Literature / Dead Six

Dead Six

Dead Six is a Military Fiction novel co-written by Larry Correia and Mike Kupari published in 2011. The world is currently a hellhole with corrupt governments and secret organizations running it. Veteran and mercenary Michael Valentine is recruited by a secret government organization to conduct a terror operation in the small nation of Zubara in the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, a thief and assassin known as Lorenzo is blackmailed by a vicious crime lord who wants him to commit an impossible heist. Their goals bring chaos and terror to Zubara, while Valentine and Lorenzo soon come into conflict with each other. Both men will kill anyone in their way to complete their objectives, but secrets and hidden conspiracies lie everywhere. Follow up by Sword of Exodus and Alliance of Shadows.

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Dead Six contains examples of:

• Action Girl: Ling.
  • By Alliance Of Shadows, Jill has leveled up to this.
• Action Prologue: The novel begins with Valentine in the middle of a job in Mexico. Lorenzo's story begins in the middle of a heist. Lampshaded as the first chapter is Prologue is called Cold Open.
• Action Survivor: Jill, who survives multiple kidnappings and outlasts several better-trained characters.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: The Zubaran assault on Fort Saradia.
• Alternate History: It's not specified when the story takes place. But Ling describes her childhood and a Chinese Civil War that left the country divided into North and South, with a DMZ along the Yangtze River. Ling is an adult, so this had to have happened some years prior to the events of the story. Also, the UN seems to have a lot more power than it does in the real world, and Mexico has collapsed into a failed state run by warlords and later occupied by UN Peacekeepers.
  • Alliance Of Shadows reveals that the Chinese Civil War happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
• Always a Bigger Fish Big Eddie claims the guy who commissioned him to have the McGuffin stolen frankly scares the hairgel out of him. As revealed in the third book, Sala Jihan the prophetic warlord from the second book is indeed someone Big Eddie should be scare of.
• Anyone Can Die: Nobody is safe here, and Train, Hunter, Wheeler, Sarah, and Carl are only a few of the people that are killed.

• Ancient Astronauts: The key, vault, and scarab are implied to have come from them.

• Arbitrary Skepticism: Reaper calls Lorenzo and Carl on it.

  "Okay, so you don't believe in my conspiracy theories, but we're conspiring to break into a thousand-year-old vault for a mythical crime lord, so we're trying to track down a secret government death squad that kills witnesses, and there's apparently a conspiracy to overthrow the emir, but the second I say Illuminati, I'm the crazy one."

