Overview
"Jack Vermillion is an ex-Marine who came back from Vietnam and turned a two-truck shipping outfit into a multimillion-dollar empire. His work is his life. His only grief, a son, Danny, who ran off the rails years back and is now serving a ten-year sentence for armed robbery. A little downtime in Lompoc cooling his heels might do him some good. But a desperate late-night phone call from Danny, in the prison clinic after a suicide attempt, forces Jack to go looking for a federal deal to save him. So when Jack is approached by a retired U.S. Army colonel named Earl V. Pike to ship his private gun collection - very simple, very illegal - Jack makes the fateful decision to flip one illegal gunrunner for one slightly imperfect kid, and turns Pike in to the ATF." "At the same time, Casey Spandau, a female cop working Sex Crimes at the Two Five in Harlem, finally snaps - and decks a sleazy public defender who richly deserves it. After she's bounced straight into an NYPD-state police task force, Casey's future looks like a self-inflicted tour in cop hell. Then she takes a call from a state cop searching for a blue Mercedes involved in a savage double homicide. The suspect? Earl V. Pike, U.S. Army, Ret." What had appeared to be two separate cases are now on a deadly collision course to disaster. For almost as soon as Spandau starts her investigation into the double homicide, her unit slams straight into an ATF sting, and an explosive blue-on-blue firefight erupts with fatal results. Five officers down. Jack Vermillion finds himself on his way to prison - his company assets seized, his whole world shattered. But Jack isn't going down without a fight. He has only one way to prove his innocence, and it won't be pretty. And if anyone tries to get in his way? Well, there isn't a law enforcement agency in the world that can stop Jack Vermillion now.Synopsis
Jack Vermillion is a businessman with a problem: a son with a criminal record who is in trouble again. This time, Jack's kid is looking at twenty-five to life in maximum security. And there's nothing Jack can do . . .or is there?
Black Water Transit is Jack's container ship company, and when Jack is approached by a man wanting to ship his gun collection to Mexico - very simple, very illegal - he sees an opportunity. So Jack cuts a deal with the ATF to trade one illegal gun dealer for one slightly imperfect kid. The deal is set, the weapons on board, the cops and feds in place. Everything should come off without a hitch. . .until the shooting starts and people start dying. As the body count rises, Jack must go on the lam, in a race for his life, and there isn't a law enforcement agency in the world that can help him now.
Library Journal
In this fast-paced novel, a shadowy ex-soldier approaches container ship company owner Jack Vermillion with a business proposition. The soldier wants to send a shipment of arms overseas without alerting the ATF. This deal solves a personal problem for Jack, who agrees to turn the soldier and the arms over to the ATF in return for a reduction of jail time for his problem son. However, the tables are turned on Jack, who finds himself on the run from a drug smuggling charge while trying to find the person who set him up. Stroud's (Sniper's Moon) story, read by Bruce Reizen, holds the listener's interest and contains many colorful characters, ranging from a cold-blooded federal lawyer to a handful of New York City cops. The dialog features many excellent one-liners as well. Not a great work of art but a fun summer diversion; for larger audio collections. - Stephen L. Hupp, West Virginia Univ. at Parkersburg Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.