A plane carrying an American arms inspection team mysteriously crashes in Russia. Not long afterward, a senior American diplomat is daringly assassinated. The warning shots have been fired. A bold gambit ti destroy America as a world power is well under way.
Its architect is Prince Ibrahim al Saud, a member of the Middle East's most influential royal family and the brilliant head of a multi-billion-dollar global conglomerate. He is also "The Paymaster." With his vast, unparalleled wealth, he bankrolls and directs the most lethal terrorist groups on earth to launch the most murderous attack ever conceived. His henchman is Rolf Ulrich Reichardt, once a feared agent of the East German Stasi, now a paid assassin, secure in the conviction that raw, cold power is the force closest to divinity itself.
Against Ibrahim and his allies stand two veteran American operatives, U.S. Army Colonel Peter Thorn and FBI Special Agent Helen Gray. Together, they follow the faint traces of Ibrahim's scheme from Russia, across Europe, and finally home to America--all the while on the run from the very people they're fighting to protect.
Ibrahim plans to wreak devastation on the United States in a single, apocayptic millisecond, altering history his way forever. And he knows that Thorn and Gray, though formidable, are still human. They can be trapped, caught, and killed.
The Operation is in its final moments. Now nothing can stop it...
Its architect is Prince Ibrahim al Saud, a member of the Middle East's most influential royal family and the brilliant head of a multi-billion-dollar global conglomerate. He is also "The Paymaster." With his vast, unparalleled wealth, he bankrolls and directs the most lethal terrorist groups on earth to launch the most murderous attack ever conceived. His henchman is Rolf Ulrich Reichardt, once a feared agent of the East German Stasi, now a paid assassin, secure in the conviction that raw, cold power is the force closest to divinity itself.
Against Ibrahim and his allies stand two veteran American operatives, U.S. Army Colonel Peter Thorn and FBI Special Agent Helen Gray. Together, they follow the faint traces of Ibrahim's scheme from Russia, across Europe, and finally home to America--all the while on the run from the very people they're fighting to protect.
Ibrahim plans to wreak devastation on the United States in a single, apocayptic millisecond, altering history his way forever. And he knows that Thorn and Gray, though formidable, are still human. They can be trapped, caught, and killed.
The Operation is in its final moments. Now nothing can stop it...
A believable, breath-taking thriller. I could not put it down until the resolution - the unexpected ending. Written pre-9/11, it foreshadows the terrorist threat that haunts the US today.
three stars
