Ultimate Weapon

A pretty good read but the author (and his editors) made a couple of major technical goofs on pages 182 and 204 when referring to cruise missiles. In both instances the cruise is referred to as being either a carrying either a Paveway or Hellfire warhead. Paveway is a bomb far too large for a missile and must be dropped from a plane. A Hellfire is a relatively short-range air-to-ground, low yield warhead missile launched from aircraft, primarily helicopters or unmanned drones. The surface to ground missiles launched from U.S. Navy ships are invariably Tomahawks.

I have been interested in the SAS for a while now, and try to read anything I can on them. This novel really takes you behind the scenes and puts you in Baghdad with an SAS team when the cruise missiles are hitting. The action scenes are very realistic. I also found the scenes between the soldiers and their civilian "handlers" (who the soldiers call "Ruperts", evidently) to be quite telling. The distrust (at times) between the government managers who never hear a shot fired in anger, and yet send men to die, is very interesting and realistic, and I have no doubt that that is how it goes down. This book is not really for the faint of heart, as it really depicts not only what war is like and what it means to see dead bodies, but also what Saddam's Iraq was like, and what it is like to slog through sewage in a war when you don't know what is happening, you are low on ammo, you have not eaten in 2 days, and you might die in the next half hour.

Sarah Scott is a PhD student at Cambridge University who is about the make the breakthrough in science that would have the power to wipe out the oil and gas industries and redraw the political map of the world. Her work has attracted Saddam Hussein's regime and she has been lifted to Iraq. If Saddam gets control of this new technology, he could earn control over all the Middle Eastern coutries and that would allow him to threaten the West. Sarah's father is an ex-SAS, who fought in Iraq during the first Gulf War. Captured and tortured, Nick was left a broken man. Sarah's lover is a young SAS soldier, a Cambridge graduate. Jed is dropped behind the enemy lines to get intelligence information about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. Both men now have to find Sarah in Iraq as the Shock and Awe attack starts on Baghdad. Allied armed forces launch massive missile strikes. Nick and Jed must fight their way through a war-ravaged Iraq for their survival and most importantly, for the woman they both love. This is the first book by Chris Ryan and also the first book about SAS I've ever read. It is a good read and very entertaining. However, the plot is simple and the main protagonists are quite flat.