Friends Robert Grundell and Ahmed Khalifa are neighbors in an apartment complex in Alexandria, Virginia. Robert is a 15-year careerist with the federal government in D.C., the last ten with the Treasury Department. He holds a Top Secret security clearance with the department, and with Defense. Ahmed is a Pakistani with a H-1B work visa sponsored by his boss, Abu Kamal Ramshallah, a senior board member of Mideast Continental, Ltd., Detroit and, unbeknownst to Ahmed at first, is a terrorist agent.
For years, Robert has been nursing a grudge against the office for being bypassed time and again for a promotion. Learning of his situation at work through Ahmed, Abu Kamal preys upon his vulnerability. He offers Robert a deal to make a lot of money passing classified top secret military and civilian data to him and his people in Michigan.
Without any qualms, Robert sells out, resulting in horrifying consequences to the U.S. government. Through data passed to them by Robert, the terrorists are able to launch a successful attack on the Pentagon itself, a suicide truck bombing in the Punchbowl Memorial in Hawaii on Veterans Day and an all-out daytime assault on a half dozen U.S. senators in a ceremonial train ride to the inauguration of a major water and power project in North Dakota.
*
Early in the events come into play Omar Husain, a faceless, nameless master terrorist, for years known only by the FBI code-name Saladin.
Consumed by hatred the day he lost his entire family including Kamilah, his fiancee, in southern Lebanon during the '82 Arab-Israeli war, he swears his life to the Jihad.
Out of the ruins of his life, he carries a relic of his love for Kamilah whose mother is a Christian—a copy of the Holy Bible. A quarter of a century before, Sister Caterina, an Italian nun on a mission in the Philippines, had written a message inside the book which she would later give Kamilah's mother as a gift.
Holding Julie Santorelli—a niece of Sister Caterina and a witness to his identity—captive while hunted by the FBI, memories of the past overwhelm him. Seeing Julie in anguish reminds him of Kamilah. He struggles with guilt. Here, his hatred finally succumbs to it when he recalls the message in the Bible which, in part, says:
‘…what good is a victory
if it turns you into your enemy?’ :
***
The Prologue and the first seven chapters (100 pages) may be viewed in the following webpage:
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Author Bio
![[Jaime]](jpepic3.gif)
I was born and raised in Imus, Cavite (province), Philippines. Immediately after obtaining a B. Sc. degree in Architecture from the National U in Manila, I came to the U.S. I spent eleven years dawdling with architecture till my late thirties. First in West Orange (NJ), Toronto, Detroit, Los Angeles and lastly in the D.C. Capital area. Then I had enough of it when I noticed I wasn't getting anywhere - no pension, no job security, no practice, no nest egg. This was in the mid '70s when computer programming was catching on in the academia.
So, I went to a computer training school and switched careers. After a couple of years in the private industry, I got in the federal government and launched a 26-year career in the civil service.
In the meantime, I've written and published several other books, namely: Voices From the Heart. (fiction novel 471 p.), Ordinary Lives: A Journey Through America (an autobiographical novel, 561 p.), Polarized (a near-future socio-political fiction novel, 452 p.), Being Here, (fiction novel, 328 p.), Mr and Ms Stories (four novellas, 350 p.), Duck People (short stories, 292 p.), Solitaire (short stories, 200 p.).
