Reviewed By: The Blind Monkey

My love affair with military fiction began in college. My first peek (yes, there were many to follow) was in my junior year with ‘United States Military Strategy and Weaponry Tactics’. As one of our MANY reading assignments, we were given an amazing fictional paperback on Pickett’s Charge and the battle of Gettysburg… I’ve actually spent the entire morning going through my files trying to find the title to share with you, but I’m just not THAT organized (it’s been a LONG time).

Anyhoo, that was the start of my love/hate affair with military strategy. I progressed along both non-fiction and alternate history lines, starting from the times of the Roman phalanx all the way up to modern tactical warfare. Eventually, I found myself where many do, in the modern world of fiction influenced by and centered around the military. Authors like Tom Clancy or Stephen Hunter, and of course, my favorite, Stephen Coonts.

If you can’t quite place the name, think Flight of the Intruder (No, not the pathetic excuse for a movie starring Rosanna Arquette as Callie, the book).

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And that brings us to today’s review. Although it’s good to learn from history, nowadays I enjoy the excitement that modern technology and a dangerous political climate adds to a story.

Stephen Coonts’ latest novel presents us with a thoroughly modern dilemma. The U.S. is prepared to annihilate an enemy with nuclear weapons in a conventional war. Billions are spent on precision weapons, guided missile systems, communications, and on armed forces that are the best equipped, trained, and led on earth. So well in fact, that no sane enemy would confront the United States in a conventional or nuclear battlefield. Which means that guerrilla warfare and terror weapons are the only alternatives.

Historically, nations have used chemical or biological weapons against an enemy only when the enemy lacked the means to retaliate. It was this threat that deterred Saddam Hussein from using chemical and biological weapons against allied troops in the Gulf War… but these days deterrence has fallen out of favor with the ‘politically correct’ American public. As such, the United States signed the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1993, thereby agreeing to remove chemical and biological weapons from its stockpiles.

But what’s to make third-world countries decide not to build biological and chemical weapons? In fact, the real question is.. doesn’t the treaty actually force major world powers to rid themselves of the very weapons that deter others from using them?

That’s right — this book is about Mutually Assured Destruction. And exploring the possibilities if chemical and biological weapons got into the wrong hands. It goes something like this:

A quick 90 miles from Florida, Fidel Castro lies dying. The power struggle for control of Cuba has begun. Meanwhile, the U.S. is engaged in an arms-control race in Paris and has finally decided to take care of the CBW warheads it has squirreled away at Guantanamo Bay.

Enter Rear Admiral Jake Grafton, a.k.a. ‘Cool Hand.’

The carrier United States is stationed off the southeast coast of Cuba, and has been ordered by the White House to ‘monitor’ the cargo ship secretly removing the warheads. But the ship mysteriously disappears under cloud cover and isn’t caught by the NSA’s sat photos. It’s up to Jake recover the warheads, and eliminate the threat from Cuba’s own weapons facilities and the powers that control them.

Veteran naval aviator ‘Cool Hand’ is one of the Blind Monkey’s ALL TIME favorite fictional characters, and a crucial one in this book. But only one. It also introduces a host of others, including an ailing Fidel Castro, Secret Police Chief Alejo Vargas, Jesuit priest and visionary Hector Sedano, and CIA safe-cracker Tommy Carmellini (you can BET we’ll see him again!).

This book has one of the most exciting campaigns I’ve ever followed. I kept wishing I had a map of the area so I could follow along better!! And it also has one of my favorite lines, ever.. “This guy is either Hector’s brother, or a liar of Clintonian dimensions!!” HAHAHAHA!

Oh, and two FABULOUS twists that I can’t believe I didn’t figure out, but there was so much going on I was totally floored!

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Now, the other Monkies keep giving me a hard time because they say my reviews are too positive. You’d think it was a CRIME to find really good books and want to tell others about them! Truth is, I haven’t read a Coonts novel in a few years and figured that, by this tenth book, he was just phoning it in. I even expected to stop everyone’s whining with a wicked rant of a review!

Unfortunately for them (but good for you), there’s not much to rant about in this one. I may be just a hack, but I loved it!! And I think you will to.

Hardcover - 384 pages 1 edition (August 1999) St Martins Pr (Trade); ISBN: 031220521X ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.44 x 9.60 x 6.50