The Team House - Vagabonds: two Special Forces soldiers adventures as "security advisors," Ep. 92

Episode Date: May 8, 2021

1978—a chance meeting on a remote military airbase between two Green Berets involved in the same operation leads to a partnership that will last over forty years. Four years after that meeting, Nick Brokhausen and Jeff Miller leave the service within a few weeks of each other and begin an odyssey that takes them to dozens of countries on five continents. Along with a small coterie of fellow former Special Operations and intelligence community veterans like Penguini, Max, Reek, The Spider Woman and a score of others—some heroes and some villains—they undertake a variety of missions for the government, other governments, large multinational corporations mostly in the aerospace or resource development industries, and occasionally just for suffering individuals who cannot find help anywhere else. In the process they lay the groundwork for an entire new industry of private military contractors. Two men sadly just a bit ahead of their time. Every episode in this book actually happened. Not always precisely as described herein, but close. Changes have been made sometimes to make the narrative flow more smoothly, some to obfuscate events that might be flirting with classification issues… Names have been changed, not always to protect the innocent. But the underlying story is, for the most part, the reality as they lived it. Get Vagabonds here: https://www.amazon.com/Vagabonds-Tourists-Darkness-Nick-Brokhausen/dp/1612009956 Get access to bonus segments with our guests: https://www.patreon.com/m/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Team House Discord: https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links): https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSampleBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Special operations, covert ops, espionage, the team house, with your hosts, Jack Murphy, and Dave. David Park. Here we are, guys. This is episode 92. I'm Jack Murphy here with Dave Park. This is the team house. This is Jeff Miller and Nick Brockhausen on the show tonight. We had Nick on the show once before. He's the author of Whispers in the Tallgrass and We Few. It was episode 76. You should check it out. Good call. Yeah, you guys should go and check it out if you haven't already. We talked about his time in Vietnam with Mac V. Sog. now we have Nick and Jeff back on the show to talk about their friendship and their

business partnership after their Special Forces Service and how they met their entry into the private security world, which was nothing at all like it is today. It's very different in its sort of embryonic state. And we'll start talking about some of their adventures that are in their new book called Vagabonds. Yeah, welcome, guys. guys, we're really happy to have you. One of the things that we do when people come on is to ask them their origin stories, like their superhero origin stories.

And Nick, even though we've had you on before, some of our viewers may not have seen that yet. So can we just really quickly get an overview of your backgrounds before you sort of came together, you know, just kind of the thumbnail sketch. Yeah, yeah. This is a trick question. He didn't really exist before he met me. I didn't have a history before I met Miller. I woke up.

One day he was there. Is this like him out in the Special Forces community? I'm a Vietnam era and dinosaur. I left Vietnam. I also did serve in a number of other groups in that. After that, I was in Berlin with the Detachment A. and that's where I severed my ties with the military was in Berlin

and then went on to I'm out of the army and I'm going I could be a rock star if I can't play a guitar or I could find some other line of work and that's as Miller left the service

like four or five months after I did and we ended up in the same place and we had this brilliant idea that we could take what we had been on the front line of which was developing an anti-terrorist capability

or you know a dead A had one and then Charlie came along and provided Delta there was blue light in between there somewhere but take that knowledge and apply the police departments

that we their first contract was with the International Association of Chiefsville of Beliefs. That's one of the chapters. There's some very interesting characters in that chapter. And Jeff, what about you? We know that Nick was MacBissan and what, you know, I mean, a bit about his background. Tell us a little bit about yours, if you don't mind.

I'll try to keep this as short as I can. I'm done. No. I'm sure of my memory. I wanted to be a spy when I was young. So I went down and enlisted in the US Army when I was 19 years old to be an area intelligence specialist. I thought that would be a very cool career choice.

And because of that, I chose that MOS, I had to get a clearance before I could even enlist. And I had to get letters of recommendation from a teacher and an employer and a friend and blah, blah, blah, and go to this whole course. Which put my enlistment off about five months from when I originally thought I was going to go in. They got down to what in those days was called the Armed Forces ended from examination station in Massachusetts. And I took the oath of enlistment and everything. And then I saw this E7. I didn't know that's what it was at the time.

despicable and he said I think it was 96 Charlie or something 97 Charlie I don't know It was a long time ago It's the 29th of September today That MOS has been filled up this month And I said well

What does that be? And he said well it's no big deal He said I just have to put you down for something else right here And when you get up to Ford Orr just that basic, just tell them it will be October 1st and everything will be wide open and just say you want to change. And I said, well,

okay, so he put it down with a flyer. Jeff, hold him one second. Can we have you sit back a little bit? We're not picking you up on the audio and I think it's just because your mic is right. Maybe. Yeah. Okay. So

I went to have basic training and I got up there and they said, no matter what those assholes down at 80s don't do, whatever MOS is on your form, that's what you're going to get. You can't change now. Don't come bothering us with it. So I went to Fort Lee, Virginia, and trained to be a supply clerk. And they sent me to Combat Development's Command to do my clerking, and I couldn't stand it. So one day I wandered into the Special Forces recruitment thing, and I met Sergeant Jack Davis, and he recruited me to come to group.

And there's a whole story behind that that I'm not going to get in. But I logged up there. So I went through training group as a commo man. And I graduated somehow and went to the six special forces group. And I'd only been there for maybe six weeks. When the company Sergeant Major came to me, his name was Rush Tyndell. And he said, there's a VIP over at Moon Hall looking for a special forces in CO. every group at that time the third the seventh and the sixth were bragged every group sending a

candidate and we're sending you and you better get picked because it would be very prestigious for the group and i said okay i'll do my best so i go over there and i'm in the waiting room with an e6 from the seventh group and another e5 from the third group and i was the second one called into the office and here's his colonel, we're splendid with medals and badges and shit all over, his uniform, it looks like a Christmas tree. They come like that. Yeah, that's why terminals are issued.

But he was doing a project directed for the deputy chief of staff of intelligence, which at that time was a general named Meyer, and he wanted an enlisted helper. And he'd been S2 of the 77th group when it was founded. So he wanted a special forces guy. So he says to me, Sergeant Miller, could I possibly interest you in a temporary duty assignment in military intelligence?

And I said, oh, sir, do I have a story to tell you? And I told him how I'd wound up there in the first place, and he picked me. So I got to go off with him for a while and do secret stuff. And then later, when I was at the 10th group, I got picked for another assignment out of a group at Fort Meade, Maryland, and I just sort of backed my way into the intelligence. So then how did you two gentlemen meet later on in your careers? In court. We met at Flintlock, during a Flintlock, at Ecterdingen Air Force Base in Germany. and I was working for exercise director at headquarters

and Nick was working as an asset he'd come down from Berlin and was you know deep undercover as a German helping the eight teams get themselves situated when they jumped in and there's a whole thing that involved underage women and let's get into that

deeply. I'm coming in, I'm living down in an area, and I've got assets that are other SF guys that are playing a part of being an OSS time. And John Liner, one of them is living in an insane asylum. That's where he's hiding the A-Team.

And the 80s are looking everywhere, but they can't get inside to check the room. rooms. So I have to go back up to Echnerding to report to my case officer at that time with Richie Herbert. And I'm driving in the back gate. I mean, EDH, when Flint locks going on,

it's like Tent City. They've got this group over here, and they've got people that are playing the part of the opposition force. You know, they might be a, you know, an infantry unit that protects a hawk missile battery. So they're all housed there, going out to do a different thing.

I'm coming in the back gate. And they come in the back gate. Echardding is an Air Force base. So the unit patch for the command is some kind of huge insect eating a mix.

And the colonel's wife had the emblem done on the side of this dirt burn in flowers. And it was a pretty thing that's to be a for us. and so I'm driving down in my Mercedes

come down and I see these lights, backup light, coming down at a high rate of speed and off in the distance I can see blue lights, obviously the MPs, but maybe a mile and a half, two miles off. And this staff car

shoots past me on the cross street net, goes up the embankment, does a donut and a half to the flowers. And then engine dies and slides down to the bottom of the hill the driver's door open and that's him right there the only thing you say is you need to help me get out of here also a young lady involved that was there with him but that's how he met him there he was in all his glory it it sort of

sounds like it was it was a portent right it was uh it was a sign of things to come. Yeah, you know. You don't either weapons now. Yeah. It was different. The medics have seen a portend.

It only got weird from there. Yeah. So for just kind of a brief over you because people might be curious. Like, what is it footlock? How is it set up?

They still have it. Yeah. Right. It's in North Africa now. But, you know, but it used to be in Western Europe. In those days, it was basically the special operations portion of reforger. It was

done separately, but it was part of the whole reforger system that the Soviets came through the fold of gap and then they had to deploy forces from the states and then all this SF units that were assigned to that area would infiltrate

behind the Russian lines to screw up their communications and logistics. And it was practice for that basically. And you would have actual like US armed military personnel or German military military personnel acting as the aggressors the Russians The whole scenarios played out that the cops were against you

The horse Meisters were against you Everybody was out there trying to find you and stick you out to somebody Well luckily the mental asylum ran like E&E networks Scape and Evasion Yeah We get pilots off the carriers as the pickle. And they put him in somewhere

on some deserted beach in Italy. He'd get picked up by guerrillas and taken to a safe house and he's moving up to the safe house system that we had set up, which was what you would do in a in war. You'd have

safe houses, transportation cells, all that. I had an entire safe house system that was made up of ex-SS members. Wow. Really? They were great. And the pilots we put through there, they all said, hey, we want to go to Nix area.

