The Crimea has become one of the most dangerous places on the planet as it could spark a war that no one really wants, but for some that is exactly what they’re counting on.  Dark Zone is the fourth book of the Op-Center reboot as original series author Jeff Rovin joins George Galdorisi as Op-Center is faced with rogue elements in Ukraine looking to start a war with Russia that will force NATO to join.

A female Ukrainian agent meets with the former U.S. ambassador in New York to get information about Russian military movements and is murdered by a Russian assassin then her fellow agent apart of the Ukrainian embassy is also murdered by the same assassin.  The U.S. ambassador learning of his friend’s murder gets in contact with Op-Center about his conversation with her and that her apparent murderer keeps calling him with her phone.  Director Williams sends a two-man team to meet the ambassador only for them to save his life from the assassin and his accomplice.  Meanwhile in Russia, Putin appoints an ambitious yet cautious general to command an enlarged military base to project so much power against Ukraine that they will simply be defeated mentally.  Unbeknownst to Russia is that a famous Ukrainian tank commander has set a trap for them which included the appearance online of a VR program of their huge military base which led to the murders in New York.  Williams and Op-Center after finding the VR program come to the conclusion that a rogue faction in the Ukrainian military is planning to start a war between Russian and NATO with an attack on the base that will cause Russia to attack Ukraine.  The Special Forces team is sent to the region to observe but in route they find the team that is to attack the base and send the force to intercept them.  The Ukrainian commander leads a large assembly of tanks—out of nowhere—towards the border and the Russian commander response by leading his tanks to the border, leaving the base open for attack through the Op-Center Special Forces team is able to stop them just outside the Russian base though the Ukrainian team leader is killed by a sniper which causes a grenade explosion.  The Russian commander is ordered back to the base, already relieved of command due to failing to secure his base; the retreat of the Russians from the border is a victory for the Ukrainian commander even though the attack on the base didn’t happen as his goal was to embarrass the big bad bear.  Williams and Op-Center are happy to prevent a war, but they decide to prevent the next Russian assassin to take up station in New York by outing him to the NYPD who threaten to leave or die as a terrorist.

This was a great military-political thriller for anything connected with Ukraine and Russia, but Op-Center and their Special Forces team are just around.  Honestly if this book did not have anything connected with Op-Center written in it this would have been a great exciting read, but because of the Op-Center stuff in it this is a middling book.  Everything connected with Op-Center just felt like it was put in there because this was an Op-Center book, not that anything was particularly bad but as I got further into the book I cared less about what was happening in and around Op-Center or what they were going to do and see if the Ukrainian plan would work in anyway.  I guess Rovin and Galdorisi were showing that sometimes Op-Center is blind to the realities on the ground and can sometimes only do little things to protect U.S. interests but that would effectively undermine the organization from a reader’s viewpoint so, I’m just confused as to the structure of this book.

Dark Zone is a mishmash book with one great story element and one that was just meh, unfortunately it was the series titular organization and their personnel that were the meh story element not that they were bad but because they weren’t interesting.  Jeff Rovin in his return to the Op-Center series and George Galdorisi is what appears to be his last effort created a Ukrainian-Russian mini-conflict but totally failed to be relevance to Op-Center existence in a book in its own series.

There is trouble in paradise as oil, murder, and long-lived shadowy cabals overshadow Trinidad just as UpLink is setting up an installation.  Wild Card is the eighth and final installment of the Power Plays series written by Jerome Preisler as Pete Nimec goes to Trinidad on a working vacation and steps into international intrigue while suspended Tom Ricci goes renegade to rescue a kidnapped daughter for a small-time Mexican cartel leader.

Over two centuries ago, a French nobleman living on Trinidad and an English pirate form a partnership that their descendants continue by selling oil to rogue nations that the United States have put an embargo on.  A Trinidadian Jarvis Lenard escapes from a rogue element within a high-end resort’s security force after his cousin attempted to blow the whistle and was murdered, staying for weeks in a nature preserve causing fits to the rouge security force.  Pete Nimec is sent to look at the new UpLink project in Trinidad as well as figure out about the mysterious emails they received, he sees an oil transfer not knowing at the time what he saw but later figures it out, but the rogue security teams aims to kill him and his wife while they’re enjoying the resort.  Nimec and his wife escape on a boat, making their way to the nature preserve where Lenard is hiding and swims out to them as Sword helicopters come in and scare off the rogue security team’s helicopter.  Meanwhile Tom Ricci is on leave from UpLink after saving New York City because he did so without letting local, state, and federal authorities as well as the company know what was happening.  Ricci links up with the former DEA agent that has helped him on two previous occasions, helping save a kidnapped young woman whose father is a Mexican cartel leader while starting a friendship with Julia Gordian.

