FREE SAMPLE — FOREWORD AND CHAPTERS 1–3

Read the Opening of Resonance Portal Wars

Normandy, June 1941. A British commando team goes ashore to capture Otto Skorzeny, and finds that the SS are not alone in the woods. The first 1800 words of Book 1, free.

Foreword

“Human beings are under the control of a strange force that bends them in absurd ways, forcing them to play a role in a bizarre game of deception.”

“The central question in the analysis of the UFO phenomenon has always been that of the controlling intelligence behind the objects’ apparently purposeful behavior.”

Jacques Vallée.

Hunting Skorzeny

Normandy, France — June 1941, 0430 — Operation Tilt

Captain Jack Phillips checked his watch—0430 hours. Right on schedule.

The air hung heavy with salt and damp earth, Normandy’s underbrush carrying the musk of soil mixed with the distant tang of the sea. Overhead, the canopy swallowed the starlight, draping the world in restless shadows. Beyond the treeline, waves whispered against the shore, their rhythm nearly drowned out by the crisp clicks of magazines locking into place, the rasp of knives sliding from sheaths, and the low, steady breaths of men preparing to kill or be killed.

Phillips crouched in the wet foliage, eyes fixed on the clearing ahead. His Number 4 British Commando team held position, weapons ready, nerves wound tight. The insertion had gone unnervingly well. Paddling rubber dinghies through the frigid Channel waters, they had reached the shore unchallenged. The French Resistance’s diversion two miles south had worked—too well. No German patrols. Not a single sentry in sight.

Phillips didn’t believe in luck.

Luck got men killed.

Tonight, they hunted Otto Skorzeny—Hitler’s favorite commando.

The mission was clear: capture or eliminate.

Phillips’s gaze swept over his men—ten shadows in the undergrowth. The best of thirty. Each handpicked. Each forged in the crucible of war.

Sergeant Mack Taylor, his second-in-command, ran a final check of his grenades, movements quick and methodical. Stocky, built like a Highland bull, Mack grinned in the face of death but never underestimated it.

“Ready to bag us an SS prize, Captain? That Luger’s got my name on it, sir,” Mack muttered.

Phillips smirked despite himself. “Let’s make sure we live to enjoy it.”

Beside Mack, Corporal James Morrison adjusted his radio. A man of quiet endurance, he had carried wounded men when others faltered. Inside his breast pocket, a worn photograph of his wife, Sarah, peeked out—the only thing cleaner than his weapon. He never spoke of it, but Phillips knew: that photo was his anchor.

At the rear, Private Luke Meadows tapped the explosives strapped to his belt. The team’s demolition expert—wiry, quick to grin, quicker with his hands—he had been forged in fire, literally. The Coventry bombings had shaped him into someone who didn’t fear destruction. He embraced it. He wielded it.

Perched behind a fallen tree, Harry Cook adjusted the scope of his Lee–Enfield rifle. A former poacher turned sniper, he had once dropped a stag at five hundred yards without hesitation. War had changed his targets, not his precision.

The youngest, Private Charlie Dawkins, clutched the radio pack strapped to his back, fingers tightening on the straps. Barely twenty. His eyes weren’t quite fearful, but they weren’t far from it.

Phillips watched them work. They weren’t just soldiers; they were a brotherhood.

And tonight, they would need every ounce of that trust.

Phillips shifted his weight, his boots sinking into the wet soil beneath him. His thoughts drifted to the Highlands: frozen bogs, relentless wind, training so brutal it stripped them of anything soft. Keep low or die. That was the lesson drilled into them with live rounds snapping overhead, sleep a luxury stolen in muddy trenches.

He remembered the first time he and Mack had hauled themselves up the cliffs with bloodied hands, packs cutting into their shoulders. Morrison had collapsed at the top, lungs heaving, only to be yanked back to his feet by Cook.

There had been no sympathy. No reassurances. Only the expectation to stand.

And now, in the belly of occupied France, that training was the only thing keeping them alive.

Phillips met Mack’s gaze. A small nod passed between them—the kind that said everything without words.

Phillips exhaled slowly. “Mack—final check.”

Mack nodded and shifted his grip on his rifle. “I’d say let’s not keep Skorzeny waiting, but I doubt he’s the patient type.”

Phillips smirked, but it didn’t reach his eyes. The next hour would decide whether they lived or died.

He glanced at his watch again—0435 hours.

Time to ply their deadly trade.

With silent precision, the shadows of Number 4 Commando melted into the forest to hunt one of the Reich’s deadliest men.

Ghosts in the Trees

Normandy, France — June 1941, 0600 — Near the Château du Broutel

Captain Jack Phillips checked his watch. Ninety minutes on the move. Sixty to go.

The forest loomed around them—dense, watchful. Twisted roots waited for the careless; every step was a negotiation. The damp soil, heavy with moisture, threatened to betray them with the smallest misstep. Only the occasional rustle of leaves, the faint clink of gear, and the slow, controlled breaths of men carrying death on their backs broke the silence.

Something was wrong.

Phillips had spent enough nights creeping through enemy territory to know what a living forest sounded like. Tonight, that familiar chorus was gone—no owls, no rustling brush, no soft chitter of unseen life.

The woods were listening.

His gut tightened.

Phillips halted, posture suddenly rigid. He scanned the underbrush, head angled slightly.