And then half of them were old castles. There was a very, very large, what they call a Vodain veterans organization from both from the Vermont and the SS that had property all the way up and down Europe. I can move somebody from the toe of Italy all the way to the Baltic Sea. Yeah. And you did this as after military service. You were contracting for the military? No, no, no.

You asked how we met. We were still in when we met. Okay, so you're both still in. Okay, I got you. So this was a detail. This was the idea we could do this in our own. Okay. I look at the Army as a 14 years college.

So. Very interesting skills that I went out and wasted on this. to the market. I am. Let me show you how to use that tri-rep, baby. So you guys depart the military. The security, or I should say the security contractor, in air quotes, world was very different.

What year was this? And everyone who's a little younger, keep in mind, there's no such thing as Blackwater at the time. There's no such thing as corporate security, it's just a very different world that you two had stepped into. It was 1982. 1984, and there was nothing. There was two types of security.

With Wells Fargo, Wacken Hut, those people who just get California plant protection and that. And then there was the Crem de la Crem, which were all ex-FBI. Coal Associates existed, but it was brand new. brand new. But they were normally, you know, like corporate security chiefs of that. And the rest of the industry just wasn't there. Nothing

was there. Right. And they, I'm sorry, I was just going to say in the FBI, like those professionals, they were more focused on sort of, more like an investigative type of protective service. They were looking for stuff they could lie about me.

Damn feds. They're looking for, you know, employees, smoking, you know, pet work or you know, piltering from the warehouse and stuff like that. Or out and out theft. I mean, they were

all the big mining companies, oil companies, gas companies, manufacturers like Fornet all had a security you know, the head of the security department, directory security. And invariably they were using an X-Speb.

And then Azas came along and they started doing a forget what they call a C CPP P you know it's like a master you know seven languages

and you can be a banana and a monkey but they gradually those people with those degrees and there was a lot of guys that had the predigree that also went and got the degree because that became the rubber stamp

you got that degree you got the CPPPB PPP Pee yeah I got it Yeah, right here. But the first private military contractor was running in Texas in 1984.

Jeff, we're losing you. Can you center up? Oh, yeah. Which one do? We got to move. It's amazing. I don't have to move an inch in it. There you go.

Yeah, yes, sir. So you were saying the first private military. The first private military contract that I ever heard of or was aware of. It was a company called Military Professional Resources Incorporate. NPRI. Mm-hmm. And it was started in Texas in about 1984, 85, I believe.

So we'd already been out for like three years. And it never really went anywhere. It was started by some retired general. I used to know his name. But we had a good friend that had worked in the White House named Rita Lund. And he actually recruited him. He run the administration of that company, but he didn't want to do it. That's how I found out of it.

And then Dyncourt. was formed out of Diet Electron Corporation. And then we actually helped them do that without even realizing, you know, we were so naive in those days. They come to one of our training things. And then I would you guys like to come down and talk to us about training at our headquarters on the Dolly Madison Parkway in McLean, Virginia? And he said, oh, more than happy.

So we went down the boardroom and told them everything we knew. Yeah, I am. That was a good moment. Probably one of our best. You guys drive a hard bargain. He came along with his huge inheritance from his father and became black mother

Yeah, sorry. Not signing, making the microphone. Maybe I need to lean closer to you. How's that? It's a good photo if nothing else. So, yeah, that's That community, that industry grew up. It started in its most nascent for maybe three years after we started and really hit its stride 15 years after we started.

Yeah. And that's what everybody got really rich. Everybody but us. So you. So you, look. You enter into this world where there's no scaffolding for career progression. You're kind of having to make your own job, find your own work, go out there and really hustle for. We're out there trying to look for situations that we thought we had solutions for that we could bullshit somebody into paying us for.

That was the price of the business. We know we could do it. And just go out and go ahead. hey, you know, your grandfather, we got kidnapped yesterday night. We think we can get them back. Man, we can get the money back after you collected. Here it's coming.

So is that? Go ahead, Jack. I was just going to say, so these are the stories that are in your new book, Vagabonds that's coming out later this month, the 28th or the 31st, somewhere in between there. We discovered today it's available on Kindle right now.

It is available on Kindle right now. Out on Amazon. if you want to go and check it out, you don't have to wait. So could you start off telling us about some of these stories about how you mentioned the kidnapping, the kidnapping for ransom and the rescue missions? How did you guys get wound up in that? Like everything else in life, we backed into it.

We were doing something else. I was in the Mexican ones. I was actually training bodyguards down in Mexico. Well, we were. And then I went looking for an armored car manufacturer that wasn't U.S. because at that time was a Gerhardt's stress

or O'Hess or something. O'Hara. Oh, yeah. O'Hara is something in Eisenherst? Yeah. They were the only provider for armored cars. And there was a couple other places, a little shoe string outfit down to Texas and Florida.

But they had no such thing as customer service. Once you bought an armored car from them, you were stuck with it. If the windows don't work, any of that happens, you couldn't get it. So I went looking for a Mexican manufacturer that made armored cars, and

that started our relationship with our business partner in Mexico, Carlos. And, you know, he's been in the armoring business for 35 years. And from that, I started getting

request from his clients because who buys armored cars, rich people. Who gets kidnapped? Rich people. So the first one I did, I, you know, basically it was a investigation

working with the state police. And then we came up with a special technology. We could mark the money. It was odorless, colorless, tasteless. Pretty much like our dates up until 35. and you know it worked real good

we did a couple of cases down there got the people back it's one of the chapters of the book few chapters yeah and another two chapters is a lot of these things just happened we didn't even go looking for him we had a friend who was a reporter

and a writer wrote some book he was writing a book on satanic cults actually, you know, it got published and it was on the market. You can find it out there. It's called Other Altars. But we were helping him do some investigations.

He was married to a shrink. A therapist. Freed some of these women. Thank you, Nick. And abused by the cults or whatever. Uh-huh. Anyway, we got ourselves sort of submerged in that for a little while. into Satanism

like Nick was like Signed Me Up Yeah Well Hey It was pretty straightforward We were You know like this

We had this one That the therapist Said that this woman Would be picked up By a black van Every night By two large Hispanic gentlemen

They used to go out And do bad Sexual things to her for hours Bring her back to her house So we're You know We listen to these stories And that's it

Before we agreed to do the job, we'd go up and stake the place up. They were all night. We didn't even see an alley cat. And by the time we get back in the morning, it happened last night. There was four of them this time. Yeah. Same black man. Yeah, okay.

Well, she's lonely too. Then they came up with the story that there was children being sacrificed. Yeah. And Miller went undercover by borrowing a friend of his. his stroker. Oh man, it was a nice, nice ride. So he's over there as a biker, and I got a beat-up

pickup truck with a Stetson I bought out of a hand store. They came complete with sweat stink. Nice. So I'm redneck and he's hanging out at the biker bar and that, and they want us to go pick up their contact at the airport.

Who is the contact? Well, she's 300 pounds. and you won't be she won't be hard to find and Millie goes why? Well she has smeared herself with goat excrement and protect yourself

for Satan and she had she has it was not hard to pick up at all but you know things like that where you you know the you're looking at it please don't give me any money I'm embarrassed

to take any money. So did this who are so loony you should use that money to go buy yourself some good drugs. We need to hear who gave her a ride back from the airport. Does she ride on the back of the motorcycle or does she ride in the... No, no, no, no, no. In the bed of the pickup? He was in the back of the bail of hay.

That's the only guy she'd sit. Anyway, we're getting a cab with it. The same guy that got is that fantastic deal. Calls and says he doesn't, you know, some private that he'd been working with up in Northern California on the Satan stuff knew a family in Minnesota whose daughter's kids were kidnapped

and taken out of the country. Do we think we could do anything about it? Well, of course we can. We have one last thing. That's the sort of thing we do all the time. So we wound up, and this is two chapters in the book, the first chapter is called

tiny hostages into McGrub and the second chapter is called Running for Our Lives across the room of Africa but you did you a pretty good idea but it's pretty help explanatory there but that was that started doing a bunch of

parental kidnappings usually by men from the worst countries in the world we did Iraq, we did Saudi Arabia. We did Guatemala. Sudan, Mexico.

The first one was Algeria. That's the one that's in the book. We didn't do any of the other stories in this book. Maybe if we do a sequel, we'll put a couple more child kidnapping cases in there. Maybe during the trial, more details of trial.

Could you walk us? Could you walk us through one of those instances? I'm very curious. I think other people will be as well. how do you begin that process of, you know, finding the kid first and then coming up with a plan. You have to, you know, re-kidnap them, I imagine. First thing you do is find the money and get your hands on it. Yes.

Now, because when they get their victim back, they get amnesia. So get all the money abrupt. Did you learn that the hard way? All he used to say, Cosmo is a character in the book that's obviously a pseudonym. you've got to get the money while their eyes are still wet because otherwise you're never going to get it.

Yeah. Yeah, the process, well, it's never the same twice, I mean, but the story's always the same. And here's the story. Because I got a little bit known for this because I went on the Mori-Povit show

and I got on the front page of all the night ridder newspapers. But they did die his hair, So he would be camera. Yeah, so you can tell where I was. A reddish brown. But anyway,

the story I started to hear over and over and over. Are you the guy that can get children back from overseas? Yeah. Well,

my husband from picked the shittiest country in the world. we got divorced and he took my son or my daughter or my son and daughter, whatever the case would be, be back to his home in Chad or upper bullpower, some goddamn horrible place. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey.

Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today.

I've spent every penny I ever had on lawyers trying to get my kids back and none of them have been able to do anything for me, so I was wondering what you might be able to do, to which I would answer, well, if you spent every penny you ever had nothing. But it's not cheap. Not even a hearty, hyo, silver. The cheapest one we ever did was in Mexico, and it was about $37,500, which was super cheap because most of the ones in the Middle East

and that were up in $180,000 to $250,000. It's just what it costs. Right. And are those just your expenses before you even? Yeah. We would pay ourselves $2,500 a month while we were doing it. That's all. Yeah.

And, you know, we were not getting rich. We did our people. They mostly got paid by the day because they would usually, after we did all the prep work and all the recon and all that, they would just come in for the actual counter-kidnapping things. We're losing you, Jeff. I just can't lean for some reason. I just can't lean for it. It's your beard.

It must be. Yeah. So you guys, when you say counter-kidnapping, so what, so you are. obviously had people that you would bring in to help you with this process at some point. How would this work? Would do law enforcement in these countries help you? Would the State Department help you? Were you totally like, you know?

Oh, yes. They're all very cooperative. That's what I thought. You couldn't believe how much cooperation. That's exactly what I thought. A State Department won't do anything. The only thing you could get out of the State Department was the address of the nearest gay bar. All right.

If you're lucky, a mimograph sheet of local lawyers that you might want to talk. These guys here can represent you in court. And the local police are trying to arrest you. Usually, though, you're like in Mexico. Well, Mexico is a little different. Here's how you do it. Got a problem?

Who can help you solve that problem? If you can't trust the police and the local police, who do you go to? They can provide you with assets so you can actually plan an operation that will cover the victims back to the safety of their loved ones. In the case in Mexico, we're really, really fortunate

because the level that I was getting our customers from were the people that bought 15, 20 armored cars a year for a couple hundred thousand each for their executives and their families and that. So as the targets of the kidnappings went up, Like when we first started, the average kidnapping ransom in Mexico was about 30 grand. That's it. And now it's 30 million.

Or, you know, when they took, what was the big bank, they took him down for 40 million. And those cases are very structured. In Mexico, you're going to be kidnapped for about 40 days as a victim. you're going to be kidnapped and they're going to send the certain you know dance at the court to the thing

it's uh you get a message we've got your loved one here's what we want you to do and give you an idea of the depth of the industry there's at that time there were 2,500 kidnapping gangs

just in Mexico City wow and a unit that we eventually got lined up with was an outfit that came out of the state of Mexico, which is Texcoco, up on the edge of the lake where the old dried lake is. And they were appointed by the governor. The head of that outfit was a former cardiac surgeon, actually.

And they were really good, really good. In cases like Chechnya or in Algeria or in Algeria or something. place like that. You've got to find the people that can help you achieve what you need to get done and they can cover your ass at the same time. Right. You might have pickings from both.

And sometimes it's the underworld. Most of the time. For some guys, we missed you, Jeff. For some guys it's what? Yeah, the underworld. The underworld. The mob. The gangster community. The Corsican mob.

The Union courts. in a way never went back on the word delivered on time and didn't pitch about anything. I imagine that in some, like you said, it really differs country by country because in a lot of

Islamic countries, the father has the rights to the child in their view. So 100% Yeah, so you're not going to get any help from the government because in their view, he's 100% within his right to do what he did. And they were,

a kidnapper. Well, in the book, there's a little phone call I got from the State Department at the beginning of the chapter, Tiny Hostages in the McGrath. They actually called me on the phone, and it was one of the most interesting telephone calls I've ever had in my life, because I'm just hanging around and the phone on the kitchen wall rings. Remember when we used to have phones on the kitchen wall? Yeah, well, let me go this one. And this voice says, is this Jeffrey Miller you know this

like professional radio timber baritone and I said yeah have you been to Algeria recently yeah well apparently you know I have or you wouldn't be

he's like well Mr. Miller are you aware that the Algerians are very upset and they've issued a warrant for your arrest for kidnapping and forwarded to Interpol and issued a red notice.

And I said, oh, really? Well, what does that mean? And he's like, you know, that means you're going to be very careful with your international travel. Don't go anywhere that we can't protect you. And I said, I didn't really think there was anywhere I could go that you would protect me. Set her luck at the Ukrainian embassy. You need to take this seriously, Mr. Miller. And then here's what he said. He said, there may be some people here who would applaud what you did.

There may be some people here who would think what you did was heroic. But officially, the U.S. State Department deplores these kinds of activities by private citizens. So just watch your step. And I said, okay, I'll watch my step. And then I went to Guatemala and did another one. So what happened with the Interpol thing? because obviously, I mean, that's a huge thing.

Nick knew a guy. I didn't take care of anything. During that, I was on medics. I got that name, had a relapse of malaria and dengue fever. It just somehow wasn't in the fire. There were, it wasn't a necessity for it to stick around.

Save a treat. The paperwork. The file, the paperwork got lost in transit? Yeah. It was two years later. That thing hung over my head for two years. So when,

so for your first, like for your, because Nick, you were used to, you know, you were working out of debt A, so you were used to doing everything in a very clandestine manner and whatnot.

When you went into Algeria, did you guys try to figure out, well, should we go in true name, should we fly right into Algeria, should we cross the border from Morocco, Like, how do we do this? We were trying to get two young guys to do it instead of.

Oh, I mean, that was a perfect cover. We'll be in Poma, Myoka, and this is our cell phone, our satellite phone numbers, call us. And how'd that work out? We went in under our own names. And remember, you got cover for action and cover for purpose. We were visible that you should not forget. We were archaeologists. We were looking at Carthaginian ruins.

So we went to Tunisia, and then we went to Algeria, and we had fully backstopped university credentials as archaeologists. And I can speak archaeology. That's amazing. Especially Roman, you know, after-septics. It's not so easy. What people don't realize when they come out of the service is how dependent you are on Uncle Sam's monstrously. logistics capability. Right. Yeah. We have to get everything yourself and it costs a lot of money. We blew $50,000 on a ship that we never wound up getting to use on the Algerian thing. And they wouldn't

give us our money back and that guy hanged himself. Well, you know, the guys from Corsica were involved there was an honor today and the ship burned into the water line and unfortunately on himself. Jesus Christ You know For the people who aren't familiar with some of the vocabulary When they say that their credentials were fully backstop That means that somebody could call the university They could look

Well they didn't have websites at the time They could call the university They could do research And yeah These guys are legitimately tied When you're paper yourself You're paping yourself for action What is the chance that somebody's going to call

if they call what kind of questions are they going to have, and who needs to answer that from? So it helps you that when the dean of that particular institution was in Matt B. Saug. You know, I noticed something. My head is looking kind of odd shape, and I know it's not the way because it's round, but it's kind of like flat on one side. Is that the lighting?

I know your head's flat on one side. I don't know. You think so? asymmetric? It looks pretty symmetric to me, but, you know, not as symmetric as mine. It looks okay. But it's close. You're beautiful, Nick. Don't worry. Don't worry. Yeah, sure.

So, so you guys decided to fly in true name, into country. Did you already know the location, like, did the wife know where the ex-husband took them? For a kid case, the standard is in those days.

Remember, this was a long time ago when was worth way more than it's worth now. Back in the 1980s and early 90s, $25,000 flat fee for a recant, and it's non-refundable. And we come back and we'll tell you if we can do it, how we can do it, and how much it will cost.

And if you don't want to pay, first of all, if we say it can't be done, we've never said that, but it certainly could happen. And then we say, this is how much it's going to cost. And if you think that's more than you can afford, there was one return. You said it Lebanese?

Somebody they wanted to get out of the predicament he was in. It wasn't a good situation. That wasn't a sit down. But because what people don't understand is, until you've been on the ground and seen what the exact, situation is, there's no way you can come up with a number. You have no

idea what assets you're going to require, what kind of personnel you're going to have to hire. And it's very expensive to tell people, if you're running from the police in a country and you sneak across an international border

with forged paperwork, you're going to go to the airport and a couple of little kids in tow that you didn't have when you arrived. you're going to go to the airport and you're going to pay cash for the first ticket on the first plane going anywhere. And I don't care how much it costs. And now I was like, these people are like, well, can't you book in advance and get the Super Saver? No, you do that.

Going in, yeah. Going in, yeah, but not coming out. Yeah. I got to ask, Jeff, like, how do you as, you know, going into a country like that, get the kid back and you also, I mean, they've never seen you before. I mean, how do you...

They kept their mother with it. Oh, you did? Okay. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And the mother was right there. Right there in the alley in the car. Take the mother with you. Always.

The fact that started the shipstorm was because some Arabs were sitting in the back of the car without a male with her and started giving her a rash and a frat. Yeah. Then the ninja leaped up

The wall, yeah, right there. Leaped off the wall with this Russian shot baton. It looks like a billy clip in the turn of the century, and his electric, shoots lightning bolts out of the side of it, turn it on and cackle. Junked down, lands on the hood of the car, and when he did, he turned it on, and he hit his right leg. That's paralyzed his right leg.

Wait, Jeff, you hit... Oh, Jeff, you're breaking up, but Jeff, you hit your own right leg with a shock baton. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Basically with a cattle crime. It was like Chester on gunswark. I was trying to chase these three Arabs down the street. I'm dragging my right on the way.

