INTO A DARK FRONTIER: A NOVEL
by John Mangan
“John Mangan’s Into a Dark Frontier is a powerful, realistic, and daringly unique international thriller. Its near-future plotline is as brilliantly crafted as it is dark and foreboding, and the action scenes are visceral and utterly thrilling. Tormented but able Slade Crawford is a perfect anti-hero to root for, and Into a Dark Frontier is a surefire winner of a debut.”
—Mark Greaney, #1 New York Times best-selling author
In his debut book, “Into A Dark Frontier: A Novel”, author John Mangan tells the story of ex-Navy SEAL Slade Crawford. In the near future, Africa collapses into an enormous failed state, leaving the continent lawless and severely depopulated. For most, the breakdown brings horror, but for others―the outcast, the desperate, the criminal, and the insane―it allows unparalleled opportunity: a new frontier of danger and unlimited possibility.
In America, ex-Navy SEAL Slade Crawford, emotionally crippled after twenty years of front line combat, the dissolution of his marriage, and the accidental death of his son, is falsely accused of terrorism. Slade flees to Africa to build a new life and escape his past, but he is captured by an enigmatic American colonel, Gary Kraven, and blackmailed into tracking down a blood cult that is rampaging across the sub-Sahara.
Struggling to stay alive and to free himself from Kraven’s grasp, Slade pursues the cult across the lawless African frontier. He soon learns that nothing is as it seems and that he is standing at the epicenter of a global struggle that will determine the course of history. Slade must decide whether to fight for his life or his honor―he can’t have both.
Read an Excerpt From This Exciting Thriller
Into a Dark Frontier - Excerpt
CHAPTER 41
Slade studied the maps on his wrist computer. He would follow the eastern branch of the Great Rift Valley, due north across Tanzania, traversing terrain as rugged and varied as anywhere on earth; bone dry deserts, open savannah, rain forested mountains, glaciers, and active volcanoes, over 600 miles of rough, unknowable terrain. The battery on his wrist computer was fading and he would have no maps showing where to find shelter, food or water. He would be there in ten days.
Taking a bearing off his compass, Slade set his shoulders North towards Nairobi. Hips sawing steadily, he kept a brisk pace, taking rest when needed and drinking when thirsty. Days passed full of azure skies, emerald plains, heat sweat, and the taste of wild game.
Over a muddy river, brown and laconic, Big’s hooves rang the iron bridge, flaking great scabs of rust like stricken butterflies into the water below. Through the following days, Slade rode on broken highways split by trees and through the remains of failed cities, the dead citizenry scattered and intertwining the sweet spring grass, their skulls popping like crisp apples beneath his hooves. Here, the nights where star-choked and fragrant, filled with night birds and moonshine orbs reflected from hyena pack eyes that slouched and cackled through the night like black witchlings.
He rode down into and through a fire stormed land of gray ash drifted so deep that his horse became mired in the thick talcum, then across a flat pan where a following wind swept their dust along with them till man and horse were obscured in the haze of their own going like some great jinn conjured forth across the plains.
On the eighth day, man and horse rested among the thatched huts, zebra rugs, and ivory tusks of an abandoned safari lodge. Returning from a hunt, Slade hung the rusted meat hooks with fresh game, dripping crimson, and stared sightless into the brazier as lard sizzled and spat upon coals resurrected. Roaming the dusty halls and empty rooms, he dressed himself in salvaged clothing, polished a mahogany dining table, straightened its chairs, set its places and lit its candles. Clattering through the pantry, he unearthed a Sapphire gin bottle then poured the stemware full. When each place was served and the chair pushed in, he took his seat beneath the glittering stares of mounted beast heads then used his teeth to pull chunks of flesh from a platter of steaming shanks. When he was sated, he ran a napkin over his wet hands and dripping beard then raised a glass to the empty seats and toasted by name each of the beloved ghosts seated there.
With the bottle drained of its spirits and the china smashed to shimmering dust, he lifted a fire of his own making to the thatched roof huts and set the world ablaze while above him an immense storm thundered and strobed. Driven by buffeting winds the flames flowed around him in a luminous river then surged out across the savannah setting it alight and driving before it everything which lived.
Slade stood atop his quaking shadow, naked and raving, anchored to this world by the barest of threads, calling out across the burning plains for the ones forever lost to him. Were his own name called openly, he would have reckoned it for that of a stranger.
The Story Behind The Story
My war is now behind me, un-won, unfinished. The flaming turd handed off for the next generation to play hot potato with. I remember watching the space shuttle Colombia burning it way across the sky as we were preparing to invade Iraq. It was an age of omens.
I do not miss the deployments, the repetitive training cycles, or the endless months spent sitting alert behind concrete blast walls.
But there is something that I do miss, deeply; the sense of wilderness, moral and physical, that accompanies war.
I remember the first time that I led a rescue mission in the summer of 2004. As my flight passed over the airfield fence and clattered east towards the Pakistan border, and the lights of Kandahar faded behind us, we were swallowed up by the world in its rawest and most natural form; no civilized laws, no rules, no guidelines other than our own morals and the imperative to bring our countrymen home alive.
I felt like a fish that had just left its pond, and for the first time could see the broader world beyond. And having seen the broader world, I realized that the pond itself (civilization) was nothing but a temporary and fragile construct. Because when it comes down to it, a world without laws is the world in its most ancient and natural state. I also realized in that moment that my every decision had became immediately consequential. Terrifyingly consequential. The feeling was intoxicating; the realization that your decisions and your actions truly matter.