He caught the flicker of uncertainty in the lead man’s stance—the subtle shift of weight. A soldier reacting to something just beyond the edge of his senses.

Mack crouched by a gnarled tree, his gloved fingers brushing bark. Then he froze.

Phillips crept closer. “What is it?”

Mack held up a clump of fur—thick, coarse, wedged deep in the grooves of the bark.

Not wolf. Too long. Too rough.

“I’ve seen bears in Canada,” Mack whispered, “but this is… different.”

He lifted it to his nose. Musk. Primal. Territorial.

Phillips followed his gaze up the trunk. The fur clung four, maybe five feet off the ground.

Too high for any normal animal.

A cold gust stirred the branches. Mack’s grip tightened on his rifle. The darkness beyond the trees seemed to thicken, pressing in, watching.

He flinched as a buried memory surfaced—his older brother locking him in a closet, laughing while he screamed.

Phillips raised his hand and clicked his commando-issue frog clicker. Twice.

The team froze.

Discipline. Precision. No wasted movement

Phillips sank into a crouch, steadying his breath. “Five minutes,” he whispered. “Gear check. Hydrate. Next stop is showtime.”

Sergeant Mack Taylor knelt beside him, melting into shadow. Phillips unsheathed his knife and sketched a rough map into the damp soil—driveway, staff car, sentry routes, likely positions of Skorzeny’s men. “Intel says one to two dozen men. Two trucks. One Mercedes,” Phillips whispered.

Mack studied the layout. “Plenty for a party. Still manageable. Same plan?”

Phillips nodded. “Team One—my group—takes the left flank, clears the sentries. Your lot handles the right. We rendezvous at the rear entrance. Breach together. In and out before they know what hit them.”

Mack grinned, grabbed a twig, and drew a crude teapot next to the Château.

“Tea’s waiting, Captain.”

Phillips exhaled and rolled his shoulders. Time to move. Thirty minutes later they reached the ridge. Below, the forest thinned, revealing the gravel drive that led to the Château. Phillips raised his binoculars. Two trucks. One black Mercedes.

Skorzeny was here.

Even better—no sign of reinforcements. He exhaled slowly, pulse steady. Everything lined up. “Eyes sharp,” he whispered. They waited. Fifteen minutes. Watching.

The sentries were lazy. Cigarette embers flared in the dark. Patrols looped predictably. Ten men moving. Two guarding the front. Good. We can work with this.

The Château du Broutel loomed, its once-elegant facade weathered by time. The Germans had claimed it, stripping away history and turning its halls into a machine of war. The original owners—the Longvilliers—were prisoners in their own home. Phillips had read the Resistance report. La Marquise de Longvilliers had passed intel at enormous risk. It was her message that confirmed Skorzeny’s location. And she had warned them of something else: Skorzeny wasn’t alone.

He would be in the master suite—with his mistress. Phillips turned to Mack and offered his hand. “See you at the rear entrance.”

“Save me a spot in line for that tea.”

With silent precision, the teams split.

They moved like whispers in the dark—leather creaking, leaves shifting, breath tight through parted lips. The sentries never saw them. The first went down—silenced with a blade. The second crumpled, garroted; breath snuffed. One by one the guards sank into the dirt.

Silent

Unseen

Joining the legion of shadows

The mission had begun.

Click

Private Luke Meadows wiped the sweat from his brow. The forest air was damp and cold, yet his nerves burned hot. Pressed flat to the earth, every muscle drawn taut as coiled wire, he belly-crawled toward the German sentry. Ten yards ahead, a cigarette ember pulsed in the dark—a fragile beacon of life, soon to be snuffed out.

A boot stomped. A throat cleared. Fabric shifted.

Each sound was a metronome, ticking toward the inevitable kill.

Luke slowed his breathing, every inhale measured. Silent. Calculated. Precision was everything.

He inched forward, fingers brushing damp leaves, breath barely parting his lips. One perfect moment. One perfect strike. Then—

Click.

His blood turned to ice. The damned commando frog clicker in his pocket had pressed against the ground.

A mistake. A small, stupid mistake.

The German sentry jerked, head snapping toward the sound. His cigarette tumbled from his lips, scattering embers into the dark.

Luke couldn’t move. Everything collapsed—training, instinct, mission. His mind screamed to act, to do something, but his body locked.

He hadn’t frozen like this since Coventry, when he was ten—since his father beat his mother again and again while he hid in the cupboard, too afraid to move.

The German’s eyes narrowed. His mouth opened, lungs swelling with the warning.

Thunk.

The sentry arched, gasping as steel slammed into his ribs. A strangled sound escaped—wet, barely a whisper.

A shadow slipped behind him. Smooth. Efficient. Stiletto sliding free, one hand clamping his mouth, lowering him in a controlled descent.

No sound. No struggle.

Just death, delivered with precision.

Luke’s pulse hammered against his ribs.

Phillips wiped his blade on the dead man’s coat—calm, methodical. Then he knelt, extending a hand.

“Might pay to keep that clicker in another spot, lad,” he muttered, a smirk curling his mouth, casual as if they were talking about the weather.

Luke exhaled shakily and gripped his hand. “Yes, sir.”

Phillips didn’t linger. No lecture. No scolding. Just the lesson.

The mission wasn’t over. And Luke Meadows swore he’d never make that mistake again.