First Appearance: Patient Zero
Joe Ledger’s group of first-chair shooters. This SpecOps team has logged more field time than any other DMS unit; and they’ve tackled some of the most dangerous threats to humanity imaginable.
First Appearance: Patient Zero
The Baltimore Field Office and home to Joe Ledger and Echo Team from Patient Zero through Code Zero. The original Warehouse was destroyed by the terrorist Erasmus Tull, taking with it the lives of nearly two hundred agents. It was rebuilt by Ledger in the days following that tragedy.
First Appearance: Patient Zero
The main headquarters of the DMS, housed in an old hangar on Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn. The decrepit exterior hides the world’s most sophisticated counterterrorism organization on earth.
First Appearance: Patient Zero
The DMS’s latest field office. Built on an actual pier in San Diego by Joe Ledger, this office is dedicated to Special Operations and runs four teams — Echo, Slingshot, Deep Six and Kraken.
The Joe Ledger Series
Novels and Short Stories in Chronological Order
COUNTDOWN
(A teaser prequel to PATIENT ZERO)
“I didn’t plan to kill anyone. I wasn’t totally against the idea, either. Sometimes things just fall that way, and either you roll with it or it rolls over you. Letting the bad guys win isn’t how I roll.” Meet Joe Ledger, Baltimore PD, attached to a Homeland task force…who’s about to get a serious promotion.
PATIENT ZERO
NOVEL #1/Published in 2009 by St. Martin’s Griffin
When you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week there’s either something wrong with your world or something wrong with your skills… and there’s nothing wrong with Joe Ledger’s skills. And that’s both a good, and a bad thing. It’s good because he’s a Baltimore detective that has just been secretly recruited by the government to lead a new taskforce created to deal with the problems that Homeland Security can’t handle. This rapid response group is called the Department of Military Sciences or the DMS. It’s bad because his first mission is to help stop a group of terrorists from releasing a dreadful bio-weapon that can turn ordinary people into zombies. The fate of the world hangs in the balance.
ZERO TOLERANCE
Short Story
This sequel to PATIENT ZERO brings Joe Ledger back into action, hunting for zombies in the deadly mountains of Afghanistan.
DEEP, DARK
Short Story
In an underground bioweapons lab a team of scientists working to develop super soldiers instead create something that is far deadlier and infinitely stranger. Joe Ledger and Echo Team must hunt — and be hunted — deep down in the dark.
MATERIAL WITNESS
Short Story
A stand-alone short story that takes place in the early days of Joe Ledger’s service in the Department of Military Sciences, a top secret division of Homeland Security. Joe Ledger and the DMS must protect a Pine Deep spook and author who is in over his head with the wrong people and may know more than he is letting on.
THE DRAGON FACTORY
NOVEL #2/Published in 2010 by St. Martin’s Griffin
Joe and the DMS go up against two competing groups of geneticists. One side is creating exotic transgenic monsters and genetically enhanced mercenary armies; the other is using 21st century technology to continue the Nazi Master Race program begun by Josef Mengele. Both sides want to see the DMS destroyed, and they’ve drawn first blood. Neither side is prepared for Joe Ledger as he leads Echo Team to war under a black flag.
DOG DAYS
Short Story
Joe Ledger returns in this tale that follows the tragic conclusion of THE DRAGON FACTORY. In the wake of a devastating personal loss, Joe Ledger and his new canine partner, Ghost, go hunting for the world’s deadliest assassin.
***An audio exclusive story available from Blackstone, read by Ray Porter.
CHANGELING
Short Story
Joe Ledger teams with a mysterious British agent named Felicity to investigate a dangerous bioweapons factory.
Originally published in Midnight Echo Magazine (Australia), June 2013.
THE KING OF PLAGUES
NOVEL #3/Published in 2011 by St. Martin’s Griffin
Saturday 09:11 Hours: A blast rocks a London hospital and thousands are dead or injured…. 10:09 Hours: Joe Ledger arrives on scene to investigate. The horror is unlike anything he has ever seen. Compelled by grief and rage, Joe rejoins the DMS and within hours is attacked by a hit-team of assassins and sent on a suicide mission into a viral hot zone during an Ebola outbreak. Soon Joe Ledger and the Department of Military Sciences begin tearing down the veils of deception to uncover a vast and powerful secret society using weaponized versions of the Ten Plagues of Egypt to destabilize world economies and profit from the resulting chaos. Millions will die unless Joe Ledger meets this powerful new enemy on their own terms as he fights terror with terror.
ASSASSIN’S CODE
NOVEL #4/Published in 2012 by St. Martin’s Griffin
When Joe Ledger and Echo Team rescue a group of American college kids held hostage in Iran, the Iranian government then asks them to help find six nuclear bombs planted in the Mideast oil fields. These stolen WMDs will lead Joe and Echo Team into hidden vaults of forbidden knowledge, mass murder, betrayal, and a brotherhood of genetically engineered killers with a thirst for blood. Accompanied by the beautiful assassin called Violin, Joe follows a series of clues to find the Book of Shadows, which contains a horrifying truth that threatens to shatter his entire world view. They say the truth will set you free…. Not this time. The secrets of the Assassin’s Code will set the world ablaze.
A FOOTNOTE IN THE BLACK BUDGET
Short Story
Joe Ledger, Top and Bunny go to the bottom of the world all the way to the Mountains of Madness in this crossover with H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.
***This story is not yet released. It will be included in the anthology The Madness of Cthulhu, edited by S.T. Joshi.
MAD SCIENCE
Short Story
Joe Ledger and Violin go after a kill-squad of Red Knights in this sequel to ASSASSIN’S CODE.
BORROWED POWER
Short Story
Joe Ledger teams with a mysterious British agent named Felicity to investigate a dangerous bioweapons factory. A story told in two parts: A young Mr. Church teams with Lilith to hunt monsters in the sewers beneath Paris; and when that ancient evil rises again, Joe Ledger and Violin close in for the kill.