Unlike the previous book in the series, the three subplots that were not only worth their print on paper but came together to create a satisfying whole.  The first and only prologue in the series that showed the creation of the centuries-old partnership between the families of a French nobleman and an English pirate that had their descendants coming up with this oil smuggling scheme that is found out.  While the character development was sparse for returning characters, one-off characters had development put into them—especially Jarvis.  If this was written to be a quick page turner it succeeded but given the scattered shot subplots not only in this book but the previous one the well of ideas had run out for the series.

Wild Card is the final book of the Power Plays series, the ending of which was written in a way so that Jerome Preisler could either continue it or not depending on the publisher.  While a drastic improvement over the previous book in the series, this book showed that the series did not have enough legs to continue.

After making a huge propaganda killing against the United States, a terrorist leader is incensed when a retaliatory strike hits too close to home and makes his war even more personal. Scorched Earth is the third book of the Op-Center reboot and the first exclusively by George Galdorisi as retired Admiral Chase Williams coordinates his Op-Center team in fighting the war on terror that has suddenly become personal on both sides.

General Bob Underwood—a special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL—is kidnapped after his security detail is massacred then hours later is beheaded on live television. American forces retaliate with a strike on Mosul resulting in the death of the ISIS leader's son, his father promises vengeance. A homegrown terrorist cell kidnaps the admiral who oversaw the strike on ISIS but are accidentally foiled in their attempted to send him to Mosul to be killed and retreat to a hideaway in rural Maryland. Based off information that it’s Geek Team Op-Center’s SEAL team is sent to Iraq to investigate all the aircraft delivering to the city, but come up empty resulting in the Geek Team backtracking and the terrorist cell and finding their location in Maryland. Op-Center’s CIRG team locates the house and rescues the admiral while taking out half of the terror cell. Meanwhile the admiral’s son, a SEAL himself, believing the Navy fumbled the ball goes AWOL to Iraq with help from an old teammate and infiltrates the ISIS headquarters in Mosul but is captured. The SEAL team, with information from the Geek Team, with a contingent of Rangers rescues the prodigal son while shaming the ISIS leader.

Like the previous book this was quickly moving story was an engaging read from start to finish, especially the first two-thirds of the book when the kidnapping of the admiral was the main plot. However, once his son decided to go rogue the end of the book was relatively telegraphed paint-by-the numbers ending. Yet despite the “going rogue” cliché and the ISIS leader’s desire to “go live for the evening news”, the action was particularly good which made up a tad for the headshaking narrative turn. Overall Galdorisi’s solo effort was good and while I wish he would have avoided the stupid “going rogue” trope as it probably would have improved the book some, it did not ruin it.

Scorched Earth is a good military-political thriller and is George Galdorisi only solo effort in the reboot series, so far. While I did not like subplot that finished off the book, it did not make the book bad and throughout the action scenes were solid. Overall, this book is better than a vast majority of the original Op-Center run.

My reads today & over the weekend:

Wild Fire is the last book in the Shetland series, which I've decided to finish so I can take it off my active series list. I put an ehold on it and it came through right away!

No Wind of Blame is the pandemic buddy read of the week - can't wait! We read tomorrow. Or when convenient.

A Few Eggs and No Oranges is a long diary of wartime London. I've read about 30 pages, and so far I really like it. It's best in small bites.

Debt of Honor just came through from the library. I have it for 14 days, but will probably finish it next week.

The Late Show is next up in my obsessive Bosch read. 

And that will probably take care of things until next Friday!

Given my current country of residence's complete incompetence and the news that my native land is trying to be the world leader in everything including incompetence, I needed to escape to a world where real problems are met and dealt with by leaders with integrity and the skills to think through issues rationally with a view towards the long-term.

In other words, a fantasy.

I have always been and will always be, an unapologetic fan of Clancy's works - the ones he wrote himself - so falling back into Jack Ryan's world was, if not a comfort, at least familiar and comfortable.  It's been 2 decades since I last read this, and it generally holds up perfectly.  The first half of the book is a bit overly idealistic, but what struck me about it is that Tom Clancy showed a startling degree of prescience not just in some of his major plot lines, but in his story arc.

Executive Orders is the story about a non-politician ending up as President of the United States, vowing to eject the political riff-raff out of Washington, and appointing business sector executives to the cabinet to get things done.

Sound familiar?  Of course, Jack Ryan wasn't a paranoid narcissist and he was highly educated and qualified regardless of his lack of political savvy.  He also had more integrity than your garden variety black widow spider.  But Clancy imagined the world we live in today twenty years ago, with startling accuracy, albeit in the most idealistic light.

His idealism extended to America's response (and only America because his plot extended no further) to the epidemic that grips the country in Executive Orders; his national lockdown works flawlessly; almost nobody ignores the mandate, there are no rushes on grocery stores, and there's no general panic.  Of course, I'd like to think that any country's population would react to an epidemic of ebola exponentially better than they're reacting (or not) to the corona pandemic, so maybe my faith in humanity hasn't been completely snuffed out.

Either way, it was good to revisit a world that works, even when everything is pear-shaped.