Rocket's Red Glare

Nat Phillips, leader of Team Rhino at Chesapeake Security and Training Company (CSTC), a private military contracting firm, narrates the story from a holding cell in the Nantucket County Jail. Days earlier, his team rescued the crew of a disabled Army Humvee during an ambush south of Baghdad, killing several terrorists. Al-Qaeda placed a bounty on Nat's head, and Congressman Martin Jennings, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, ensured Team Rhino's extraction from Iraq with honors and no legal consequences. Upon arriving at his house in Nantucket's Siasconset neighborhood, Nat was tackled and arrested by federal agents who considered him a threat to Senator Coleman Harrison, a presidential candidate staying next door.

In jail, Nat befriends his cellmate, Josiah "Si" Wilson, a twenty-year-old from a wealthy Palm Beach family locked up after sinking his mother's Porsche on the beach. Nat calls his CSTC co-founder, Tristan Dent, a billionaire who dispatches retired federal judge Samuel Starnes to secure Nat's release with the backing of the attorney general. Si's father, Alan Wilson, a hedge-fund chairman, drives Nat home and agrees to let Si work at CSTC.

Harrison leads the presidential primary by twelve points but is personally unraveling. His wife, Elise Courville, daughter of Charles Courville, the French ambassador to the United States, has kicked him out of her Cliff Road house after discovering his serial infidelity. Harrison's press secretary and mistress, Aimee Sullivan, demands a National Security Council seat in exchange for her silence, threatening him with a compromising video. Harrison's campaign manager, Walter Fitzgerald, brokers a sham deal with Sullivan, then privately tells Harrison the real plan is to have her killed and framed as someone with a drug addiction. Harrison agrees. After Sullivan leaves the meeting, she calls an unnamed woman to confirm the arrangement. That woman relays the information to a mysterious figure in Paris. The caller is identified as Elise Courville.

On the island, Nat meets US Secret Service Special Agent in Charge Rowan Anderson, who led his arrest. The two develop an immediate connection. Tristan reveals CSTC's next venture: Rocket's Red Glare, a covert domestic operations network conceived by Jennings and the president. Operating under the Office of Domestic Strategy (ODS), Team Rhino would function as an off-the-books strike force with near-total autonomy but no overt government support.

In Paris, the attack's mastermind is revealed: Haracat al Marrak, a thirty-year-old Algerian posing as a financier. Courville, gradually radicalized through their relationship, has been feeding him intelligence via untraceable burner phones. Al Marrak privately plans to kill her once she has served her purpose.

Team Rhino arrives on Nantucket: Oliver Smith, a former Green Beret; Meg Fuller, an intelligence analyst and operator; John Paul Kennedy (JP), a sniper and former Green Beret; and Wolfgang "Wolf" Kerr, Nat's driver. Nat briefs them on Rocket's Red Glare, and all four embrace it. On Friday night at 10 p.m., al Marrak's coordinated attack strikes. A Chechen bomb maker loads a U-Haul packed with nearly 1,000 pounds of Semtex, a plastic explosive, onto the ferry from Hyannis to Nantucket and arms the device before jumping overboard. Three operatives, positioned on the island a year earlier as migrant workers, simultaneously destroy the Secret Service motel with grenade launchers, blow up the airport control tower, and block the runway with a disabled garbage truck. The ferry bomb detonates, killing everyone aboard.

At Harrison's rented house, a sniper kills three Secret Service agents. Anderson races inside, finds Harrison handcuffed to a bed with Sullivan, and shoots Sullivan dead. Two masked intruders tranquilize both Harrison and Anderson, sever Harrison's cuffed hand, and carry both away on stretchers. Harrison is loaded onto a Zodiac raft bound for a waiting yacht; Anderson is taken to Courville's estate.

Driving back from a party at the Wilson estate, Team Rhino hears the explosion and discovers a crude improvised explosive device (IED) on the road, which Wolf and JP disarm. At Harrison's house, they find the dead agents, Sullivan's body, and a severed hand on the beach. Tristan activates Rocket's Red Glare and places Nat in command.

