Force Protection » (Reprint)

Gordon Kent is the pseudonym of a father-and-son writing team. Both have extensive personal experience in the U.S. Navy and are former intelligence officers. The son earned his Observer Wings in S-3 Vikings and left active duty in 1999. They share interests in history, fishing, and Africa, where they have spent considerable time, in and out of military service. They live in the United States.

From Rules of Engagement to Hostile Contact, Gordon Kent has captivated readers with novels that combine authentic portrayals of global secret operations with the passions that go with them: the yearning for family and peace, the deceptions of agents in the field, and the extraordinary risks the bravest and best will take for a cause. His new suspense novel is vintage Kent: a heart-stopping tale of a terrorist strike, its explosive aftermath, and the struggle of special agents in a battle that is reshaping the globe.

To Americans, the scene is agonizingly familiar. The mangled steel of a U.S. warship in a foreign harbor. The revolving loops of CNN footage and faraway streets strewn with debris. But for Lieutenant Commander Alan Craik, the terrorist attack on the USNS Jonathan Harker is part of the job. Fighting terrorism from Pakistan to the Far East, Craik reacts to a spontaneous horror with calm action. But an enemy Craik doesn’t know has carried out the bombing in the teeming port of Mombasa, Kenya—for reasons he cannot guess.

While Alan Craik finds himself in the middle of a scene of carnage, his wife, Rose Siciliano Craik, is fighting her own battle, proving her flying prowess, rising to astronaut training school in Houston while trying to hold her family together. Now she herself has been forced to accept around-the-clock protection from NCIS—the Navy Criminal Investigative Service. NCIS special agent Mike Dukas, Rose and Alan’s friend, is playing it by the book. But he’s also playing his hunches. Dukas thinks it might not be coincidence that Craik was in Mombasa when the terrorists struck—and that a sniper was using the cover of chaos to take a shot at Craik himself.

As agents scramble around the world to find the planners of the attack, and another bomb goes off in Cairo, Craik, his wife, and their friend are at the center of the storm. And as each makes fatal choices, they begin to sense that the fight they’re in is not the kind they’ve planned and trained for—and that whoever is behind the devastating Mombasa terrorist attack may be coming relentlessly after them.

Kirkus Reviews

Terrorists take on the Lieutenant Commanders Craik-and are, of course, overmatched. Again, in a fifth outing, the Craiks (Rosie and Alan) are beset by low-lifes both foreign and domestic (Hostile Contact, 2003, etc.). Alan, in Kenya on special assignment, finds himself temporary skipper of the USNS Jonathan Harker when it falls victim to a sneak attack. In Mombasa harbor the ship lies on its side, burning, minus top officers, and under murderous fire from a sniper in a hard-to-reach hidey-hole. But Alan reaches him, kills him, and willy-nilly becomes a TV star because a journalist captures his heroism on film. Thus, the law of unintended consequences is invoked, and in Houston, Texas, Rosie experiences the thrust of it. An astronaut in training, she suffers her own sneak attack when vengeful terrorists sore at Alan take a retaliatory crack at the distaff Craik. Bad move, and Rosie makes them pay: three hit-men, two vehicles, all totaled-and in the aftermath it suddenly occurs to her that she's had all she can stand of spiteful Space Center bureaucracy and arcane NASA politics. "Good to have you back in the real Nav, Rosie," says an old shipmate as she reclaims her place among the hottest of Navy helicopter pilots. In the meantime, Alan and his NCIS buddies are trying to figure out precisely what variety of terrorist they're dealing with. The OBL (Osama bin Laden) type wins the popular vote at first, but on reflection Alan & Company grow less certain. What's for certain, however, is that someone smart, capable, and utterly ruthless is out to kill a lot of Americans. With the pseudonymous Kent (a father-and-son writing team, both ex-Navy ), authenticity is a given, but what really makesthis series go is a core conviction that thrillers thrill when they're character-driven.