• Artifact of Doom: The Scarab 4 nuclear bombs for Project Blue
• Attempted Rape: One of Gordon's thugs tries raping Jill. She curb-stomps him.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Big Eddie and Gordon Willis are secretly working together.
• Black Dude Dies First: Averted. Though many characters die in the novel, Hudson, the titular black dude, survives it all. However, Train might disagree about the aversion.
• Black Helicopter: A couple do show up and are both silent and invisible to radar, surprising Valentine and Tailor, who've spent enough time in the regular sort to dismiss the idea as nonsense.
• Blood Knight: Valentine, Tailor, Lorenzo, and Carl all have traits of this, since they all seem to love fighting. Valentine accuses Tailor of being a "war junkie" at one point.
• Bond One-Liner: Tailor. "April Fool, motherf***ers." "Yeah, well, he can consider that my two week's notice."
• Bulletproof Human Shield: Averted. Lorenzo learns the hard way that the body of a skinny arms dealer won't stop a .44 Magnum slug.
• Bulletproof Vest: Many characters make frequent use of body armor, to life-saving effect. Realistically, soft body armor protects against pistol and submachinegun rounds, but not rifle rounds. Body armor with heavy plate inserts stop rifle rounds, though nothing stops .50 caliber heavy machinegun fire.
• Calling Card: Literally. Dead Six takes to leaving an Ace of Spades on the bodies of people it kills.
• Cassandra Truth: A conspiracy-theorist radio host mentions numerous thing that do show up in the book, including Black Helicopters and and a secret cabal of power-brokers.
• Chekhov's Gun: Well, Chekhovs Surface To Air Missile. Lorenzo's souvenir switchblade from his days at Switch Blade turns out to be not totally useless.
• Concealment Equals Cover: Averted. In one scene, Valentine fires through a wall to take out opponents. In another, its remarked that a large-caliber sniper rifle, most likely a .50 caliber, "turns cover into concealment".
• Conscience Makes You Go Back: Lorenzo's biggest weakness.
• Colonel Badass: Colonel Hunter. He also wears an Eyepatch of Power.
• Civil War: Zubara is quickly caught up in an escalating one between the ruling emir who favors the west, and General Al Sabah, who wants to take over the country. Dead Six is brought in to support the emir, though they arguably just make the situation worse. The general wins when the emir is killed by a bomb.
• Convenient Escape Boat: Subverted in a very violent manner.
• Crapsack World: A secret conspiracy is more-or-less running the US, and a related conspiracy runs everything. Mexico's gone even further to hell and is occupied by UN Peacekeepers. China is/was in the middle of a massive civil war that's stalemated along the Yangtze River that saw Shanghai NUKED after the third major battle for the city. And a hyper-violent, well-organized group called Exodus wages bloody war on human traffickers.
• Damsel in Distress: Jill is first seen captured by terrorists before being rescued by Lorenzo. Later she's kidnapped in order to lure out Lorenzo and the scarab. Reaper even jokes that she's like Aquaman, since she gets captured so much.
• Damsel out of Distress: Despite repeatedly getting kidnapped and held at gunpoint, underestimating Jill is painfull.
• Darkest Hour: Valentine loses Sarah, is severely injured, and most of Dead Six is wiped out. Lorenzo is betrayed by Big Eddie and Carl is murdered. Both are on the run.
• Deadpan Snarker: Carl. “Are you done throwing your sissy tantrum?”
• Deconstruction: The first book is one to the concept of a black operations team that can do what needs to be done because they can focus on getting the job done instead of explaining things to committees. The Dead teams have gone without answering to civilian authority for so long that they no long consider themselves accountable to it or under their authority, and are now basically working for themselves.
• Dissonant Serenity: Valentine has "The Calm", seemingly brought on by adrenaline.
• Dynamic Entry
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Illuminati leadership are either killed via Project Blue or by our hero. Bob is running Task Force 151 that's hunting down the remnant of Majestic in United State with Valentine leading the Ops. Lorenzo returns the stolen nuke back to Sala Jihan's impenetrable former Soviet Bunker, and drop the mountain on the warlord. Ariel/Oracle living an ordinary life. Lorenzo and Jill are finally retired from the business.
• Expy: Reaper may well be one for Mouse from the The Matrix. He's a shotgun-wielding computer hacker and non-action guy, and is explicitly described as looking "like an extra from The Matrix".
• Fat Bastard: The Fat Man. He's not just fat, he's huge, described as being nearly seven feet tall.
• Fictional Country: Qurac The bulk of the story is set in a fictional Middle Eastern country called The Confederated Gulf Emirate of Zubara. It's a tiny Emirate that borders Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
• Five-Man Band: Lorenzo's original crew. Lorenzo is The Leader, Carl is The Lancer, Reaper is The Smart Guy, Train is The Big Guy, and a reference is made to someone named Kat, who was The Heart. Train is killed at the very beginning of the story, and Kat apparently left at some point in the past.
• The Gunslinger: Valentine and Hawk.
• Hand Cannon: Valentine favors a Smith & Wesson Performance Center customized Model 629. His mentor Hawk carries a similar weapon.