Wait, the master isn't up yet. Come back. Yeah, well, it never runs like a sea. No. Right. Yeah. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents, and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them

on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Yeah, that's true. The two guys that were supposed to subdue the husband, were so excited they jammed the hypodermic

in his buttocks and broke it off. Jesus. So he managed to stumble on the house and down the street to the police towbox where they were hiding because they were well there was a revolution so the gendarmerie are barricaded in their little thing and he's

pounding on their door and he slur in his his wife half the dose of PCP or whatever it is because the needle broke out and he's like giant ninja stole my children come out of here and get away from here and we'll shoot through the door

and gave us an extra like eight hours hit start So during your operational planning, the idea came up that whomever you were working with, whomever you guys had hired, had access to some sort of drug, and needles, and they were going to jab this guy, sedate him so that you could nap the kids and get out, and he'd be out. Actually, it never really came up in the operational planning. guy was a special forces captain

and came up with that completely on his own. I didn't know he was going to do it until the needle came out. I got some nuclear in there. I got this from my cousin EMT in New Orleans. It's good stuff.

Whatever. Nick, we can't hear you. What did you say? I said it's like getting a gamma-clothed shot. Yeah. Tennis ball underneath your skin. Yeah.

On the ones that we did in the Middle East, we actually, go like Cheshire. We actually used a friendly isotope. That's how we tracked. It was different in the ones in Mexico, because usually the client was the member of the family, and the family's paying for it. And you have to follow very strict rules. because under the Mexican criminal code,

if you're involved in the recovery of a kidnapped victim and you're not working with the police, you can be arrested as co-conspirator and a co-defendant as one of the kidnapping. And the one in Chechnya was totally different. It was a rich industrialist. And we actually used a friendly isotope that we got from the Russians.

He had a heart medicine. that he had to take. And the only way, the only place to get it was like a two pharmaceutical out that's within 100 miles and so. So they broke in and dose all the medicine that was there.

And eventually he got some of it. And then they used like a nuclear emergency search teams in a helicopter. They got a detected and he flew over the area until they got a hotspot. Holy shit. Wow. And that's how we found it. Who had the helicopter in Chechnya?

Who did you guys, like, if you don't mind talking about it? Like, who did you? They rented it. They rented it. We also rented a whole bunch of burles to go in and make the way. Was this a Grosny? It was in the mountains west of there. Okay.

The guy tried to do an oil deal with the Chechers. And of course, the Chechens. When Stalin captured the place, he took every rat, man, woman, child, dog, cow, and everything, put him on trains and shipped him to Siberia until the train ended and then gave him shovels and told him get busy. And between that time, and I think it was 1934, and the collapse after World War II, the Chechens came back and settled back in their own country. they're strange and their their entire history is a brigandy all the way back to the czars the zars used to send the cossacks in there every once in a while to clean the place up so it's uh you know the guy thought he could do business with these people and he ended up suffering for it for 18 months wow so you dose his heart medication

found him using a isotope that wouldn't kill him with a nuclear search team. And then you hired a bunch of thugs to go in there and pull him out of there, is what you did. Exactly because they were members of the military. You hired the Russian military to go into a radar. There was a different security company that came with equipment that looked amazingly like Russian military. Right, right. The technical aspect here that my lawyer would say I have to bring up in the conversation. They made in the military, but if they were, they had a part-time job.

I mean, who does? They were moonlighting. Yeah, well, you know, they paid $30 million for this guy. Wow. God damn. We had another trick on the other. Which helped immensely. But everybody that touched the ransom money, by 36 hours later, they were with their makers.

Wow. That was the Russians idea. I mean, they're very clever people and very creative. Yeah, that, I mean, that sounds like a, that's a GRU tactic, I believe, that they would even, like, deliver letters to Chechen rebels that open up the letter and then the rebel leaders dead 24 hours later. I mean, so I've read. Bulgarians are famous for that. Yeah. I mean, you know, the famous, you know, uh, Urizen.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Risen. Rison.

Risen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I used to kill a trout with it. Roan it. They're going to throw it in the water, kills all the fish stuns them.

Just go down and pick them up like a nice to be in the daisies. And then, the game warden seizures. And then how did they taste afterwards? Well, these fish are stunned them, bringing them ashore to give mark fish a respiration. Holy shit. So how, when you guys would go into a country to do, was part of your recon that 25? You don't take guns into a country? No guns.

No, very, very rarely. And if you are going to happen, you'll get it there. You can't be running around. Get it there and get rid of it. Yeah. But when you know what people don't understand. Yeah. Homicide will follow you for the rest of your life.

And I don't care. And nobody will feel good about hiding you from it. Right. So we go, and I've gotten backlash from this from a, other S-F guys, too, like go back to Algeria, right? We took the mother with us. We were helping her get her kids. That's all, Your Honor.

If there's a dead cop involved in this scenario, that ain't going to work. Right. So now you're looking instead of maybe a good international lawyer getting you out of the Huskow in six months to a year to never coming home. Right, right. And it's a big difference. That's one thing, Hollywood, people just kill people with impunity in all these movies and leave the body. Like, nobody's ever noticed it was there, you know?

Right. It doesn't work that way. Not at all. So when you guys would go into a country, did you generally have, because of your previous work, have contacts in that country or know somebody who might know somebody? Or were there times when you got on the ground and sort of had to develop your own contacts, find the underworld, if that's what it took?

Yes. Yes. Yeah, both. Obviously, you're better off. Right. Sometimes they're quite limiting. You're still got to do a lot of stuff on your own. Sometimes you don't have anything.

Or, like how you met, what was? Cut, cut thumb. the guy who Looked Just like Paul Newman Blue eyes From the Union course

Allegedly Allegedly the master Of both the most Profitable Kidnapping And the largest bank robbery In the history of the whole Nice guy That's a really helpful tip

If you cut the finger off For identification Don't send it by regular mail Why? Because 28 days later when they get the rotting tissue to them. I can't get a printout. Right. That's good practical

advice, Nick. Yeah. That's news you can use, you know? We thought so. So use FedEx or UPS. D-HL. D-HL. Not the postal system. Yeah. D-HL, yeah.

Jets, I want to ask you about Africa, Bosnia, Mexico. Just real quick plug first for the people who are out there watching us tonight. Make sure that you pick up Nick and Jeff's new book. vagabonds. That's what we're here discussing right now. It's all the adventures and misadventures that they had after their military service. You can get it on Kindle right now. The hardback book will be out later this month. I also want to remind you guys about Jeff Miller's whiskey company,

toxic masculinity. Go ahead, show off a bottle there, Jeff. There you go. Raise it up a little bit. There you go. Perfect. I ordered two bottles that got shipped out today. It's for our episode 100 party, so we'll be drinking some toxic masculinity ourselves. And I want to remind people to go check out our Instagram page for the team house.

I want to remind you guys to subscribe to the channel. If you haven't, take a look down in the Patreon link down the description if you want to support the channel. And I also want to let everyone know that another endeavor I have going called Civ Group C-I-V-G-R-P-com.

check it out. We're doing a weekend classes and a training exercise. It's sort of a fantasy camp. If you ever wondered what it would be like to be a spy or a commando. So check that out. We got a class going in June. And also in addition to their book, which you can get on Kindle right

now, and it'll be released in the paperback or hardback sometime in the near future. I think you can pre-order on Amazon, which is called Vagabond. You can also check out Nick's other two books, Whispers in Tallgrass, and We Few. Both are great books about his time in Mac V. Sagan and in Vietnam. Was there any point, Jeff, when, like, so you went from sort of a training company in a way,

and then evolved into people asking you to, first you went through the whole Satanic craze, which the 80s, everything was about Satanism. There were all the news stories about, you know, you know, Satanic Kidnapping. Dungeons and Dragons is making my kid worship Satan. Right. Yeah, yeah. All the talk shows and I mean, you know, I played Dungeons Dragons, which was directly related to Satanism according to everybody.

But it was, but then you guys actually got into legit kidnapping, which in the United States a lot of times is you know, fathers or taking their children back home. Was there a time when it was

initially was surreal at all? Like, are we really doing this? Like, are we going to infiltrate into Algeria and find a way to grab these kids and bring them back home? I don't know if surreal would be. There's a couple of things that happened that were kind of surreal,

but not generally now. It's because you're so focused on mission accomplishment. Right. You've got to be really focused. And I've had guys that we hired breakdowns. and just not be able to handle that sort of thing, which I found amazing,

because some of them came with good resumes. Just yours or my? But, yeah, I always, it's funny, because every mission I ever went on, I almost knew from the beginning whether it was going to be good or not. You know what I mean? And I don't know why.

It was just like, I'm bulletproof on this one. I'm on a mission from God. Nothing can stop. Yeah. And then another one would be like, no, man, this just doesn't feel right. I'm not sure this is going to work. Although our success ratio on kidnappings was probably 90% or better. Which is incredible.

We had one really spectacular failure that I'm saving for the next book. because it was really interesting. There was a lot of really strange players in it. I'll give you one little tiny. Sure. We were at the mother's house in Florida, great big mansion right on a canal and down the street from the Trumps or something.

Very, very wealthy family. Very wealthy family. So we're there, we're talking about what's going on, and her kids have been taken down to Latin America. And her husband is a big, billionaire and he flies around on his own jet and everything. So it's complicated from the very beginning.

