One Rough Man by Brad Taylor

If you are born to a couple of flower children who give you the name Nephilim Logan, I'm guessing that, like that boy named Sue, you learn to fight.

Nephilim grows up to be Pike Logan, a team leader in the Taskforce, a highly classified black ops force that operates with an unlimited budget and minimal oversight that if discovered would likely bring down the current POTUS cuz such a force is slightly unconstitutional. During Pike's last mission, his wife and child wander into the wrong place at the wrong time. Pike fails at every attempt at rehab and counseling electing instead to hide out on a rundown sailboat in Charleston.

Meanwhile, a College of Charleston archeology prof is doing his best Indiana Jones in Guatemala looking into the demise of the Mayans, but his team ends up stumbling onto an ancient Mayan weapon that causes almost immediate pulmonary collapse. A local drug runner sees potential millions, but his guests, a couple Muslims trying to arrange transport into the US, also see an opportunity.

The problem is that the prof has the GPS setting of the deadly powder and when being interrogated by the drug kingpin, blurts out that he sent the unit to his niece Jennifer back in Charleston. Well, she and friends are heading out to a club where a couple frat boys hit on them when this grungy local (i.e. Pike) kind of tells the boys the error of their ways right about the time a couple thugs start to take an interest in Jennifer.

Pike manages to keep Jennifer out of the hands of the hired guns and thus begins the real adventure looking for Jennifer's uncle in Guatemala, then following and running from the muslim terrorists into Belize, Norway, and finally Bosnia. Pike obviously should be pretty resilient once he succumbs to Jennifer's pleas for help, but Jennifer also turns out to be pretty resourceful when that action gets frantic.

I will admit that after my last entry, I initially thought the quality of writing was almost amateurish. And seeing as how this is Taylor's first effort, I would probably forgive him. Once the real chase got going, the pace of the book picked up dramatically as did my connection with Pike and Jennifer's situation.

Turns out Taylor spent the better part of his 21 years in the military's special ops retiring as a Lt. Col. Based on the number of dead ends, goofs, screw ups, and generally making it up as they go, I'm going to guess that Taylor has inserted more real world SpecOps issues than most international thrillers. So, while I'd still say that Taylor may not be enough just yet to be added to my power rotation, I will pick up his next Pike Logan book.

And I hope Jennifer is back.

East Coast Don