Flight of the Pawnee

Flight-of-the-Pawnee-cover-print

ISBN: 978-1-952979-72-9

Publisher: Crossroad Press under the Gordian Knot imprint

Formats: Paperback | e-book (Kindle, iBook/Apple, Nook, Kobo)

Pages: 292

“Why would al-Qaeda, the Mexican Brotherhood and the Sinaloa cartel work together?” It is the question Derek Almer, Naval Aviator and CIA contract pilot started asking his contact at the intelligence agency in the spring of 2015.

Al Qaeda’s Ayman al Zawahiri is frustrated by the lack of success of the organization’s attempts at planting bombs to bring down several airliners at roughly the same time. With bin Laden dead, Zawahiri decides to send Harun al-Rashid to the United States with the mission to kill 10,000 Americans in one attack

Before he joined al Qaeda, al-Rashid was Mohammedh Haaq, a chemical engineer working for Saudi Aramco. Lonely and wanting a wife, friends Mohammed met at the mosque in Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia, introduce him to Hanifa, a Jordanian nurse as a means to recruit him. On vacation in Athens, Haaq learns the Saudi police want to question him after his phone numbers are found on a phone at a safe house used by the attackers who killed 19 foreigners.

Afraid he will be tortured by the Saudis if he returns, Haaq calls a number given to him by Hanifa to use if he ever was “in trouble.” Al Qaeda offers Haaq sanctuary and a new identity if he agrees to help.

In the U.S., Derek Almer’s fiancée Eileen Bertram is injured and her mother shot in a carjacking. The Plano (Texas) Police Department is reluctant to do little more than report the crime. Suspicious that there may be more behind the hijacking, Derek, and his future father in law and retired cop Jack Bertram, start digging.

The trail leads them to the leader of Mexican Brotherhood gang whom they spot leaving a house with a Middle Eastern looking man in McKinney, Texas. The Plano PD is reluctant to ask the Feds for help so on a hunch, Derek sends a photo of the man and police sketches of the two hijackers to a contact in the Mossad. The Israelis send the Interpol Red Notices as well as international arrest warrants for al-Rashid.

Members of the president’s administration want Derek silenced and if possible, in jail because his hypothesis runs counter to their narrative that the war on terrorism is over and al Qaeda incapable of launching an attack on the U.S. Bureacratic finger pointing among he CIA, Immigration and the FBI are has begun because a known terrorist has entered the country without their knowledge. Corrupt cops and the Sinaloas want Derek dead.

Convinced he is right, Derek risks all as he pursues al-Rashid in an attempt to prevent the attack that, if successful, could kill more than al Qaeda’s original goal of 10,000.