Right. So we need this old guy is there at her kitchen table. Really nice, really nice old, you know, balding, tall, but kind of stooped over, very old-worldy, like manners, you know. And his name's Ira, and he's down from New York. So we say to Ira, what brings you here, Ira? He goes, well, I'm her accountant,

the mother's accountant. And we're like, oh, so you're a CPA? I'll have a very limited practice. I do this as a favor because she's a relative of mine. But I only have one family in New York that I work for and do all the accounting for. Being a parent can be really changed. Challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey.

Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Well, it's like a really wealthy family. Well, it's the Gambino Fair. Oh, geez. Those are pretty good. Yeah. All right.

I'm surprised at having a relative that worked for the Gambino Fad. family that she that she didn't have other resources to help her with her kidnapping issue. Oh, come on. The Italians are smart enough not to touch you anything like that. Her ex-husband had all the same resources

and a lot more. Right. Was there a common sort of economic status amongst these men that would take their children back to their home country or did it vary? There was a common economic status among the ones that are going to afford to hire us. But we are at all kinds of sob stories from people get home.

And sometimes you get lucky about. We had this one, actually a Mexican mother, and she married a curd from Herb Beal, which was an exciting one. Although we never wound up having to do any of the heavy lifting on that because I shanghai Dewey into doing it for us. he had all the right connections so all we wound up doing was going to the turkey Iraq border and waiting for the

kid to be delivered but she only had the opportunity to do it because after this all happened she went marrying her divorce lawyer and he financed it you know the Algerian the family owned an advertising agency

so they had some money to do it and obviously the when in Latin in America, they were, God knows how filthy, rich, they were, you know, the people, they were a waitress at a Moroccan restaurant.

Ah. Boyfriend living, baby daddy, he's got a kid in things. You make $8 an hour. There's just no way.

I mean, you feel bad. Right, right, right. I would love to have been for, there were a few years there where I would love to have been a charity that I could have just taken these cases and gone and done them. But there's a lot, there weird a lot of sob stories that we had absolutely no way that we could help because there was just no resources whatsoever. Yeah, they didn't have Indiegogo at the time where they could, you know, get the resources to crowd fund it. and you know but yeah so I mean

that must have been hard or maybe it wasn't but was it hard for you guys on some level at times to listen to these stories and if they didn't have the resources I mean you guys can't do this out of your pocket so if they didn't have the resources was it tough to listen to their story

and not be able to do anything I've been married three John every sob story you can possibly have no effect on it you just can't drive you crazy right

right because there's there's just a way I mean we weren't making a lot of money at that right but we couldn't do it

for free either right but Algerian the Algerian one the only totally cost the family $185,000 right

you know and if you don't have that what are we going to do? There are plane tickets to buy. There's cars to rent. There's boats to rent. There's people to pay.

There's hotel rooms. I mean, there are Corsican mob guys to... Actually, they never really asked for any money. Really? They were very... There's a guy in the book. He's called Carlos.

That's obviously not his real name, but he was one of the greatest guys that we ever met. One of the... from Marseille, big hulking, kind of crazy dude. He looks like that guy that used to be on all the spaghetti westerns. You know, the name, um, not, uh, Bud Spencer. But, yeah, he looked like Bud Spencer, and he had his curly racine hair,

and his cousin, when he was a young boy, used to use him as a sex toy. Jesus. And he don't, he was he. Was he female cousin? Oh, his female cousin. He got his starting life setting fire to boats at anchor in Marseille Harbor

and then running out with his private fire boat and putting a fire out and claiming he selfish. It'll work if you can get it. And he was great. He also owned a spy shop called CIA K-G-E-Me limited.

Well, you know, listening devices and little cameras and gets stopped on the other side of the Algerian airport. Because this is what he's wearing a pair of cowboy boots that are like lawyer skin. You know, the lizard, some kind of special skin and that. Black pants, black shirt, aluminum colored tie and sports jacket. And it comes out and he goes, why did they only pick me up? And then he tells the customs guy, and he deals in electronic.

And the custom guy opens his briefcase, and it's completely full of brochures of machine guns. Machine guys, artillery. And the custom guy's looking at this monster in his silver lamaised portcote. And he's like electronics, and Carlos is like, well, they have electronic parts, you know. that's the best part of the people you meet amazing we've met some

absolutely unbelievable people around the world can you guys tell us about Bosnia yeah well that was my bright idea I dragged him into it I was watching television and they were showing the market in downtown Sarajevo getting mortared

Back in about 1995, I guess. Yeah. I'm some of the hard time putting the timeline of notes because so many things happen. We're losing you. We're losing you, Jeff. So that's because he's mumbling. Yeah, well, that was mostly because I was mumbling. But anyway, I'm watching it and I'm thinking to myself,

this doesn't look like that hard of a problem to solve. Why don't they just get some. commando teams to go up in those hills and, you know, dispatch some of those mortar teams. It wouldn't be that difficult. So I knew this very wealthy Saudi who I'd gotten to know when I was a desert storm, and I'd actually helped him bring a quad 12.7 Russian anti-aircraft gun back to Riyadh and put on the roof of his house. Why not? Yeah, so man room.

Yeah. I got in touch with him and I got in touch with this Korean guy who was always good to put the arm on for a few bucks, you know. And I got $25,000 and an agreement from the Saudi to introduce me to all the right people. So we wound up going over to Riyadh. and the guy's father the guy that I knew his father knew a was somewhat of an Islamic scholar whatever they know a chronic

memorizer whatever it is and he knew a Quranic scholar who was over in Jeddah who was from Sarajevo from the Bosnian Muslim community so we we hopped over to Jeddah and we met with him and he loved the idea. So he took us to Istanbul.

So we get to Istanbul and we go into this dodgy neighborhood right out of a movie, you know, the Cosbaw. You know, you kept expecting Pepe La Mocca to step out of the doorway. We wandered to these little streets and we go into this building and out under this balcony and this doctor is there. a heavyset Sudanese doctor was apparently the best friend of a president it's a big of it shows

Bosnia and is coordinating all the logistics most of which are coming from Iran at that point oh yeah so this this Bosnian Islamic scholar from Saudi Arabia takes us up there and introduces us I know this doctor was looking at him going You stupid little twerk Drag these freaking CIA agents

Yeah Yeah You work for the CIA No no no we don't No way They don't even like us We believe that you work for them Well we don't

Well we think you do Well we don't Well we think you do But this goes on But they said you're going to go have to wait and we're going to have to discuss this with the Ministry of Defense in Bosnia and decide

whether we're going to let you go there. So we spent eight days in Istanbul just screwing around. They got this bar there. I don't know if it's still there, but it was right at where the international bridge went across on the European side called the Zuni Bar.

And the Zuni bar was like being at a victorious secrets after party every night. It was unbelievable. So we're going to the Tocopy Museum, and we're going down to the big underbrown soup and buying spices. And we're enjoying it pretty much.

These Turkish intelligence people come and question us, you know, well, what is your religion? Kind of Christian, I guess. Really, very much. Reform Druid. Why do you want to help? Well, it just seemed like a good thing to do. You know, we saw these women and children

getting killed by mortar rounds, and we thought, hey, let's go do something about that. So finally, after eight days, they tell us we can go. So we flew from Istanbul to Marse. Miller offered to get a letter from the CIA. Oh, yeah. We get a letter from the CIA, We don't work for them.

We accept that. That kind of They went over in a corner and put it to dance together. What do you think? We flew to Marseille and we got on a train and we went to Venice. We got up in Venice

and we had a big fancy lobster dinner you know, figuring like we were the condemned men. And then we got on the train in Venice and we went to Trieste and then we went through Slovenia at night. these giant Slovenian female, let me tell you, from what

I saw, Melania Trump is not representative of the female Slovenian population in any way. Unless she was one third of one. So, and then we did the most amazing coffee. The most amazing coffee.

I said we go to some little outpost outside Sariano with a bunch of drunk teenagers with AK-47s wandering around. Coming back on. leave or whatever they would do it. And then we rented a Volkswagen Jenna with a driver

to drive us over the dirt road because all the major highways were cut by the serves. So we had to drive up in the mountains on dirt roads and down the other side. And we get this, just as we're leaving this Bosnian psychiatrist

who was attending a medical conference in Paris shows up and gets in the car with us. And which was great because he spoke. This is one of those. And which was great because he spoke. This is one of those four tens you were talking about.

Yeah. And we went up over the mountains and we got in the middle of the night to the wrong side of Sarajevo. And he dropped us up with a taxi driver who took us to the underground tunnel that went under the airport into Sarajevo. But they wouldn't let us go through because we didn't have a stamp from the chief of police. So we had a cab driver took us home and made up a spare room in his house and we slept there that night. And we next day we got into Sarajevo. It was cold.

And we met the deputy minister of defense and we went to the Hotel Bosnia and we got drunk with Jackie Schumanski from CNN and a bunch of Norwegian air traffic control. And it goes on from there. How did you get, like, the introductions to the Secretary of Defense for the, like, did you just basically show up and go, hey, this is who we are and this is what we're doing? Yeah, and this is how much money we can provide. That's what opens the door. Right. Yeah, we have a commitment for $2 million from Saudis and people from the United Arab Emirates to put together this commandos goal for you guys to teach you how to deal with these mortar problems. and the $2 billion is what opens the door.

Sure. And the connection. Yeah. And the what? The connection. The guy that brings you in. Yeah. Who is he?

