SOBs #8: Eye Of The Fire

SOBs #8: Eye Of The Fire, by Jack Hild

September, 1985  Gold Eagle Books

Not sure why I took so long to get back to SOBs. Eye Of The Fire is another strong entry that again proves that this series was the unsung jewel of the Gold Eagle line; as I’ve mentioned before, I got a copy of SOBs with every Gold Eagle shipment, and would place each volume side-by-side on my bookshelf, but I never read a single one of them. 

I think I tried to, though, and the cover of Eye Of The Fire (by Ron Lesser?) is so familiar that I’m certain I had it as a kid; I also seem to recall trying to read it and giving it up after a chapter or two. Likely at the time SOBs seemed too slow-going for me, and I probably just wanted the more action-focused stuff typical of the Gold Eagle imprint. Reading the books now, as an “adult,” I appreciate the series a lot more than I ever could have as a kid; the small group of writers who handled the series clearly were working together to retain a sense of continuity and vibe, and there’s a focus on characterization that isn’t as evident in the other Gold Eagle publications. 

This volume was handled by Robin Hardy, who I believe wrote the majority of the books in the series. Hardy also wrote the previous volume, but there’s not much pickup in this one; indeed, it mostly picks up from #6: Red Hammer Down, if only in how we finally get pickup on what’s going on with Billy Two. As we’ll recall, in that earlier volume the American Indian Sobs member was captured and mentally tortured and whatnot, and he’s been out of the series since then; now he’s back, and he’s in full-on “Billy from Predator” mode. 

It seems very suspicious how similar the two Billys are; one almost wonders if the movie character was inspired by Billy Two. Just as Billy became increasingly spaced-out and “Indian” as Predator progressed, up to putting on warpaint, so too is Billy in SOBs; he spends the majority of Eye Of The Fire in facepaint with feathers in his hair, and is prone to talking to visions or hallucinations. 

In short, Billy Two is by far the most interesting character in the series, and the most entertaining, to the extent that “series protagonist” Nile Barrabas is sort of lost in the shuffle. Occasionally Hardy will give us scenes from Barrabas’s perspective, and we learn he’s a no-nonsense, taciturn leader of men and whatnot…but he’s just not very memorable. Same goes for most of the other Sobs, but at least the series authors strive to make them somewhat identifiable: Nanos is the ladies man, Beck is the computer guy, and Claude is the, uh…well, he’s “the black one.” 

The back cover will tell you that the plot of Eye Of The Fire concerns the Sobs rescuing “Colonel D” from a Cuban prison, and while that’s sort of true, it takes a goodly portion of the narrative to get there. Rather, the main thrust of this 222 page installment is the Sobs trying to track down young Tony Lopez, 17 year-old brother of former Sob Hector Lopez, who was killed in action in #4: Show No Mercy. 

Tony takes up a goodly portion of the narrative; he’s run away from home now that he’s a “man,” determined to look up these bad-ass mercenaries his big brother hung out with. Instead Tony nearly gets blown away by Nanos and the others when he sneaks into the temporary Sobs headquarters in Tampa, then later he’s kidnapped by this right-wing group calling itself X Command, which reports to the senator who has been a recurring character in the series – a never-named senator who has a grudge with the Sobs and is constantly plotting to get them killed on a mission. We are reminded how this guy was crippled in the fourth volume (another Hardy installment), but we still don’t know why he hates the Sobs so much…or maybe we were told but I forgot. 

The Colonel D stuff only comes and goes sporadically, but basically he’s a sadist known for training death squads in Latin America. Now the Cubans have him and are interrogating him, and Walker Jessup – the fixer for the Sobs – wants Barrabas and team to slip into Cuba and exterminate Colonel D, to keep his mouth shut. “I’m not an executioner,” Barrabas angrily states, making one wonder if Robin Green were slyly taking a dig at Gold Eagle’s most popular series. 

It seems that the schtick with SOBs is that each volume goes for the slow build; Barrabas and team in their normal life as they prepare for the mission, with the mission itself taking up the final quarter. That is certainly true here, with action sporadic in the first three-thirds of the book; perhaps a reason why I was never able to get into the series as an action junkie kid in the ‘80s. 

But when Billy Two enters the narrative, the game changes big time. First we have a great psychedelic bit where he’s meditating nude in the desert, and approached by the ghost of Hector Lopez, who tells Billy that the team needs him. So Billy, still naked, walks off. When he shows up later he’s in full-on “mystical Indian badass” mode, making profound, spaced-out statements before killing guys with his bare hands. There’s a great part where he dives into the ocean and takes on a pair of frogmen. 

The cover art is not a lie, as this is very much a scuba-based mission for the Sobs. Colonel D is in an old fortress, and the only way the team can get in is by swimming underwater for a mile and then infiltrating from the ground up. This is a tensely done sequence that reminded me of a similar sequence in the never-published The Baroness #10. Robin Hardy ups the ante with not only the Cubans after the Sobs, but X Command as well; the busy plotting has these right-wingers using Barrabas to do the heavy lifting of freeing Colonel D, so that they can take Colonel D from Barrabas. 

When the action does go down, it is competently handled if not super gory. Also, there’s hardly any of the excessive gun-detailing Gold Eagle books could get mired in. That said, Robin Hardy has an annoying tendency to deliver clunky writing in the action scenes, often resorting to stuff like “Ka-blamm!” and also relying hugely on single-line paragraphs. I know this is to make things seem punchy and tense, but when you have several single-line paragraphs per page, the effect is a little squandered. 

Overall, though, Eye Of The Fire keeps moving for the majority of its 222 pages, though the stuff with teen psycho “The Kid” is a bit much. Hardy uses this in the finale as the opportunity for Barrabas to exposit on how he’s no hero, but he’s no killer, but all of this seems a bit too “deep” for a men’s adventure series. But then, stuff like this is what separates SOBs from the Gold Eagle line; as stated, there is more care to the characterization and the narrative structure. The highlight is Billy Two – if the series had been published in the ‘70s, he would have been the main (and perhaps only) protagonist – and if anything I look forward to seeing how the other SOBs writers handle him. 

I’ll let you all know if I win that 1986 Jeep they’re running the sweepstakes for on the cover. I just mailed in my entry!