Maximum Devastation
Submitted by: Neil Hall
Category: Books
In Paris, an international arms dealer has arranged to sell a backpack nuclear weapon that should have been destroyed when the U.S. Army's Special Forces unit was disbanded. Finding and disarming the bomb appears hopeless until NSA Agent Jake McCune, a decorated Vietnam veteran, receives an incredible ransom demand for disclosing the bomb's location and code. The ransom is delivered with little time remaining on the nuclear clock for McCune and his partner, IOA Special Agent Leanza Bardot of France, to find a way to break through the CIA's wall of deception and treachery that conceals the identity of the man who in threatening to destroy far more than America's relationship with France.
About the author:
Neil is a Vietnam War veteran, having served in the United States Navy, a former detective sergeant on the New Orleans Police Department, and is an assistant district attorney for the Parish of St. Tammany, Louisiana. The idea for my novel came about when my son, a U.S. Army veteran, was deployed to Iraq during Operation Desert Storm. There is no doubt that Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was largely motivated by the desire to take control of Kuwait's vast oil reserves, although the oil reserves in Iraq are considered the world's fifth-largest proven oil reserves, with 140 billion barrels. Although fiction, Maximum Devastation foretells of a conspiracy to take over the power and oil in Iraq, and the recent headlines in the news reports that Iraqi soldiers and helicopter gunships battled Sunni militants for a third day for control of Iraq's largest oil refinery, the Beiji facility, which normally produces about 300,000 barrels per day.