It's two years since the debacle in Iraq. Logan West and John Quick, former Force Recon Marines, are now part of an FBI task force. They are tasked to an obscure Aleutian to run down a rumored Russian black ops team hunting for some highly classified US technology. This information-finding mission quickly degenerates to a shoot out aboard the Arctic Glide research ship anchored at Amaknak Island. But the technology was successfully grabbed.
West and Quick track the theft to a village in Spain, again arriving too late. The technology has been secreted to a North Korean ship steaming across the Med toward Africa. With help from Spain and the CIA's Madrid station (in particular, Cole Matthews), they intercept, board, and search.
Wrong again. The ship was a red herring. Bad intel. Or was it good intel for the other side? The team returns to Spain only to get the correct intel that the device in question is on a Gulfstream whose flight plan is for Sudan.
The technology in question is called ONERING (after Lord of the Rings). It controls an American space-based weapon that can target land-based targets. And it's just been activated. It damages a Chinese-Sudanese oil field on the border of Sudan and (soon to be) independent South Sudan.
About the same time, a small terrorist ring attacks the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. The FBI quickly learns the the attack is a diversion away from the real target, a rare elements mining operation in the nearby Nevada desert.
When West and Quick arrive in Sudan, they are quickly targeted, but not by the Sudanese. These commandos are highly trained Chinese. West and Matthews are taken captive and sent to an off the books prison holding mostly Darfur rebels. The Black Hole is a lawless compound that, mostly, entertains its captives with life or death battles in a boxing ring.
And just how do the leaders of this plan know so much about West, Quick, and Matthews?
While Quick and the CIAs Sudan station rush to find West and Matthews, the Chinese and Sudanese who are complicit in this attempt to rush the US and China in to a conflict find themselves in the crosshairs of LEGION - one of the CIAs most lethal and entirely autonomous assassins. Quick and LEGION join forces with SEAL Team 6 to raid the hidden site of Chinese commandos, obtain ONERING, rescue West and Matthews, and find the leaders of this global conspiracy.
Former Marine Betley is setting up a series of (he says 5 books) that pits the globalists vs. the nationalists. Someone who sits at the 'new world order' table is trying to get the superpowers at each other's throats. Once they've fought to a stalemate, the 'globalists' will swoop in with global control and end all this ridiculous nationalist control. It's going to happen eventually anyway.
The current President offers West, Quick, Matthews, and the LEGION asset carte blanche to deal find out just who has the cash, support, and inclination to manipulate current world leaders into a global conspiracy to bring about this new world order. Call them ARES.
While the title of Oath of Honor may sound like a bad Steven Segal movie, it's far from that. Bentley shines in his presentation of every aspect, good and bad, of a firefight. The detail, the tools, the skills, the horror. He races West and Quick from Alaska to Spain to the Med to various locales in Sudan (with the FBI in Vegas) finally back to DC in pulse pounding fashion.
This is one kick ass book, folks. If I was required to cite something weak, it might be that some (and only some, I might add) of the dialogue seems a little forced. But that's hardly a reason to pass on this. On the heels of his first novel, Overwatch, Betley has skillfully provided we thriller readers with another winner. Thriller readers should accept him as quickly as they accepted Alex Berenson, another relative new author into the fold.
And mercifully, he's slyly advised us on five more West/Quick thrillers. Can't wait. Assuming #3 is as good as #s 1 and 2, Betley will soon join my power rotation.
As always, thanks to the good folks at Emily Bestler Books/Atria Books (imprints of Simon and Schuster) for the advance copy for review. As I've said in some earlier reviews, you should trust in Emily Bestler Books. If published by them, it's a safe bet it'll be a winner. I've yet to be disappointed.
Available March 14, 2017. Put in your orders now.
ECD
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