• Hollywood Healing: Averted. Valentine suffers scars and a traumatic brain injury during the course of the story. Lorenzo is left with permanent hearing damage after Valentine fires a .44 Magnum inches from his face. Averted again in Alliance Of Shadows, after Anders shoots Jill with a shotgun.
• Impossible Task: The heist Lorenzo must accomplish for Big Eddie.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Tailor, Valentine, Sarah, and Hudson interrogate a prisoner mostly by beating the crap out of him.
• Karmic Thief: Lorenzo primarily steals from terrorists and criminals. After all, they often have a lot of money and aren't likely to call the police.
• Kill and Replace: Lorenzo's "Phase One".
• Manchurian Agent What Majestic was trying to do to Valentine, combined with a Super-Soldier treatment. Anders later claims to have gotten the latter part of the XK Indigo program.
• Master of Disguise: Played straight with Lorenzo. He spends weeks, even months, researching his targets to learn how to best impersonate them.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Both Sala Jihan and Ariel/Oracle have limited prescience. They cannot account for rogue variables such as Valentine and Lorenzo. Sala Jihan is also much much older than his appearance as he has been in operation for at least 60 years.
• Mexican Stand Off: Valentine and Lorenzo's first real face-to-face meeting.
• Mission Control: Seen on both sides of the story. Sarah and other operations personnel for Dead Six actually used "control" as a radio handle. Reaper occasionally served in this role for Lorenzo.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Subverted (possibly) during the big heist Lorenzo was forced into. He may have beat the crap out of Michael Moore. Also, the late-night radio host, Roger Genoy, has a name that's an anagram for George Noory, the current weeknight host of Coast to Coast AM. In the original online version, Hillary Clinton is explicitly named as being at the meeting. Also, Big Eddie reads as if he'd be played by Eddie Izzard if they were to do a movie version of the book.
• Non-Action Guy: Reaper, who prefers computers to fighting and looses a fight to Jill.
• Oh, Crap! In Alliance Of Shadows, once the heroes learn the full extent of Project Blue.
• One Degreeof Separation: Lorenzo and Valentine both know Hawk and worked for the same PMC, albeit at different times. Lorenzo's brother Bob knows Jill's friend from the embassy.
• One-Man Army: Anders. He single-handedly incapacitates an entire Dead Six chalk. Tailor is scared of him. From second book onward Majestic's unretired Underhill.
• Overt Operative: Dead Six's operations are increasingly brazen as time goes on. This includes the leaving of a Calling Card and wanton destruction of property.
• Pistol-Whipping: Valentine bashes Lorenzo with an unloaded Korth revolver. Lorenzo notes that being hit with a $10,000 gun still hurts.
• Private Military Contractors: In the beginning of the book, Valentine and Tailor work for a company called Vanguard Strategic Solutions International, a PMC large and well-equipped enough that it has its own air support. From the prequel short story, Vanguard used to be a smaller outfit call Switchblade. Vanguard is the more corporate version of Switchblade.
• Rage Breaking Point: Lorenzo breaks down at one point after being foiled repeatedly by Dead Six. Carl mocks his "sissy tantrum."
• Retired Badass: Hawk, who served with both main characters at various times, loads up for one last gunfight to rescue Jill. He may be old, but he's still good enough to win a knife fight and avoid becoming the mentor.
• Revolvers Are for Amateurs: Averted by Hawk, Valentine, and Bob's nameless friend.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: Valentine's Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum is his signature weapon, and he refers to it as his "good luck charm." He prefers it, even though arguably more practical firearms are available. Hawk has the same preferences.
• Sacrificial Lamb: Train is introduced early as one of Lorenzo's companions, and then quickly killed off in order to show that Big Eddie will not give Lorenzo's men a choice in accepting his job.
• Sissy Villain: Big Eddie, though his routine of being a foppish, effeminate billionaire playboy is just an act to hide the monster inside. Big Eddie's henchman Diego is a talented crossdresser who's one of the most lethal assassin in the series.
• Suicide Attack: Lorenzo and Jill witness a suicide bombing.
• Spy From Weights And Measures: Discussed. After Jill claims to be with the US Department of Agriculture after being rescued, Lorenzo hopefully asks if it's just a cover story and she's really a spy. Jill dismisses the idea as "Rob Clancy stuff."
• The Stoic: Carl.
• United Nations Is A Super Power: Maybe not a super power, but they do seem to have their own military forces. In the opening scene in Mexico, the UN employs a Rafael fighter jet, a transport helicopter, and blue beret-wearing assault troops.
• Would Hit a Girl: Lorenzo slugs Jill in the gut to get her to quiet down. To be fair, she did hit him first.

• Wrong Genre Savvy: The leads are very technothriller genre savvy. Too bad they're in a Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane conspiracy story.

• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: The organization called Exodus is considered a terrorist organization by the UN.