 |
Chance and Charlie want an escape from the dangerous and tedious work at Sandia National Labs. Chance finds the perfect opportunity, driving his 1958 Corvette from Moscow to Beijing in an epic road race. While Chance is gung-ho about the opportunity, Charlie has to clear it with his wife and later his mistress. Chevrolet believes there is great publicity in this race and agrees to sponsor Chance and Charlie's team. The Corvette is transported from New Mexico to New Orleans and then shipped to Europe with Chance, Charlie, and a small crew along for the voyage. However, the trip is unceremoniously interrupted by terrorists with plans for Chance and Charlie specifically. The pair must assemble suitcase nuclear devices for their captors, or every member of their party will be murdered. Their only chance of survival is Hank Sollenberger, a CIA agent who may have inadvertently connected the pieces of a catastrophic terrorist plot. Now, he just needs to convince his superiors that his theory holds merit.
This story of two doctors forced to obey the will of murderous madmen while constructing devices of unimaginable destruction is one of both action and high drama played to an almost pitch-perfect degree. The villains are an unlikely pairing of former KGB operatives and Al Qaeda who have put their past differences aside in order to create death and destruction against their enemies. One of the best characters in this high-intensity narrative is CIA Agent Sollenberger, a man whose past theories have proven him to be a misfit at Langley, yet his ability to piece together the most important parts of a convoluted plot puts him in league with Carrie Mathison of Homeland. This is a transfixing story from beginning to end where the reader eagerly awaits each new plot twist.