DEAD AIM

Tough-minded photojournalist Alex Graham inadvertently saves the free world.

Calamity? Catastrophe? Alex is there, and she’s all heart. On assignment to photograph rescue efforts after the Arapahoe Dam collapses, she puts down her camera and picks up a shovel to dig out a baby. Then she hops a helicopter to get to the unstable gorge above for some dazzling aerial shots—and happens to overhear the villains who apparently engineered the dam’s collapse, waiting for their helicopter. Did they see her? Yup. Cut to the chase, without a second to spare. Alex eludes them but she’s going to need some help. Enter Judd Morgan, sexy former undercover man for the Company, now in hiding to save his own skin, painting serene landscapes to soothe his troubled soul. He dresses as a fireman to snatch up Alex during a staged conflagration (mostly smoke) from under the noses of the bad guys. Could they be soldiers of Matanza, the Central American terrorist group? And is Matanza somehow linked to Señor Lotana, a disgruntled Brazilian scientist hoping to tap the geothermal power of vents that originate within the earth’s very core? And what does that have to do with the bunker system now in place to protect the US president in the event of a large-scale terrorist attack on our leader and way of life? Well, if the Commander-in-Chief gets blown sky-high, there won’t be anyone around to make reassuring speeches to a worried nation. Except maybe the Vice President . . . a sneaky Al Gore type given to high-minded environmental activism. Cut to the chase again as Alex and Morgan race against time to uncover the real culprit behind this complicated plot, and fight for their lives—not to mention truth, justice, and the American Way.

Smoothly written, tightly plotted, turbocharged thriller, about a millimeter deep—but megaselling Johansen doesn’t miss (Body of Lies, 2002, etc.).