynical, with civilization falling apart around the protagonist's ears.
  • 20 Minutes into the Future: The setting of the novels (the prologue of The Liberators takes place around the American withdrawal from Afghanistan.

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