What kind of juice does he have in the country? Right. We'd already been obviously, they'd already contacted him about us when we were loafing around this. I think it was the letter that we're going to get from the CIA. Now, did you get that letter or no? Did they not require that letter? No. They didn't want.

They got to look at it. I think they suspected it might be a forgery. Really a letter from the CIA saying you don't work for them that would be completely legit. They're doing back in a hotel room in about 20 minutes. Right, right. Had the rubber stamps and a wax. Right.

You know, secret ring. We're in. You know, you mentioned like the State Department, you mentioned the CIA, things like that. during your travels, did these agencies ever approach you to, A, figure out what you were doing, B, tell you not to do it, C, try to provide support, anything like that? Yeah. Okay. And like, Boris, not all I have to say about that.

Fair enough. Yeah, fair enough. That's easy enough. Definitely, it wasn't to give us support. No, and it wasn't to give us a fucking job officer. I'm just inferred on that list that you read out. Yeah. You're about to step on some toes here.

You don't want to step on it. Yeah. Yeah. We went in China to get the guy out of China. Jeff. Yeah. When we went to get the guy out of China, we got some advanced briefings from some Americans.

So, Chuck, you got a guy out of China. You would want not to do. So before we get to China, because now we want to hear this, what happened did you guys set up the commando course did that go down I said before we get to China because we definitely want to hear about that

how did this how did the whole commando course how did that resolve did you guys we got on the elevator to go up to see the minister of defense and there's a guy on the elevator and this guy looks really familiar I've seen him somewhere

before, but couldn't make the connection. So after we got off, he made a left and went into Ali Iizabakovich's office. And we made a right to go down to the Minister of Defense. And we were talking to it. And we're like,

who is that? That kind of looks so familiar. Who was? Well, who he was. He was Clinton's envoy. I can't think of his name right now. I thought it was Halif Holbert, but it's something like But I think it was Holbrook. Something Holbrook.

He was the governor. And the next thing, everybody's all excited and we're all flying off to Dayton, Ohio to sign some kind of a peace agreement. And we're like, well, that sucks. So the lion bastard.

Peace isn't going to do us in you guys. Nobody makes money. Yeah, when there's a peace tree. We wound up just going home? Fucked up a perfectly good war, Jeff. Yeah. They did. It's always good.

If you can get paid to do this kind of work, and then it falls apart, then you don't feel bad. When you take it on a fling and you spend it some money of your own, and it turned bad is when, that's when you look back on yourself and go, did I shave you this morning? Why didn't I cut your grip? I shaved my balls for this. We just went home. The whole thing. So what's, so what? What's the story on grabbing a guy up out of China?

That's pretty wild. The guy in China was, this is something I didn't know at the time, and I don't think many people know. If you are sued by a Chinese company and you are in China, you cannot leave until that suit is settled, period. They won't give you an exit piece. You can still have, you keep your passport. You can still have.

Yeah, you're free to go anywhere in China. But it can't leave. You're trying to leave. So this guy got sued. He was a manufacturer. He was building stuff in China. He got sued for $150,000 and he wouldn't pay any...

He went to China because he was in the States and he went to China to settle the suit. So he went to court and everything and he lost because he wasn't Chinese, obviously. And he wanted to pay in the $150,000. thousand dollars and then he was going to go to the airport and go home well the guy that had just gotten his hundred fifty thousand dollars went in and filed a lawsuit for a half a million

and when he got to the airport they said sorry you can't go so his accountant actually approached me and because i because at one time in the distant smoky past she'd been my account you said you still do that oh really yeah you to do the kind of stuff you used to do it I said well if the money's right you know whatever and she said well here's what happened one of my clients is in China they won't let him leave and

I'd like you to talk to his wife I wouldn't talk to his wife and there we go on another one these things just happen that way they evolved they evolved usually without a portent yeah without one without a drive in Fortin but you you had your you had your

yeah you had your major like portent though the way you met So I think anything along the way would just be minor. Yeah, well, it's... You can tell these of weapons. Yeah, it's really strange that two people with such similarly unconventional outlooks on life when not meet each other as weapons.

Yeah. My name friends that are supposed to you, you know, and I mean, honestly, have... I mean, I would be... You know, you never know what would happen, but would you guys... Would you guys have been, had you not met and sort of came up with this idea to start training these companies, would you have embarked on these types of things solo?

You know, if you hadn't had each other, would you had such a, you know, an adventure-filled life? Well, neither one of us are a Marshenko or an Eric Prince. I mean, I don't want to be in the news being a mercenary free captain. The only private military company in the world. You don't want to be on the cover of Soldier of Fortune, Nick? No, I really don't want all this. In fact, this is too much

at Burgessman out on the open wire. We're old now. A life sentence is no longer that. Right. I never would have done this 25 years. Right, right. 25 years ago, we've been all of you. Yeah.

Been doing those, you know, those manly looking pictures of guys with guns. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's... Yeah. It's...

Alba male. In the real world out there, maybe twice we were wearing BDUs and carrying automatic weapons. Free guns. Free guns.

Over a period of 40 years. Yeah. I mean, most of the stuff is done up here. You've got to, you got to outthink the opposition Yeah, you're a problem solver.

You're not going to defeat them in open combat. Right. That way life is not... Unless you're with somebody that has that authority to actually engage. Yeah. You know, like the Mexican State Police or the, you know,

the second battalion of the 486 infantry for Nigeria or something like that. Right. It depends on, you're not going to be a pull-out. You have a piece for your own personal protection. I don't go into a country where I'm in a dangerous situation where I don't make arrangements for somebody to have extra guns on them in case I need. Right.

If you did the kidnapping thing in Mexico, the state policemen brought along four extra guns. Right. But a lot of times, that's for your own personal protection in these sort of wild lands or whatever, more than for actions on the objective, like we're doing a direct action assault, and we're going to lay down some scunnion and smoke some dudes. We're

a client. The Algerian father got a picture of in his mind of the rat patrol. Thinking that we were going to come driving out of the desert into this little town on jeeps with 50 caliber. Which I actually voted for. I knew where to get the equipment.

Yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no. So there's not going to be any 50 caliber machine. What you want to do is get the opposition force, right in, you know, unbeknownst to them, to a restaurant, give them a thick feed and douse everything, like, I see. Yeah. You want to have to work. You, you, Nick, can you kind of back up or center up and repeat that?

You said what you want to do is get the opposition force in a restaurant. And then, you know, pay for their meal, give them a banquet, but douse everything with vizene. Right. Right. Which I've heard they changed the formula of vizine, and that doesn't work anymore. Well, really. Yeah. I'll get some potassium for pistols.

I just. And do the same thing, except it'll turn your pissing. I just wanted to say that for anybody in the audience. The meds are wearing off. So how did you? get the guy out of China, though. We don't want you... briefing back to the

maxi of immigrants and then on an airplane to Taiwan and then because he went to the embassy and told him he needed a new passport and the U.S. State Department squealed on him to the Taiwanese authorities.

He was a third time to the Philippines. And he was an illegal immigrant. That is an ironic or some sort of weird, celestial. bullshit there. Jeff, I'm so sorry to do this year, but we lost you a little bit during that. But so when you got him out, like, did you, so was he under surveillance while he was in the country?

I didn't say to me. He was? We still not have you. We're going to do a little fishing village here in the town of Fuzhou. And we got him on a fishing boat, which was a whole thing because we arranged it once and it fell through. Then we had to start him, we'd set up a safe house. on one of the Matsu Island

and got him over there to the safe house and then we just flew him commercial back to the main island of Taiwan where he went to the U.S. Embassy and the State Department

turned him into the cops for being an illegal alien and that's how helpful the U.S. State Department is. Then we got him on a medical flight, wrapped them in bandages and pulled him to play dead

and got him on a medical flight to do it. to Vanilla? And then from there back to Los Angeles. It's amazing because he went to the embassy and all he needed was travel documents because he did not have an exit visa

from China. Right. Okay? So he went to the embassy and the embassy, oh, woof, wof, wop, as you came in illegally, we used some other networking and that went to the Nigerian embassy. Not only were the Nigerians

willing to give them travel papers. They were willing him to give them passport and swear that he was one of their relatives. That's amazing. For a nominal fee. Right. For less than what we had to spend on getting them away

from the airport. There's always a market for those kind of doctors. It changes. I have no idea what it is today because I'm not paying much attention anymore. Yeah.

Yeah. That was a high back in late 1990s, early 2000s, that the daughter of the president of Mozambique was selling passports, you know, like tickets to a Lakers game. You could just go, everybody could become a Mozambican if you want to do. And it wasn't even very expensive. So there's always this sort of black market going on. You just have to figure out where it is and where,

Whether the passport in question would really be a realistic fit with the person and all that. You want an exit stamp on your, or an entrance stamp on your, on your, on your passport. Right. You came in by cab over the mountains so you didn't pass through the troll. So you go find the nearest American tourist, buy him some drinks, have a good time, slip his passport out, order a hot, hot, hard-boiled egg, peel it, peel it, take the hard-boiled egg, roll it onto his stamp, and then go over and roll it right back onto yours.

Unless they're really looking at it, it's all the way down to the white color ink, the signature, the little initial they put in the center, all that. It's a simple trick, something like that. Or you've got to get a full paper. How do I get a passport? Well, there's certain circles you have to travel.

