July 28th, 2006 at 7:53 pm
The final book in a trilogy by Oliver North and Joe Musser is The Assassins. A couple of strange plot devices notwithstanding, it’s decent military fiction with little break in the action.
After a multi-headed Iranian terrorist attack that shuts down all Saudi oil production, Congress passes a bill to create a special, secret committee to select high value targets for assassination. The first ten terrorists are assigned after fearful deliberation to a Special Forces Unit for elimination. During the first stakeout, the SFU’s target is eliminated by the Iranian group, who plans to buy old Russian nuclear warheads and send them by plane and boat on suicide missions to major U.S. cities.
The book goes into good discussion about the dangers and moral issues of a standing assassination committee. The list of targets is tainted by the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee to cover-up campaign finances. As the plot switches gears into threat prevention the story takes us through military operations of not only the SFU but a submarine tracking some of the boats. There is a good subplot concerning a boy whose dad is gone all the time saving the world.
Assassins has a couple of distractions. Some of the names of the minor characters are pointedly coincidental: Supreme Court Chief Justice Anthony Scironi, a chief of staff with the last name Rose, a female Secretary of State with the same cadence in her name as Condi Rice, plus others I probably missed. The President and the main character, General Newman, are in a semi-secret international Christian society with an old man who gets revelations from God in dreams.
North and Musser keep the action going, satisfying the intellectual early and the military reader later. Though 526 pages the book is a quick and easy read. It deals with near-present issues without getting too much into the end-times scenarios.
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