At Courville's estate, Anderson wakes flex-cuffed to a chair. Courville reveals she possesses doctored video implicating Anderson as the sole conspirator behind the attack. Anderson seizes Courville's pistol, kills two guards, and proposes an alliance of necessity.

Using CSTC's private satellite, Meg identifies two large yachts offshore. CSTC helicopters carry Team Rhino to assault both vessels. The first yacht, the Oryol, yields only cocaine and no sign of Harrison. On the second, Team Rhino meets armed resistance; Oliver takes a bullet through the shoulder but stays operational. They find Harrison alive but barely conscious, beaten, tortured, his left hand amputated, and wearing a fake explosive vest. Despite Meg's efforts, Harrison dies aboard the yacht.

Si, stationed as a lookout, encounters Anderson fleeing Courville's house. She tells him she knows the situation and urgently needs to reach Nat. Team Rhino races across the island, and JP kills an approaching assassin sent to murder Courville. The entire group evacuates Nantucket via a military Chinook helicopter. At the landing site in Connecticut, Anderson and Courville go to Washington with federal agents, while Team Rhino returns to CSTC headquarters in Maryland.

During the intelligence review, the team discovers that burner phones from the attack sites share an outgoing country code for France. Oliver traces the Oryol's registration to a Bahamas LLC with a home port of Palm Beach, and Meg identifies the yacht's owner as Alexander Egorov, a seventy-seven-year-old Russian arms dealer whose twin sons operate from their father's Palm Beach estate.

Anderson, confined to her Georgetown apartment, is revealed as a paid traitor who received $5 million for facilitating Harrison's kidnapping. She resolves to continue the larger plan: assassinating the president. French newspapers publish stories of Anderson "rescuing" the ambassador's daughter, and Courville's father pulls strings to reassign Anderson as Chief Security Liaison Officer to the French embassy. She reconnects with Nat by phone, privately considering how he could be of use to her.

The Rocket's Red Glare oversight committee authorizes a snatch operation against the Egorov twins. Anderson and Courville, however, fly to Palm Beach first on a French embassy jet and purchase custom-made sheet explosives from the twins. When Egorov Sr. arrives unexpectedly, Anderson identifies CSTC's surveillance team from photos, and Egorov orders his security chief to capture one of Nat's people.

Meg is taken. Team Rhino storms the Egorov compound, killing the guards and recovering roughly $50 million in cash and art, but Meg has already been flown out. Egorov arranges a prisoner exchange at the Port of Baltimore: Meg for his assets and people. Before the trade, he hands Nat intelligence on al Marrak, revealing that the Algerian is controlled by the Chinese. As Meg walks free, Egorov's driver, a Chinese agent, shoots Egorov dead; the bullet passes through him and hits Meg in the shoulder. The driver escapes and remotely detonates a bomb hidden in the moving truck, incinerating the Egorov twins and the seized assets.

Anderson now operates under her true handler, Ming Yu, a Chinese intelligence operative. She murders Courville at a DC rail yard, then drives to Baltimore, where Meg is recovering from surgery. In the hospital parking garage, Anderson embraces Nat and kisses him before shooting him twice, in the hip and shoulder. He survives. Separately, a Chinese operative posing as a doctor infiltrates the ICU and injects Meg's IV with deadly snake venom. Meg dies.

Nat recovers over several weeks, devastated and consumed by rage. Anderson calls, claiming she did not kill Meg and deliberately let Nat live. He tells her he will kill her and hangs up. Immediately after, he receives a call from Theresa Larson, Governor of Colorado and presidential candidate, who reveals she is Alexander Egorov's niece: "I believe my uncle Alexander told you I would be in touch. We have much to discuss" (369). The story ends on this cliffhanger, with al Marrak free in Paris, Anderson at large, and the Chinese conspiracy behind the attacks only beginning to surface.