- Thor, Brad.
Takedown.
New York: Pocket Books, 2006.
ISBN 978-1-4516-3615-4.
-
This is the fifth in the author's
Scot
Harvath series, which began with
The Lions of Lucerne (October 2010).
In this episode, Harvath, an agent for a covert branch of the
U.S. Department of Homeland Security, completes a snatch
and exfiltration of a terrorist bombmaker granted political
asylum in Canada, delivers him into custody in Manhattan,
and plans to spend a lazy fourth of July holiday in the Big
Apple with one of his closest friends, a Delta Force operative
recently retired after a combat injury. Their bar-hopping agenda
is rudely interrupted by an escalating series of terrorist attacks
which culminate in bridge and tunnel bombings which,
along with sniper and rocket-propelled grenade attacks on boat
and air traffic, isolate Manhattan from the mainland and inflict
massive civilian casualties.
As Harvath establishes contact with his superiors, he discovers he
is the only operative in the city and, worse, that a sequence
of inexplicable and extremely violent attacks on targets
irrelevant to any known terrorist objective seems to indicate
the attacks so far, however horrific, may be just a diversion and/or
intended to facilitate a further agenda. Without support or hope
of reinforcement from his own agency, he recruits a pick-up team
of former special operators recovering from the physical and
psychological consequences of combat injuries he met at the
Veterans Affairs hospital New York as the attacks unfolded and
starts to follow the trail of the terrorists loose in Manhattan.
As the story develops, layer after layer of deception is revealed,
not only on the part of the terrorists and the shadowy figures
behind them and pulling their strings, but also within the U.S.
government, reaching all the way to the White House. And if
you thought you'd heard the last of the dinky infovore Troll and
his giant
Ovcharkas,
he's back!
This is a well-crafted thriller and will keep you turning the pages.
That said, I found it somewhat odd that a person with such a sense of
honour and loyalty to his friends and brothers in arms as Harvath
would so readily tolerate deception among his superiors which led
directly to their deaths, regardless of the purported “national
security” priorities. It is indicative of how rapidly
the American Empire is sliding into the abyss that outrageous
violations of human rights, the rule of law, and due process
which occur in this story to give it that
frisson of edginess that Thor
seeks in his novels now seem tame compared to remote-controlled
murder by missile
of American citizens in nations with which the U.S.
is not at war ordered by a secret committee on the sole
authority of the president. Perhaps as the series progresses, we'll
encounter triple zero agents—murder by mouse click.
As usual, I have a few quibbles.
- The president's press secretary does not write
his speeches. This is the job of speechwriters,
one or more of whom usually accompanies the
president even on holiday. (Chapter 18)
- The Surgeon General is not the president's personal
physician. (Chapter 42)
- If I were rappelling through a manhole several stories
into the bowels of Manhattan, I think I'd use a high
tensile strength tripod rather than the “high tinsel”
tripod used in chapter 59. Now if the bad guy was way up
in a Christmas tree….
- In chapter 100, the Troll attaches a “lightweight
silencer” to his custom-built rifle firing the
.338 Lapua
sniper round. Even if you managed to fit a suppressor to
a rifle firing this round and it effectively
muffled the sound of the muzzle blast (highly dubious), there
would be no point in doing so because the bullet remains
supersonic more than a kilometre from the muzzle (depending
on altitude and temperature), and the shock wave from the bullet
would easily be audible anywhere in Gibraltar. Living
across the road from a rifle range, I'm acutely aware
of the sound of supersonic bullets coming more or less
in my direction, and these are just
5.56 and
7.62 NATO,
not Lapua “reach out and whack someone” ammo.
November 2011 