Most of them are Democrats, by the way. And if you have a little time in advance, and we often did, we had a studio in Laguna Beach, California. The famous rubber stamp that went down the toilet. Yeah. But the first time I went to China, I had a Chinese visa stamp in my left shoe and a Taiwanese visa stamp in my right shoe. and let me tell you, when you're standing in line for customs,

one side of your brain is going, oh, well, there's no chance they're going to strip search me. I mean, nobody's going to find something that's inside my sock, inside my shoe under my foot. But what if they do? Yeah. And your brain is telling you. That's when you become dainee.

That's when you discover if you've got any nuts or that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. because your mind is just telling you you're having a fight in your own mind. Inside is trying to be logical. There's 35 people in this line getting off the ferry from Kinman Island. What are the odds that they're going to want to strip search me?

Right. If you're in the line and they're trying to figure out whether you can dump the hand grenade you still have, in the trash can before you get to the amnesty box. You don't want to drop it in the amnesty box, but if you drop it in the trash can, is it going to make a loud noise like,

I'm a grenade? You know? A member of our own TSA enough that five weapons can go through his little x-ray thing. I'm not going to say who were in a way.

five weapons went through his little x-ray machine, all of which were clearly visible, but which he never looked around the street because we were so entertaining. How about those cups? Yeah. You've seen those cubs lately? I think that's,

that we had to leave that out because of the circumstances of everything. It happened. Yeah. Jets, why don't you walk us through, I think you had mentioned, Jeff, uh, walk us through, you know,

the summary, the synopsis of this book, vagabonds, that is out now on Kindle. It's going to be out in the hard back. Read me the chapter title and I'll give you a two-sentence synapse. I'm going to have to bring that up. Oh, you know, the chapters side.

Yeah. Because this cord runs over to the edge of the table. See that? Yeah. Stinkers. Yeah, I can reach out and. Oh, yeah. We can give each other handies under the table while we're live streaming.

It's amazing. And we, gee. We already have. Can do, you know. So, oh, what are you doing for supper? The first chapter is called sometimes a great notion. I remember that. Yeah, birth of a notion.

Birth of a notion, yeah. They are basically about us getting out and trying to figure out what to do and getting our first law enforcement. Law enforcement contract with the International Association of Chiefs of Police, and which was the first thing that we did right after the service. That's what that chapter's about. And then there are carpetbaggers in our soup. Yeah, well, we got hooked up with a kind of a con man from Vegas

who had a lot of stories about companies that he owned and emerged with us. Remember, there is no ego in business. And wound up leaving us with a $1,100 bar bill at our favorite salute and a $25,000 debt to the month. Holy shit. Amazing.

I want to ask you how you resolve that, but I also want people to read your book. Yeah, they read the book. reading the book. Looking for read the book. Yes. Looking for

high tech in all the low places. What would work for little research and development company

that was given some of the most interesting. Can you start that over? So we're

to work for a little research and development company after the after the

con man left us flat. They hired us doing a lot of really

cutting-edge high-tech stuff. And we did a little world travel with them. We went to France and we went to Malaysia and we went to Taiwan and Berlin. And we did a lot of interesting things with that company.

You went to Berlin when the wall was still up. Yeah, there's a whole chapter about that later on. Very famous Bordello mentioned in there. You might want to pay attention to that. Particularly a couple of paragraphs.

I definitely will. And for those of you who are kind of young, there actually used to be a wall in Germany that separated East Germany from West Germany. Oh, yeah. It was the anti-fascist rampart put up by East Germany. Remake of the Wild Bunch. Oh, that's the first half. That's Bustamante.

That's the first half of a two-chapter thing about a year. huge training at that point the biggest one we'd ever done about $800,000, training the security staff and bodyguards for the World Trade Center of Mexico City. And we did it in two parts. So that chapter is about the part that was down in Mexico. And then the next chapter after that, Assassins on the hotel roof is about when we brought 50 of them up to San Bernardino, California to do the second hammer.

The advance course. Send lawyers, guns, and money. I'm not sure what they Oh, that's the Jim, I won't use his name. The banker. Oh, yeah, the banker. Yeah, I go to the Philippines and

Nick goes to Europe, both working with the same rather deranged banker. The Yacazza, the gentleman with the missing digits and the pet tattoos are involved in this. They had a bank instrument that was drawn on a Japanese bank

using Zanichi Noren assets. Zanichin Noren are those gentlemen with the tattoos and the missing digits. And they own all the race all over Japan. So it's a $200 million bank instrument

and we have to recover it. Holy shit. And at the same time, the guy wants to find Yamashita's gold in the Philippines. So I go to the Philippines. That's why I sent him. because I understand Swiss banks, you know, and the normal protocol on that. But if you're going to go upriver in the parang,

looking for somebody that just showed you 50 ounces of gold, yeah, you need younger people that are more stamina than I have. Oh, man, yeah, I got to read it. I read a whole book about Yamashita's gold. I mean, it's a fascinating story. Oh, good. Yeah, still on TV. I was the first in it, and it is completely nuts,

what's going on. There's a whole industry in the Philippines. Yeah. Intending to know where to... Right, right, right. You'll find the... Okay. What was it...

I think we're going to hit in a duffel bag at the end. Was it the original Nigerian print scam in a way? No. The thing in Germany recovering the financial instrument, which was an international bill of trade.

involved some very interesting fellows that I've known before and the Russian mob and very wealthy people in Austria and Germany that owned a Ferrari

dealership and that but very and a Swiss banker who's the most amoral man I've ever met my life. Absolutely this guy was someday, like I said in a chance.

I dream of being behind his house on the hill. Real. A real. You guys have to read this book. I mean, honestly, I mean, I know that both Jack and I will. And we would have, had we known it was out already, we thought it was getting released soon. Ishtar and other bad plots?

That's a desert storm. that's about first Gulf War the first you know the first Gulf War Desert Storm I got activated

went back in the army oh no he went back because somebody had to have an ID card yeah that was joined the reserve

and got activated we we discovered that we had access to an intelligence um source that went on

You discovered that you had access to an intelligence source? Went all the way to the Iraqi general staff. Okay. So I came back to the states to try to sell it, which wasn't easy. You think, hey, we're going to war with these people, and I have an intelligence source right into their general staff, and people say, who the hell are you? Have you been cleared by Sympagpo?

pro. We finally found the right guy, but he told me this would be much easier for me if somebody had a military ID card. So I said, I'll go back. So I re-enlisted and went to the 12th Special Forces Group reserves and then shuttled myself off to a desert storm. I have you looked larger than me. I am larger than me.

It's an optical illusion. Yeah. I'll lean back. Now you lean forward. There you go. There you go. When you went in, I think it just ate a bullshunds. I had to turn the air conditioning up because it's actually on fire.

When you went into the reserve, did you have any idea that you would actually get called up and have to go to the Army thing again? No, not really. I had been called. I knew where I would go. If we can make an interpull warrant disappear, what makes you think he was going back to be a supply clerk in Fort Lewis? Right. Oh, I don't. Follow us, well, you think, no.

Yeah, I'm having a hard time keeping up, but, you know, I'm doing it. So are we, actually. Tiny hostages in Maghreb, we talked about that. That's the first half of Algeria, running for our lives across the rim of Africa, the second half of the Algerian. Pancho and Lefty? That's the first Mexican kidnapping

recovery. Okay. And is that the one where you worked with the government forces? Well, yeah, anytime you do anything in Mexico, if you're working on your own, you're stupid. You know, and you're liable going to end up, you know, somebody's going to uncover your body when they start

digging a new freeway. Yeah. Well, if you're working in Mexico, you better find yourself a way to work with the police. That means you have to vet the police. I would very fortunate for us that my Padreno, my godfather, is the senior partner

and the most prestigious law firm in Mexico. So, I mean, he does, put it this way. He's had kidnapped cases where when the kidnapper found out he was involved, they brought the victim back.

I mean, that's the kind of reputation. year. The only services the Lebanese and the Sephardic Jewish community and the very upper 1% of the economic sector. So that's who I got my clients from,

basically from my partner down there, and we always had the backup from the Padreino. Don't do anything in Mexico stupidly. Carrying guns, you know, getting involved with explosives. Yeah, like old dog the bounty hunter.

a Rospero, rain or anything like that. You've got to plan it out. You have to find the right people to work with. And then follow their plan. All you are there for, because the way it arranged this is, we had the technology that could, we could track the money.

Anybody that touched the money, wherever it was at, we could go find it. And we could find it at night, like a bloodhound. So, in that regard, we are a contractor.

So under kidnap and risk insurance you know, you don't the insurance company doesn't give you $30 million. They allow you to raise $30 million and pay the ransom and then they reimburse you

if you follow the rule. And if you're not involved with the police, you have broken the rule. Okay. So, you know, that's kind of your guideline. Yeah. That's what happened with them. We did recoveries using state police units in three different locations.

They were all a special unit formed up for anti-kidnapping. Really, truly brave men. We get paid really squat for what they do. Yeah. Now, they pay for their own gas. They paid for their own bullets. They pay for their own hotel rooms when they're on stake up. That's amazing.

I think if you ask people in America to pay for their own, I mean, you know, bullets, you wouldn't have too many. Well, it's common for the victim's family to give them a tip for phenom. You know, that's, you know, they decided between them and a police commander. But that's, they put that in a slush one, which they use for that in other cases. Yeah. And also for the widows and orphans. Yeah. of those men.

