About the Author

Samuel Hill was born on July 4, 1959 in a small town in upstate New York. The son of a foundry worker and stay-at-home mom, Sam, the middle child of six, was brought up in the Catholic faith. With a diet of ketchup sandwiches for breakfast and macaroni-milk-and-butter dinners, he learned at a very early age what gratitude meant. At age eight, he was shot by his father, a violent alcoholic, in a fit of rage. That incident distinctly imprinted on his mind what it felt like to be afraid and vulnerable with no chance of anyone coming to help. That predisposed him for his future life in the military.

At age 15, Sam moved out of the house into the woods which taught him valuable skills about survival and ingenuity. If you wanted comfort, you had to work for it. If you wanted “things,” you had to find a way to either make the money to buy them or build it yourself. But the most important lesson he learned was to never trust anyone, no matter how close they were to you. All of these early lessons in life molded him into a life of Top Secret, Special Compartmented Intelligence (TS-SCI).

At age 17, he enlisted in the military in the delayed entry program, leaving for boot camp at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri in the fall of 1976. Follow-on training moved him rapidly to Ft. Huachuca, AZ for the Advanced Cryptologic and Communications School, Ft. Devens, MA School of Morse Code Intercept and Direction Finding, the Defense Language Institute/Foreign Language Center at the Presidio of Monterey, CA, along with many other courses and schools, some of which are still classified, including many tactical military training courses meant to instill those very lessons he learned as a child.

In 1977, Sam served 110 miles behind the Iron Curtain in the walled in city of West Berlin for the National Security Agency (NSA) targeting Soviet illicit agent operatives, operating in the Western world and specifically, Soviet Military Special Operations forces, (Spetznaz) operating throughout the East Bloc nations of the Warsaw Pact. The frustration of the Wall providing “safe haven” for illicit agents led Mr. Hill to volunteer to move into deeper, darker, and more classified missions in the East Bloc and the Soviet Union. His success led him to become known as the “go to guy” for other intelligence agencies.

Operation Eagle Claw in the desert of Iran was his first “public tactical mission” and upon the disastrous conclusion, he was tapped to brief then-President Ronald Reagan about the “soldier perspective.” At the completion of the briefing, Samuel was given a direct appointment and lateral transfer into the Army Chief Warrant Officer training program. Upon completion of the complex and brutal training, “Chief” as he was forever more known, returned directly to Europe to become the Current Intelligence Operations Officer for the Deputy Director, Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Europe. In 1989, he returned to Ft. Bragg, N.C. and deployed as the Special Operations Liaison Officer for the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Group during Operation Just Cause in Panama. Immediately upon completion of the mission and after losing three Navy Special Warfare Operators at Patilla Airfield in Panama (KIA), along with ten more casualties, Chief and his team deployed immediately to Liberia for a Non-Combatant Evacuation Operation (NEO) to provide direct intelligence support to Special Operations forces evacuating civilian dependents and non-combatants from the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia prior to a full blown civil war outbreak. The immense success of these two operations set a fast paced operational tempo setting the standard for all future operations in Bosnia, Haiti, Bogota, El Salvador, Guatemala, Zaire, Rwanda, Somalia, Egypt, the Sinai Peninsula, hostage rescue operations, and combat operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Chief was seriously injured by friendly fire in a non-disclosed location in the Middle East which is documented in the book series, “Six Days to Zeus.” Book one, Alive Day, has been optioned by Phoenix Pictures with Oscar nominated producer Mike Medavoy (The Thin Red Line and seven other best picture Oscars) along with executive director Phillip Noyce (Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, Salt) at the helm. The rest of the books in the series, due to the classified nature of the missions and non-disclosure agreements, are currently undergoing the Pentagon Pre-Publication Security Review process.