"Collectively, Team Zebra had America's best of the best from special operations – tops in every category employed in warfare – ex-SEALS, Berets, Deltas and other Shadow groups."
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Code: Team Zebra (Project Seven) by Dale Greenwell Trafford Publishing
book review by Peter M. Fitzpatrick
A secret group of crack military operatives have been gathered together and organized to fight the influence and control that the drug cartels have over American politicians, judges, and law enforcement. A secret meeting with a potential informant with the codename "Iceman" has been arranged with one of these men, Ben Halter, on a remote lake covered with ice by Signal Mountain in rural Wyoming. Halter brings along one Martin Houseman to provide cover, but when Halter finds the informant lying dead in the middle of the ice, he is also assassinated, and Houseman is left wondering. Who has killed his fellow Zebra team member and what was in the envelope that the "Iceman" was going to deliver? A veil of secrecy immediately descends over the investigation, partly due to the ultra-black nature of the Zebra operations, but also seemingly to obfuscate it, and Houseman resolves to investigate on his own. A veritable whirlwind of orders up and down the chain of command lead Houseman all over the country, with strings being pulled and tapped phones and tracking devices enabling and blocking the investigation almost simultaneously.
The complex plot explores the theme of secrecy in law enforcement and government in contemporary America. Devotion to the cause of battling the power of the drug cartels is shown in the altruistic and selfless dedication that the Zebra team men (and the women who aid them) embody. But secrecy implies lack of oversight, and as is so loudly being weighed in current world affairs, lack of oversight leaves the potential for abuse all too real. No matter how idealistic, such operations need funding, and the battle for taxpayer money to support such activities is shown here as the Achilles' heel of the entire program. No one is watching the watchers, and when a cyberspace device is secretly developed that can indeed watch them, murder and double-dealing in search of a cover-up ensue. Descriptive language paints sharp images of rural America, particularly in Wyoming in this work, the author's love of very fabric of this nation made deliciously apparent.