TIER ONE WILD

Fury (Black Site, 2012, etc.) again enlists gung-ho Delta Force Maj. Kolt “Racer” Raynor for anti-terrorist action, and this time the threat involves missiles and airliners rather than forted-up bad guys on the ground.

With the once-cashiered Racer cautioned about the maverick decisions that got him canned, the major and team are HALO-dropped into India, where an airliner has been hijacked. Forced to land on the 767 as it moves onto the runway, the four harpoon their way into the cabin and dispose of the bad guys. Team member Stitch has a finger shot off in the melee. That leaves Racer, Digger and Slapshot to detour to chaotic Libya and extract a U.N. investigator who has uncovered post-revolution looting of Igla-S shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles. Curtis, CIA on station, doesn’t like Racer's rough-and-tumble solution. No problem, since the U.N. geek is safe. Racer’s team is then sent to Cairo because a former agent from Libya’s nefarious Jamahiriya Security Organization, Aref Saleh, has gone rogue and is distributing the airplane-killers to bad guys. In Cairo, Racer’s team liaisons with a resentful Curtis, and things go south because of lackadaisical CIA Operations Security. Enter David Wade Doyle, aka Daoud al-Amriki, California boy turned jihadist. Racer and al-Amriki met in Pakistan during the mission that earned Racer’s return to Delta. Now, al-Amriki is in Yemen training English-speaking jihadists to infiltrate the U.S. and bring down airliners with the Igla-S missiles. There’s more scoop about Delta Team operations in this Fury effort and a separate narrative about female members joining the Joint Special Operations Command, with Cindy Bird, code name Hawk, sent on the Egyptian reconnoiter. The bad guys get missiles into Mexico but are stymied at Nuevo Laredo in a messy Racer-led firefight. All but al-Amriki are KIA. Posse Comitatus keeps Delta from in-country operation, but Racer and recuperating fellow officer TJ, another Delta who hates al-Amriki, take leave to D.C. and tie up a perfect-coincidence termination.

Action-adventure from an author who’s been at the sharp end of the spear.