Author Vince Flynn has a few things on his mind about the so-called War on Terror and how the U.S. goes about waging it. As an expert on high-tech, high-level security systems with a taste for espionage and a distaste for Washington politics, he uses his counterterrism bulldog Mitch Rapp to express what's bothering him.

On this particular Memorial Day, an unveiling ceremony in Washington of the new WWII memorial will bring the president of the U.S., Robert Hayes and other world leaders together--a perfect target opportunity for a terrorist bomb. But, nothing like that is being considered until Rapp conducts an interrogation of Pakistani Colonel Haq. What he learns provides the first hint that just such a plan in in the works, operating out of a secret location in Kandahar.

Rapp wastes no time booking a flight there and then seeks approval from his boss and primary supporter, CIA director Dr. Irene Kennedy to proceed on the mission. When he convinces her what needs to be done, he's free to lead a commando raid on an al Qaeda stronghold and confirms his worst suspicions. A cache of documents includes a map of D.C. as a nuclear target. Realizing the need to learn a great deal more, he takes terrorist leader Ali Al-Houri and four of his men prisoner.

Pushing the limits between torture and political restraint, Rapp applies his interrogation techniques once again to learn the reality of the threat and its planner. Tying it together with bills of lading found with the documents, Rapp and his team defeat Saudi Arabian Mustafa Al Yamani's ingenious operation by intercepting the parts for a bomb arriving by ship at five different U.S. ports.

Mission accomplished, Kennedy, proud of her difficult but successful agent, brings him to a meeting in the Oval Office. Rapp is in no mood to take glory or to compromise. He's barely civil. The Farsi and Arabic-speaking operative pulls no punches when he insists to the man on top that the government misunderstands the enemy and what's needed to combat it.

"We pulled five prisoners out of that village in Pakistan, sir, and none of them were willing to talk. I lined them all up, and started with a man named Ali Saed al-Houri. I put a gun to his head, and when he refused to answer my questions I blew his brains out, Mr. President... [after I killed a second one the third one] started to sing like a bird. That's how we found out about the bomb, sir. That's what it takes to win this war on terror..."

Understandably, Rapp's style and reputation has produced some enemies in the administration hierarchy. The president's Chief of Staff Valerie Jones is in the president's ear about Rapp's arrogance and bullying ways. And then there's the gorgeous deputy assistant attorney general in charge of counterterrorism, Peggy Stealey ("a violent spring thunderstorm"), who also has trouble with Rapp's methodology... even while she's trying to decide if she wants to go to bed with him.

What the statuesque six-footer doesn't know is that Rapp is a married man so devoted to his wife and children that her usual power over men will have no effect.

Just as Rapp is ready to head to Wisconsin for a delayed family vacation, evidence surfaces that there might be a 2nd nuclear device on its way into the country.

Flynn's depth of research and his self-training pays off, as usual, in embracing the wide scope of the drama and the well structured play-out of every detail. His views may be extreme but he makes his case vividly in this effective what-if scenario.