On a typical summer night up and down the east coast, eight prominent Muslims living in the US are murdered. Mostly businessmen. Within about an hour, the FBI’s Taskforce HYDRA no longer has anyone to watch. This taskforce had been working for a couple years doing the painstaking work of tracking the flow of Muslim money from the US being laundered and funneled into Al Qaeda. And these 8 victims were suspected of being the traffickers of millions. The quiet life in the greater Portland, Maine area is about to come to an abrupt halt for financial analyst Daniel Petrovich and his wife Jessica.
General Terrence Sanderson, US Army (ret.) used to run an
off the books outfit for the Pentagon called Black Flag. That’s the term spy
agencies use to identify bad guys targeted for execution. And his unit was
good, really good. They’d taken out leaders of organizations unfriendly to the
US all over the world, most recently in the former Yugoslavia. Problem in that
some do-gooder found out about Black Flag and informed Congress. To avoid the
publicity, Black Flag was shut down, Sanderson retired under suspicious
circumstances and the operatives mostly tried to go home and live ordinary
lives. Problem is that most had done some pretty bad things using some even
worse methods.
Daniel gets a call from Sanderson. One job. Quick. Local.
Then come down to DC for a meet. Daniel knows that if he does the job, he’ll
have to go completely off the grid and that includes leaving Jessica, which he
isn’t happy about. Not one bit.
As Daniel heads to DC, some adroit detective work by both
the FBI and the CIA have tracked Daniel to Baltimore and start to close the net
around him. But old skills die hard and Daniel escapes multiple attempts at his
capture eventually meeting the reclusive Sanderson who has a proposition.
Consider this book to be the back story to a series of books
about Black Flag by Konkoly. And if the next ones are a slickly presented as
this one, it should be one helluva ride. This would’ve been another one sitting
book if life hadn’t interfered. The story jumps quickly and smoothly between
the FBI, CIA, and Pentagon in DC to Baltimore, West Virginia, Connecticut,
Boston, and Maine as the chase accelerates and the noose tightens, but never
quite catches Daniel. Some of the strings pulled by Sanderson might be a bit
hard to fathom, but as Johnny Carson used to say about some of his rapidly
failing bits, “buy the premise, buy the bit.” And if you buy the premise, the payoff
comes in the numerous reveals as the author ties up the story. This is my
first book by Konkoly, which is surprising considering the body of work he’s
published is right up my alley, especially a series he has on what can only be considered as being about apocalyptic
preppers. That sounds interesting too. The guy’s got about a dozen novels,
novellas, and singles and the idiots who manage purchasing at my county library
have seen fit to buy not a single title. Aggravating, indeed. I’ll find more.
Count on it.
ECD
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