With those days behind me, perhaps longing for those moments, I wanted to recreate them in my novel; a world of immediate consequence where the characters are free to slam and ricochet into each other without civilization padding 
their interactions. This is the reason that classic American Westerns have such an enduring draw; they depict a world that has no referee.
Inspired by that lawless world I encountered, I wanted to write a book in the spirit of the classic Westerns, but with characters and a setting that a reader would find disturbingly familiar. But it has to be realistic and believable, right? Where can we find a vast, ungoverned frontier in the 21st century? A place where the only law is the law of the gun?
Luckily, there are thousands of highly qualified people, top people, laboring night and day to bring us such a place. Just turn on the daily news…
The other thing that guided the creation of this story was the people that I met downrange and had the privilege of serving beside. Whether it was from a baby faced, 19 year old Corporal, or a grizzled Special Forces Sergeant Major, I witnessed courage, fortitude and mental endurance that at times seemed supernatural.
During the battle for Roberts Ridge, with two helicopters already shot down and six of their comrades killed, I watched a SEAL team plan their third futile rescue attempt of the day. They did so with the calm and composure of men preparing for a trip to the supermarket.
In Helmand, I saw 19 year old Corporals re-shoulder their rucks, lift their rifles, then set off down a road that was still wet with the blood and flesh of their dearest friends. And they did it again and again, day after day, month after month. I would make daily trips down to visit them, to bear away their dead and wounded. Doing that nearly broke me. And yet those kids, the ones who actually had to live the horror, kept shouldering their rucks, lifting their rifles and marching on.
I don’t suffer from survivor’s guilt, but I do suffer from observer’s guilt; as a rescue pilot I arrived only after the disaster had already occurred. I couldn’t do anything to prevent it from happening. It made me feel like a war tourist, always showing up to view somebody else’s agony from a distance.
Now that I’ve left the military and have started writing, I want to do something more for those guys, the ones that gave everything and the ones that are still out there. I want to introduce them to people, give others a chance to peak behind the curtains and see what drives them. INTO A DARK FRONTIER is fiction with a capital F, but it is woven from filaments of truth. I’ve taken the people I met, the dialogue I heard, and vignettes I experienced, then used them as the building blocks of the story.
In order to stay true to those real men I knew, I couldn’t write a story with the prototypical bearded, bulletproof superhero that racks up John-Wick-body-counts. And although my protagonist does sport a lush, tactical beard, I tried to make him more human and relatable. He’s just like us in that he’s plagued by failure, doubt, regret, and he frequently doesn’t do the right thing. But the one thing he never fails to do is get back on his feet, re-shoulder his ruck, lift his rifle, then march on down on the road.
Actually…he’s got a horse, a really big one, so technically he just rides on down the road.
I hope you enjoy the story.
InD’Tale Magazine –
“John Mangan delivers a dynamite debut novel that keeps the heart racing, start to finish. Page-turners are getting few and far between, but hands down, this is one!”
Joshua Hood, author of Clear by Fire and Warning Order –
“Into a Dark Frontier is a hell of a debut novel with a terrifying plot and relentless action that made sure the only time I wasn’t turning pages was when I was looking over my shoulder.”
Steve Berry, New York Times best-selling author –
“A riveting imagined what-if so real you wonder if it might even be possible. Tense, intelligent, harsh, and surprising, this thrill ride is drum tight in its execution.”
David Morrell, New York Times best-selling author –
“Its relentless opening chase sets the tone for Into a Dark Frontier, a winner for fans of techno-action novels. After eight deployments as a combat rescue pilot, its author knows what he’s writing about and does so with speed and insider details.”
Publishers Weekly –
“Mangan’s debut reads like he couldn’t get the words out and onto the page fast enough, which translates into a … blazingly fast and fun action thriller.”
Midwest Book Review –
“A simply riveting read from cover to cover, Into a Dark Frontier is an extraordinary novel that showcases author John Mangan’s genuine flair for originality and ability to deftly construct a truly memorable story … Very highly recommended.”
Jon Land, USA Today bestselling author –
“Into a Dark Frontier is an international thriller of rare depth and complexity that would make the likes of John Le Carre and Robert Ludlum proud. But John Mangan does both of them one better by injecting into the mix a loner hero with a gunfighter mentality fit for taming continents as well as frontiers, with Africa subbing for the Old West. A vision splendidly realized and tale wondrously executed.” — Jon Land, USA Today bestselling author
Robert K. Tanenbaum, New York Times best-selling author –
“John Mangan’s Into a Dark Frontier plunges the reader into the chaos of an African continent where anarchy reigns. A near-futuristic scenario, one that could really emerge. Expect an overdose of action and danger that careens off the scales.”
Mark Greaney, #1 New York Times best-selling author –
John Mangan’s Into a Dark Frontier is a powerful, realistic, and daringly unique international thriller. Its near-future plotline is as brilliantly crafted as it is dark and foreboding, and the action scenes are visceral and utterly thrilling. Tormented but able Slade Crawford is a perfect anti-hero to root for, and Into a Dark Frontier is a surefire winner of a debut.
Joshua Hood, former 82nd Airborne and author of CLEAR BY FIRE and WARNING ORDER –
“Into a Dark Frontier is a hell of a debut novel with a terrifying plot and relentless action that made sure the only time I wasn’t turning pages was when I was looking over my shoulder.”
James Rollins, New York Times best-selling author –
“John Mangan’s Into a Dark Frontier is cut from same cloth as the best of Vince Flynn and Brad Thor, a story written with authority and military authenticity. It’s a harsh look at a continent-wide battlefield, waged not only for land but also for the heart of freedom. Timely and exciting.”