THE KILLING GROUND

Can Sean Dillon & Co. blunt the Hammer of God and again save Western Civilization?

When Caspar Rashid, a native of England with big-time Bedouin connections, is picked up in the passport line at Heathrow, no eyebrows or red flags are raised. Routine security measure, that’s all, but as it happens Caspar’s arrest is the opening move in a complex game of geopolitical chess. It’s Dillon himself who puts the arm on Caspar. To his surprise, Dillon—whose place in the Clandestine Hall of Fame has long been reserved—discovers that Caspar is, in fact, eager to be arrested. He wants help, the down and dirty kind, the kind unhampered by niceties such as rules. If Casper can obtain what he needs, he’s willing to swap certain sensitive information concerning al-Qaeda. Dillon & Co. rush to reassure him: “The only rules we have are not to have any.” Turns out that Caspar’s 13-year-old daughter has been kidnapped and spirited away to deepest Iraq—kidnapped by Caspar’s cousin Hussein Rashid, the dreaded Hammer of God, a ferocious Muslim killer who sits at the right hand of Osama bin Laden, at the behest of Caspar’s father, the rich and fanatical Abdul Rashid. Caspar wants her returned. And so an operation is mounted, Colts and Walthers bang away at targets endlessly available, body bags fill—can any other thrillmeister equal the Higgins corpse-per-page count?—and finally there’s the obligatory O.K. Corral variation, during which, for the sake of us all, Dillon & Co. must nail the Hammer.

Higgins’ 37th (Bad Company, 2003, etc.): You get what you get.