Point of Honor

by
Douglas de Bono

Metropolis Ink, February 2002, 380 pp.
ISBN: 0-9579858-6-X

Genre: Thriller
Subgenre: Military
Reviewed: 4/5/2003

Reviewed by: Conan Tigard

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Washington, D.C.
Saturday

November 15, 1997

10:45 AM EST

"All right, so we've got our weapons expert and some marines to shoot bad guys. So who's the computer whiz and team leader?" Lisa Borden, the Deputy Secretary of State asked.

"You have such a way with words, Lisa," snapped the NSA. He flipped the page on the briefing folder to a photograph of a soldier in fatigues. "May I present Major James Harper, United States Special Forces Retired. He will serve in both capacities."

Brian Stillwell found it somewhat curious that nowhere on the dossier or photograph was there an indication of service branch or unit designation. There were no insignia like Navy SEAL or DELTA. This Harper seemed as faceless and nameless as the spook sitting next to him. Special Forces was an ambiguous title.

"He was at the top on both lists of available personnel who fit our mission criteria," continued the spook. "Major Harper is conversant with most information technology likely to be encountered on the mission. He has previously broken into Iraqi computer systems and--"

Lisa Borden looked up from the briefing book. "It says under the psyche profile that he's a born-again Christian." She laughed--not a very nice laugh. "You're going to send some fruitcake Jesus freak on a mission into the desert? What are you, nuts?" Her voice rose with passion and volume. "Everyone knows these type of people favor Israel over everything else over there." Brian was unsure whether these type of people or Israel received more derision from Lisa Borden. But then, she was from the State Department, and American Foreign Policy seemed to be dedicated to a mission designed to deify Yassir Arafat and blame Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for most Arab terrorism.

"That's all we need at the UN. Saddam gets his hands on a Jew-loving, Jesus freak on a black op to one of his presidential palaces. No, gentlemen, I'm afraid State can never approve of this choice. I--"

"Ma'am!" interrupted the Two Star. "I don't care whether State will approve or disapprove of Jim Harper. From 1980 to 1992, he took care of some this country's biggest problems. He's something of a legend in the Spec War community. Most everything we know about the inside of Saddam's computer network came from Jim, and one of the reasons you're here today is because Jim Harper stopped a mess like this once before.

"I've had men under my command. I wish all of them were like Harper." Something seemed to boil out of the Two Star who no longer cared about promotion. He was obviously destroying his chance for career advancement. "We are going to send in a team without support, without backup, to find something the Red Chinese gave to a crazy man. Now the only reason we don't go in with all guns blazing is because we want the Red Chinese to like us. So, we'll ignore the problem of a sub running loose in the Gulf, and the transmission of a weapon to the Iraqis because it is politically expedient to do so. We're talking about sending my friend back to hell, and you're upset because he goes to church."

Review

Six years after the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein still burns with the need to enact revenge upon the country that humiliated him. In China, he has had devised a more virulent form of VX nerve gas, otherwise known a the City Killer. On November 15, 1997, during a secret flyover, a U2 photographed the Chinese Han Class submarine 404 in the Persian Gulf, where they should not be. The 404 had been specially designed with an elevator to deliver the nerve gas. But when something goes terribly wrong with the delivery and some of the gas escapes, the Iraqis start shooting the Chinese sailors. Major Jim Harper is pulled out of an early retirement to go back to Iraq and gather data about what exactly happened in the Persian Gulf. Years earlier, Jim had lost his best friend in the Iraq dessert and sees this as a chance to enact some revenge on Saddam Hussein and his computer infrastructure. A team has been gathered by Louis Edwards, a man who has worked on black ops for the past twenty years. Going with Jim to Iraq will be four Force Recon Marines and Brian Stillwell, an expert on unconventional weapon systems. They intend to penetrate Iraq's central Data Center to find out exactly who, what, where, and how the Iraqis are preparing banned weapon systems. Jim is convinced that his best friend died because there is a mole somewhere high up in the US government. He tells Louis, right before he leaves for Iraq, that if he feels that his mission has been compromised again, he will come back and kill him. Of course, the mission is compromised.

Point of Honor is a Jim Harper thriller by Douglas de Bono. It is a fast-moving fictional tale based on actual happenings in Iraq. Douglas de Bona easily blends the lines between reality and fiction in this tale of a deceit and deception.

From the moment I met Jim Harper, I liked him. He is a very intriguing character because we learn that he was in the blackest of the black ops working secretly to keep the America a superpower. We do learn that he did a lot of work for Ronald Reagan in helped bring down the communists rule in the USSR. Douglas de Bono does an excellent job taking a bit of history, twisting is some to the right, turning it back to the left, and squeezing out a story that the reader will find hard to put down. Who is the mole that is passing the info to the Chinese? Will the mission into Iraq be as easy as it sounds? Will Jim make it out alive? All of these answers can be found in Point of Honor. I found reading this book at this time to be extremely poignant because Operation Iraqis Freedom started right before I picked up the book. I had just witnessed on the television what the desert in Iraq looked like, so that really helped me form a picture in my mind of where Jim and his crew were. If only Major Jim Harper were real, I am sure that President Bush would send him in first to wreck havoc with Iraqis personnel. Overall, I really enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it to any fan of military novels, or just to anyone that wants to have a pleasurable experience. Move over Rambo, now we have Major Jim Harper.

I rated this book an 8 out of 10.