Ten years ago, a CIA extraction team of Isabella, Suzanne,
and Jason with overwatch by Vanessa rescued a Senator Matthews who had been
abducted when on a peacekeeping mission.
Fast forward ten years. Isabella has been appointed as a
Chief Supervisor on Cyberterrorism. She and Jason were married with twin 6yo
boy and girl, but not long after their birth, Jason died of pancreatic cancer.
Suzanne is still in the field, and Vanessa still works for Isabella as her
confidant.
Andre, a nerdy Russian programmer has been spirited into the
USA with an assignment that must be fulfilled if he ever expects to see his
family again. He is under the thumb of this Yuri, a man of little patience but
grandiose dreams for Mother Russia.
Isabella is out for her usual Sunday morning jog leaving the
kids with her mother, herself a retired CIA analyst. Isabella makes the turn
back and is attacked. But the mutt sent to ambush her was far from being up to
the task, is easily bested and Isabella hauls him in to a Langley detention
room. She gets nothing from him until he says neither she nor her family are
safe.
That sends Isabella speeding toward home only to find it
empty with some evidence of a struggle. When she returns to the detention
center, one of her team, John Beck, tells her the prisoner swallowed a cyanide
pill hidden in his teeth, an old KGB tactic.
Isabella’s kids and her mom have been missing for 12hrs. No
clues. Isabella needs sleep but can’t go home so a room in a nearby hotel is
reserved. During the night, mutt #2 tries to kill Isabella. He fares worse.
Isabella doesn’t capture him.
The full force of the CIA is brought to bear, but the
details are kept highly compartmentalized to Isabella’s core team. Big questions:
Why was Isabella targeted and just what is coming?
Members of a Kansas credit union find that their accounts
have all been emptied. The entire computer system of a rural Arkansas (or was
it Mississippi?) EMT unit is shut down. Tests to convince Yuri that the virus
works and to keep Andre’s family alive. In theory, this new virus has the potential to
bring down the bulk of the American electronic infrastructure.
The core team has to consider someone knew: 1) when and
where Isabella was running. 2) that the kids were home with her mom. 3) that
the first hit failed. And 4) where she’d be spending the night. The only
conclusion:
A mole.
So now, the events of these couple days added a new level to
the hunt. Is the mole can be found, then Isabella’s family can be found.
Isabella is sure her core team is clean, so she starts looking for the mole, or
even more ominous, the hunt for moles.
This book reminded me of two earlier books that, sort of,
mined the same themes:
First is a Tom Clancy book, the title of which escapes me, where one part of the plot involves a computer takedown of Wall
Street. Countdown America might be
thought of as the plans and preparation necessary to eventually press the ‘go’
key for Clancy’s book. Big difference here is the mole hunt where Clancy’s book
was more about finding the source and fixing what happened.
Second is Brad Thor’s Athena Project where Thor stepped away
from Scot Harvath and presented an all-female team of deadly operatives.
Personally, I thought Athena Project was Thor’s weakest effort, but he keeps
bringing back one or two characters from time to time and that’s OK. The core
characters in this book are mostly female, but not entirely. And when it comes
just to the characters, I found Isabella and Suzanne, et al. a better unit
than the Athena team.
MC Fox presents a fast-paced story about a mom who will do
“anything to get the bastard” responsible. An easy 2-day cruise read. But something
was missing. We find out ‘who’. We find out ‘what’. But we never find out ‘why’
only Isabella was targeted. There are so many other professionals ‘out there’ both
in and out of government with similar responsibilities as Isabella. Why just
her? One might think that the ‘why’ is the hook for a part 2 of an Isabella
Bendel series. Based on the way the book ended, I’m not so sure. But I could be
wrong. Been wrong plenty of times so why not this time, too.
ECD
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