About Sheepdogs
Sheepdogs is a globe-trotting thriller by Elliot Ackerman, published by Knopf in 2025, that moves through the underbelly of modern war, intelligence work, and off-the-books missions.
Skwerl and Cheese are down on their luck. Skwerl, resourceful like a squirrel, once worked for Ground Branch, the CIA’s elite paramilitary wing, before a raid in Afghanistan went bad. Big Cheese Aziz, a legendary pilot and his country’s Maverick, has been grounded by the fall of Kabul and is now working the night shift at a gas station.
When Skwerl recruits Cheese into an anonymous network of so-called sheepdogs, they enter a shadowy world between the sheep and the wolves, protecting prey from predator while earning a buck along the way.
Their mission is to repossess a private jet stranded on a remote African airfield. Their fee is a commission on the jet’s $5 million value. But nothing about the job adds up: their contact has gone missing, their handler is mysterious, and the real source of the money remains unclear.
Full of heart, humor, espionage, and moral ambiguity, Sheepdogs is an adventure through modern conflict, corruption, loyalty, violence, and the blurred line between protection and predation.