This is the whole thing about two sentences, preach chapter, right out. Yeah. I don't know what I'm down. Going on. No,

it's fascinating, you know, how the different countries handle it. You know, you know, because I think we take so much for granted

here in America that even as kind of broken sometimes as our, you know, system is, the idea that you know, that these police officers, these highly trained police officers that focus on kidnapping,

part of their living comes from tips, you know, the whole... Don't go down that road. Okay. Not true. Oh, okay. The tips just go into the slush fund. They get their stipend and their salary from the state government. Okay.

But at times when the family does feel that they, to do something for them, there's an apparatus there for it and it's very tightly controlled. It's not like they give the commander a couple hundred thousand pesos. Right. It doesn't work like that. Okay. Thank you for clarifying that. Pontchon, let's you, by the dawn's early light.

That's the second Mexican kidnapping operation. Who thought of these titles? Just out of curious, because there's great chapter titles. Both of us? Yeah. You thought of some, I thought of some. Nigeria with snow Bosnia with snow

That's the first First serious interface with the Russians Yeah Starts with Russians in America And ends up with us in Russia And Kazakhstan And Kazakhstan Fascinating

Into To To the Hindu It's Kazakhstan that. Into the Hindu Kush with the beast of the Baskervilles.

That's more than us. Actually, when we're on our way to Kazakhstan and we have a plane crash. We live out on the Siberian Tendra with the Cossacks for a little while before they get the plane bad. The plant where it's out,

plane grabs the plane has a malfunction. It has to make an emergency land. We talk, you told us this whole story in the bonus segment we did for the last episode. So you guys can go and check that out for the people who are Patreon supporters. That's right. That was fascinating.

Anybody who hasn't flown one of those airlines before, I mean, you guys can attest this. Like, you have people bringing livestock on. I mean, just everything is on this plane when you're flying like these small locally owned or whatever

they are. I don't know if it was that. If it was a large plane or a small plane, but it's interesting what you see on these flights sometimes. Oh, yeah. We saw a KGB agent get that shit kicked out of him by a

tribe of gypsies on a plane from Moscow out of Anchorage once. That is fascinating. They left the body in a seat with a jacket over like your drunk. Don't be looking down there. Bosnia by

boss. We talked. talked about the spy who slid in from the cold. That's Berlin. Okay. Letté on the Spanish main? That's when we tried to start a cruise ship shore excursion in St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. And it was put out of business 12 days after it started by 9-11. Oh, shit.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We got everything built. I was standing on the rooftop. You can get my latte or whatever. The latte part is because Pinguini had to have a freaking latte from some girl in Charlotte of Mali every single morning. Every single morning.

I mean, I was about two hours late getting to work. Soaring hopes and soaring temperatures. That's about a big training for the Marine Corps to train about 1,600. Marines for pre-deployment to Iraq right after the whole kerfuffle good started. Porto-Prince is dying. That's a Haiti earthquake.

Oh, shit. Yeah, we were there. Yeah. I became the most hated man in christen them. Because I called Madam Secretary a waste of flesh. You mean

Hillary? yes that would be the one these kids aren't as stupid as they look I am on the road to Mandalay that's me going me and Penguini went to Burma to train the Karen National Liberation Army and the second half of the chapter

is mostly of me staggering around Chiang Mai Thailand with a nearly fatal dose of dengue fever holy shit man you guys were everywhere Terry and some very odd pirates That is The spider woman And a guy that used to be in the 10th group

And a Norwegian billionaire And some other people Trying to start a counter piracy operation In the Indian Ocean off the coast of Somalia Wow, okay Never really got up and going But it was an interesting

Is there a particular reason why it didn't get up? You don't have to go into the whole story because, again, we do want to... Because everybody got pissed off at each other and egos. He goes. It ruins most of them. Interesting. The heart of darkness. That's the first half of Africa.

That starts in Guinea. I think we mentioned when we were doing that special before about how we were once accused of over throwing the government of Guinea. Yeah. It starts there and gets into some other African stuff. And the lost empire

of Prestor John. More Africa. That's when Nick got this place up in Ethiopia and had a pet hippopotamus or something. I don't know. Say that one more time? Had a what? A pet hippopotam. Who wouldn't have a...

It's a strange about that. No, it's not. Who wouldn't have a ranger but giant? Who's strange about me? having a hippo? No. Who would not have a pet hippopotamus given the opportunity? That. Sounds legit.

Man, so you guys were all over the world, man, getting into trouble. This is awesome. Three quarters of a century old for God, say. Eventually, you'll have this kind of history. Yeah, I don't think anyone... I don't think anyone's going to have quite this kind of history.

You guys did some pretty unique jobs. When I'm 75, I'll be talking about the podcast that I was on for the last 25 years. Yeah. We tell you back back in 2021. It was rough. We had technical issues. It's not too late. We know about some stuff.

Yeah? And my blood type are you? You don't want to be a B positive? No, sir. I'm A.V. positive. I am little shit. Oh, no. I'm old.

Maybe we Maybe we save that for the bonus segment If you guys are game for it Talk about what you're up to now As long as we can peeve first Of course you can Of course you can Guys

We'll wrap this thing up Jets Next episode is going to be If everything goes according to plan Peter McAli's I gotta get Coms back up with him But he served in the British SAS For Dijian SAS

Pathfinder in South Africa he was a mercenary in Angola and then he was also hired to go assassinate Pablo Escobar so I'm hoping that I can reestablish Coms with Peter I got a great Rhodesian story that didn't make it into the book

You have a one more time Jeff? A great Rhodesia story that didn't make it into the book All right maybe on the bonus segment we'll hit it Columbia in general tracked down Pablo and killed him

There we go We gotta hear it So, but we'll do it on the, on the next second. Yeah, out of curiosity, you guys had this, this reputation within maybe a small community or whatever for, for going out and conducting these types of operations. Did anybody ever approach you for things that were maybe, say, on the shadier side? Like, they're like, oh, these guys, these guys will are game for whatever. They'll do whatever. Yeah, well, we're not.

Right, right. No, and I believe that. There are certain lines we won't cross. Well, Bend the law. Sure. We won't necessarily break. And we definitely will let go into the U.S. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Like doing kidnap recoveries in the United States. You don't do them. That's the FBI. That's the venue. They get very upset, very bitchy about things like that. And now are you saying this from experience? Yeah, I mean, we had things that came to us in the station.

And we said, hey, man, call the few. fucking call the FBI, man. That's their job. After they're getting paid for. I got an FBI jacket with a code name. We have a, I think we have one question, one viewer question. Oh yeah, I think so.

Let me scroll up to it. Anthony S, thank you very much. With Nick's interest in Nazi stuff or that historical period, what kind of stories did he shake out of the SS connections? I know he had to invest. I know he had to investigate if Hitler escaped, right?

Yeah, you know, that, actually I met those, those gentlemen to, I think it was through the Forestry Service in Germany, most of them. You know, my family's served. And I had two uncles fight in the Bearmont,

you know, and, you know, the, then Germany is, is full of connections. and that's how I got to. I used those connections to do what I was doing for the U.S. military. And in the process, I was able to establish a relationship with some really unique people.

Yeah. And I think that, like, a lot of people don't understand that the, like, the SS, like the people who served in World War II in Germany were very, very anti-communists also. And a lot of them would hop services after World War II to fight against, communism or Russians wherever the the group. The Bopin SS was a combat unit. They were also used for the death squads

in that band, but they also they were in the main they were shot troops like the SS Panzer Division, the SS grenadiers and the different formation. They were used as shot groups to either make an attack

fill a gap in in the defense, etc. Then you had the Gestapo and you know, you know where most of the people from the Gestapo came from? They controlled all of Western Europe and terrorized the world with less than 8,000 members. The Gestapo worldwide, they were never more than 8,000 people. Now, they had adjunct units like the death squads and that they were attached to them. But 8,000 people, do you know where those people came from, what their profession was before they were drafted?

into the Gestapo? I think policemen. They were what? They were police officers. In the Maine, they were detectives and police officers. That's where the Gestapo gave

from. You know, they got rid of all the guys that didn't feel like they didn't. That, why not? They knew everybody. They knew how to do criminal investigation. They knew how to do counter intelligence. Because that's what they've been doing. You get your connection where you find them.

Yeah. We found connections in Mongolia for spare parts for chipping machines to a rock band. They just happened to me. They were Mongolia. Have you ever seen Mongolian rock bands? No, sir. No. The Who band, but it's H-U.

Not to be confused with the British Who, WHO, W-H-O. This is H-Yo band. One of the best rock bands ever. The Who band? I'm gonna... Their best song is called Wolf Totem. Jim G. says, we need to get you guys a decent mic

and then have you come back to tell some more stories. I agree. We'll have to FedEx you a microphone at some point. We can pick a really expensive bar and everybody get together and buy his drinks. Yeah, even better. I'm down for that. So guys, go and check out Vagabonds.

It's up on Amazon right now. You can go get it for your Kindle. And if you want a hard copy, it's going to be out later this month. Jim, Jeff, thank you so much for joining us tonight, telling some of these stories, man. I really appreciate it, you guys. Did you just call me, Jim? Yeah, but he was going off the last comment he just read. Didn't I say Jim and, I didn't say Jeff and Nick?

Sorry. You can call me first base. After you said that we're smarter than we look, we go and do this. But, no, yeah, but Nick, Jeff, thank you so much. Guys, definitely check out their book. Try and keep your nose clean between now and the next time. Remember, in the immortal words of Barry Goldwater, extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice.

Tell that to the perfume princes of the Pentagon next time they come around.