If you are familiar with Dale Brown’s books – particularly those that feature Patrick McLanahan as the protagonist – then you will already be aware that this book is chock full of whiz-bang military hardware, outlandish military threats to the United States and save-the-country heroics by McLanahan. In this case the bad guys are the Iranians and they aren’t threatening the U.S. as a whole, just the U.S.’s aircraft carrier group in the Persian Gulf. The action kicks off with the Iranians detecting and destroying a U.S. spy ship and capturing 13 of the “civilian” crewmen – most of whom were, in fact, spies. Nevermind that the U.S. was doing something that is really shouldn’t have been doing; we needed to kick some butt to get the Iranians back in line. But how?
The obvious answer: take an experimental B-2 strategic bomber, equip it with the latest in high-tech gizmos, assign it to a super-secret intelligence agency and assemble a crew of mostly civilian crewmen, led by McLanahan, to act at the “tip of the spear.” Yes, I know this all sounds highly implausible and it is. So if you aren’t willing to suspend your disbelief and go along for the whole implausible ride, then just forget about this book.
It is wordy and Brown always gets way deep into details of military hardware that may or may not be accurate. So the appeal is mostly to military geeks and those who like military escapism.
I had a hard time letting go of my skepticism on this one.
4 out of 10.