Larry Bond's First Team

In these harrowing times, with our enemies lurking in the shadows and their widespread tactics of unconventional warfare limiting the ability of our traditional armed forces, special measures are needed to fight this war on terror. Heeding this call the President has set up the Joint Services Special Demands Project. Known as "The Team" it is a unique unit existing beyond the bureaucratic restraints of either the U.S. intelligence or military establishments. With an almost unlimited budget, the Team—consisting of a CIA officer, two Special Forces commandos, and one outnumbered Marine—is authorized to track vital intelligence and then take immediate action. Called upon to track a quantity of radioactive waste that has gone missing in the former Soviet Union, the Team is faced with the fact that this material is now in the wrong people's hands. . . . And these terrorists are geared to wage the single deadliest attack ever on U.S. soil.

Larry Bond's explosive series continues as the First Team finds themselves in the cross-currents of terrorism.

Publishers Weekly

The troops of the small Special Ops force in this latest novel by Bond (Red Phoenix, etc.) spend about equal time bantering with each other and blowing up stuff: buildings, vehicles and even thugs who stand in their way. Aside from its inherent entertainment value (which is considerable), this is a good formula because it allows Bond and coauthor DeFelice to smoothly fold in an enormous amount of exposition and to introduce, over the course of a hundred or so short chapters, the individual members of Joint Services Special Demands Project Office, known to insiders as simply the Team, for the novel is the kickoff of a projected series about the new war on terror. Smooth, shrewd Bob Ferguson leads them, engineering their escape from a tricky trap in Kyrgyzstan early on. The MacGuffin: a planned meeting with Russian wheeler dealer Alex Sheremetev in Kyrgyzstan goes awry when Ferg finds Sheremetev's murdered corpse. Before you can say frameup, local police have arrested Team member Jack "Guns" Young (a Marine and language expert) for the crime. It's up to Ferg, Connors (the old man and explosives expert) and Rankin (the young hothead) to rescue Guns and find the real killer-and that's just for starters. Back in Washington, Corrine Alston, chief adviser to the new president, disdains the maverick modus operandi of the Team and Ferg in particular, so much so that she flies to Russia to confront and control him. Her slow journey from skeptic to supporter is the novel's most entertaining and mainstream plot thread, the reader on her shoulder as she's immersed in the rough and tumble adventures of the Team. This is a solid series debut. Agent, Robert Gottlieb at Trident Media Group. (May) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Larry Bond is the author of numerous bestselling thrillers, including Vortex, Cauldron, and The Enemy Within. A former Naval Intelligence officer, warfare analyst and anti-submarine technology expert, he makes his home in Springfield, Virginia.

Jim DeFelice has previously collaborated with Stephen Coonts and Dale Brown. He lives in New York state.