Book: "Force Protection" by Gordon Kent

Force Protection by Gordon Kent

A military thriller I picked up in a bargain bin somewhere. Not a great book, but not a bad book either. The story is very Navy centric and involves an attack on a US Navy ship in Mombasa, Kenya. Always interesting to hear about someplace different. Don't think I've read anything about Kenya since "West With The Night", which was set in the early part of the 20th century. This story is set in the present day. Nairobi is the big city and is located inland. Mombasa is the port city and is located on the East coast of Africa.

There were a number of things in the plot that you could be pretty sure would never happen. I mean one incident could happen to one person in the course of their career, but to have a whole sequence of events, like the ones that happen to the protagonist's wife, would only happen in a movie script. But hey, it makes for an entertaining story.

Basically it's a story about what goes on in government/military circles when they are faced with a terrorist attack. There is the infighting between competing bureaucracies. There are a couple of unpleasant characters. But mostly it's about getting all the pieces in place to pull off an attack on a mercenary camp, and there are a bunch of pieces involved.

One interesting thing was their base at the airport. The marines setup a sandbagged machine gun post. I am not sure how much good that would do. If someone were to attack the people at the base it would be good to have, but it's not going to do much good for any aircraft coming or going. Airplanes are very vulnerable when they are on the ground, and airports are big places with a clear line of fire in every direction. If I was responsible for a military airbase, I would want a secure perimeter at least five miles from the center of airport in every direction. That's 30 miles of perimeter that would have to be secured. That would be tough, especially if you are operating out of someone elses' airport.

There was one line that stood out. I should have marked it when I read it but I didn't and it took me an hour to find it tonight, and I actually found two lines, but they both say the same thing:

A week ago, she had been riding high on the rush of astronaut training; now she was two thousand miles from Houston, and the people there thought that she was a liability. She could hear the words - uncooperative, grandstanding, aggressive. Violent. Self-centered. Not a team player.

Yeah!


View Larger Map

Update September 2016 replaced missing picture.