Unified Action

The first two thirds of this book I loved. Phoenix parachute into Kyrgyzstan wearing local clothing and carrying local weapons, just as it should be. Able are sent to the Dominican Republic and get caught up in civil anarchy. Phoenix become trapped in a village, under fire from local terrorists, the military and the bad guy's mercenaries. Everything is exploding and enjoyable. The last third goes wrong and there are multiple errors that neither the author nor the editing team bothered to correct. Page 233 is the worst with Gadgets, on a solo mission, morphing into Lyons, staying Lyons for the next paragraph, then morphing back to Gadgets again. On the same page! Later Able Team, still in the Caribbean, drive past barricades guarded by Russian soldiers! Over in the war zone, McCarter makes his escape in a Land Rover, which becomes a Toyota which becomes some Russian vehicle. The bad guys also have the same identity issue with their transportation. Then after all of that, two PF members suddenly arrive in Amsterdam in the time it took Able Team to have a gunfight. So this part was poorly written and edited, but the first parts of the book were great.

Here we have Able and Phoenix seemingly setting out on separate missions only to find out via the Farm that each Team is looking for a Smith who happen to be brothers. The brothers Smith work for the same outfit in different parts of the world and find out they are involved in something they don't want to be so the Teams are sent in to rescue the brothers. The firefight for Phoenix begins immediately and does not stop until the end of the book; same for Able except there is a bit of investigating in between. I haven't decided if I like the style this story was written in that you read a few pages of Able's action in the Dominican Republic, stop, back to Kyrgyzstan with a few pages of Phoenix's fight, stop, and so on but it is guns a blazin' non-stop action for the most part. The highlights for me were McCarter staying behind in a hot zone while Manning and Hawkins get the wounded James and Encizo out and to medical aid. McCarter has a long battle against two different forces, take-as-many-out-as-you-can scenarios and then move to another location and do it again while he is under constant and sustained fire, not a bad car chase in the escape. The second highlight was Lyons standing at the door of the evil mastermind on the last page, you'll have to read it for yourself.