Transfer of Power

#1 New York Times bestselling author Vince Flynn delivers a heart-pounding novel that poses an alarming and timely question right out of today’s headlines: What if America’s most powerful leader was also its prime target?
TRANSFER OF POWER
On a busy Washington morning, the stately calm of the White House is shattered in a deadly terrorist attack on the executive mansion. The president is evacuated to an underground bunker, but not before nearly one hundred hostages are taken. Mitch Rapp, the CIA’s top counterterrorism operative sent in to take control of the crisis, determines that the president is not as safe as Washington’s power elite had thought. Indeed, Rapp has made a chilling discovery that could rock Washington to its core: someone within his own government wants his rescue attempt to fail.
From Publishers WeeklyIn this long political thriller staged almost entirely around a hostage standoff, Flynn makes maximum use of his White House setting, and mixes in a spicy broth of brutal terrorists, heroic commandos and enough secret agent hijinks to keep the confrontation bubbling until its flag-raising end. The villains are led by Rafique Aziz, a notorious Arab terrorist whose band of thugs takes over the White House by finding a weak point in American politics: they pose as wealthy campaign contributors and are welcomed through the front door. President Robert Hayes manages to escape to his bunker moments before the bloodbath, but religious zealot Aziz takes almost 100 hostages, seals off the White House and begins making demands, of which large sums of cash are just the beginning. With the president incommunicado and weak-willed yet power hungry Vice President Sherman Baxter in charge, the Pentagon and the CIA resort to their secret weapon: commando extraordinaire Mitch Rapp. After sneaking into the bowels of the Executive Mansion through an air duct, Rapp steadily disrupts the terrorists' well-laid plans. He finally calls in reinforcements when Aziz begins drilling into the president's bunker. It's a long haul to the finish, but Flynn (Term Limits) compensates for some stereotyping by creating dynamic tension between the main players, especially between military leaders and politicians, and between Rapp and Aziz. His description of the White House is impressive; readers will wonder if the secret passageways, hidden rooms and clever deception devices that help load this story with seemingly endless intrigue, really exist. Agent, Sloan Harris. 15-city author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library JournalWhen terrorists crash White House security, the President is swept away to an isolated underground bunker, and the Vice President suddenly finds himself in charge. From the author of the best-selling Term Limits.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.