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Now... it's no longer 'if'... but WHEN |
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To generations of Americans, the specter of the atomic bomb was their worst fear. Before the-mid 90s, a terrorist strike on home ground was unthinkable. However, an unprovoked attack puts a new face to the arsenals of war. After the terrorist attack in 1995, the Pentagon authorized the covert expansion of the PIDs, an elite counter-terrorist division culled from all of the nation’s resources. The coveted status of the first Primary Incursion and Destruction team has America’s brightest and best clamoring for entry. Colonel Robert Bracken’s assignment is to oversee the development and integration of the clandestine specialists based out of Hunter Field in Georgia. This fits perfectly with the newly formed plans of Bob’s long time girlfriend, Callie Franklin. Callie’s found an old plantation manor outside of Savannah. Since then, she’s been happily carving out their private little niche called Cypress Cove. Her only dream, is a haven for Bob when he finally transfers from Washington. That idyllic dream is destined to become a horrifying nightmare in one explosive afternoon. A shadowy tribal leader from Afghanistan, Adu Buwayda, intends to bring the richest country to its knees before him. Biological toxin is the poor man’s weapon of choice and Afghanistan is among the poorest nations in the world. He has carefully planned this ultimate coup. The time is now but the former wife of a dead friend has knowledge that will spell disaster for him and the Kush-Karan. He orders her assassination at any cost. The murder of a prominent attorney brings Special Agent Byron Rooles into a fragmented investigation. Backtracking, Agent Rooles learns of an aging secretary that died of a mysterious virus a few months ago. Then, a foreigner dies in a bungled robbery at the hands of his intended victim. It is a muddled web of disconnected occurrences. Yet, are they really disconnected? The more he learns, the less he knows. The only consistency is a thin line leading back to the former wife of a dead man and her boyfriend, Colonel Bracken. The Colonel’s girlfriend was a reluctant client of the targeted attorney and the dead secretary worked for her ex-husband. Now there’s another body, an Afghani, in the Colonel’s Washington apartment. In every case, nothing is missing but something has to be. Something crucial. During the course of the investigation, another face emerges. She was reported killed in Libya in 1986. So how can Fala Garadj be on the streets of New York almost ten years later? What is the connection? A dead man’s livid tattoo bridges the clues, forcing Agent Rooles and Colonel Bracken into an unlikely partnership. The conflict spins tighter for Byron Rooles in the rural swamps of southern Georgia. New information compels him to defy orders. His intent is to take Callie Franklin into protective custody. She is oblivious to the heightened tension in Washington or her place in the unfolding drama of international terrorism until the startling appearance of a clandestine foreign agent followed by a withering attack by heavily armed strangers intent on assassination. Hopelessly outnumbered, Byron and Callie flee into the hostile countryside, guided only by their instincts for survival. The swamp however, has deadly pitfalls of its own. Agent Rooles knows that she alone holds the key to the code that will unlock the terrorist plan, yet he is helpless to recover it. Callie is in the Intensive Care Unit of Savannah Memorial Hospital, comatose and near death from snakebite. The Nation’s best intelligence says that the terrorist timetable is the Moslem holy day, Ashura, and that a converted yacht is the final processing lab. Pinpointing its location is an orchestrated exercise in patience and perfection. There is no room for error. The nation now knows the terrible effects of the toxin. The accidental detonation of one device leaves sections of New Jersey a biological no-man’s land. Thousands have died with more casualties being reported as the contamination spreads. Colonel Bracken and Agent Rooles battle the clock as Bob struggles with the prospect of unplanned fatherhood as well as his own tangled paternity. They know they have only hours. Ashura falls on the 4th of July this year. A Category 3 hurricane is homing in on the southern Atlantic coastline. Every military force at the country’s disposal is poised to strike but the nature of the toxin makes the methods uncertain. Only one unit has the expertise and the cunning to stop them at sea. As the PIDs teams race into the maw of certain death, not one man wonders for his own safety. Consummate good and absolute evil battle on the bow of a rigged ship with the nation’s future teetering in the balance. As the seconds tick down, Bracken and Rooles work in concert to connect the clues and determine the correct disarmament sequence.
© 1999 |
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