Remote village in Yemen. A small Doctors Without Borders
team is trying to care for a small village that has been afflicted with a
SARS-like virus. An American Doctor, a German nurse, and a French
microbiologist can only treat the villagers symptomatically. No cure. No hope.
ISIS is on the ropes. Command and control is failing.
Leadership is dying faster than they can be replaced. Sayid Halabi is one of
the few remaining, now hiding in a northern Iraq set of caves. ISIS leadership
has nightmares: the bearded face of Mitch Rapp. When Rapp’s team tracks down
Halabi, the cave is brought down by massive number of grenades killing all within.
Except Halabi. Despite considerable injury, he crawls out an exit tunnel known
only to him. After action reports find plenty of bodies and blood, but not 100% proof
that Halabi was killed. Assumption by the media was that no one could’ve survived.
Rapp returns to his home in rural Virginia to a country fractured
by partisanship politics of hate. He wonders if this is the same country to
which he has risked his life for the past 20 years. President Alexander is
coming to the end of his 2nd term and the chair of the senate
intelligence committee, Christine Barnett, is the opposition’s front running
candidate. She despises everything Rapp and CIA chief Irene Kennedy stand for
and have done.
Barnett is an expert at the blame game. Kennedy and Rapp are her
prime targets. Her hated is all-consuming. Perceived offenses committed by Rapp
have pushed him off the CIA payroll and into the role of a contractor. Even
more off the books than usual. And while he still communicates with Irene
Kennedy, he has an even longer leash than usual. He frequently thinks that
cutting it altogether would be best.
The medical community knows about that village in Yemen. So
do the Saudis who want to firebomb the village to stop the virus in its
tracks. But if Saudi intelligence knows, you can bet what’s remaining of ISIS does,
too. Halabi gathers a few trusted troops, goes to the village, captures the
medical team, herds any remaining villagers into a building and burns it. He
has plans for the medical group. Especially the microbiologist.
Halabi is a planner. Of big things. Plans that he feels his
God has given him and only him to carry out. He manages to negotiate with a rising
cartel leader in Mexico to transport middle east heroin into the US. But
he changes the deal. He wants a specific package to be smuggled in with the
pure heroin to be delivered to a specific recipient in southern California.
The special task for the microbiologist? Anthrax. Getting
across the border should’ve been the easy part. Unfortunately, a random test of
a NASA satellite shows the tunnel and the shipment is intercepted. A second
misfortune was the when a few of the bricks of product are pulled for
examination, the anthrax brick was also selected. Dumb luck. Bad for the cartel/Halabi,
but good for the DEA.
The delivery guys were captured, but they are hardened
coyotes and the DEA isn’t getting anything out of them. The chain of command in
Washington can’t seem to get things done so Mitch goes to the safe house where
the drivers are being held and shows the DEA what real interrogation means. Which
forces him to run to Mexico to avoid prosecution and the media storm that would
follow.
Using long perfected skills, he manages to insert himself
into the cartel (that one sentence is about 25% of the book). He wants to stop another anthrax delivery, but convinces the
cartel he is in it for the money because the US has shit on him one time too
many.
When Halabi’s next shipment arrives in Mexico, it’s not
anthrax. It’s six devotees to the cause. Seems Halabi didn’t kill everyone in the
village. He isolated a couple and used a group of suicide bombers, not to wear
a vest, but to be exposed to the virus, get transported across the border and
infect population and transportation centers in the US. Halabi’s goal is to
make it look like his God has struck directly at the Great Satan.
This 18th installment combines Rapp’s battles in
the middle east with cartel-based trafficking. And it kicks some serious butt.
Not just in the deserts, but in Mexico and the halls of the Senate. Rapp and
Kennedy are faced with multiple fronts with no military or political support
either from the US or any other country be it friend of foe. A no-win situation.
Little probability of success. Rapp really is out on the weakest of limbs. Terrific
thriller. Absolutely terrific. You have to wonder how many more villains Kyle
Mills can dream up. But fans can only hope he keeps doing just that.My favorite parts were the push-pull in Washington, DC.
East Coast Don
p.s. buried in the book is the very best job description of those
elected to the House and Senate: do anything to ‘enhance their status, increase
personal wealth, and destroy the careers of rivals. Everything else is just
noise.” Sure seems like it applies to Rapp's world as much as our own.
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