This Tom Clancy(ish) story begins where 911 left off, with the United States still very vulnerable to terrorist attack. The unthinkable happens — Washington, D.C. is leveled in a nuclear blast, taking a large segment of the established Federal Government with it. Those individual officials lucky enough to escape the conflagration are thrown into turmoil, but soon establish lines of control and calm a terrified nation. The new president sets up a clandestine training program she calls Freedom’s Lancers. Its purpose is to develop a super secret cadre of young spies of the highest educational caliber with a mission to seep into the fabric of society in scores of countries across the globe. These highly dedicated undercover agents are to ferret out and report on illegal arms shipments and other activities of a detrimental nature to the free world. Where possible to do so without compromising their secret identity, they are to effect countermeasures. In addition to intense academic studies, their training includes every aspect of the most modern electronics, armaments, guerilla warfare techniques and martial arts.
 

The protagonist of the story, Ali Jaheed, is an immigrant with close ties to his family in Pakistan, which makes him a prime candidate for the Freedom’s Lancers program. His intellectual and physical profiles more than qualify him for the program and he is inducted at the age of seventeen for his college education followed by a twenty-year hitch with the Lancers. His career path will take him into lands untamed by western standards, lands that harbor the haunts and escape routes of Osama bin Laden and a large contingent of gun-running, dope dealing thugs, as well as ruggedly independent indigent peoples that scratch an honest living from these inhospitable lands. Into this cauldron Ali plunges with gusto and finds deep friendships and lethal enemies, some of which are one and the same. There are adventurous life threatening experiences at every turn — as well as romance in many delicious flavors.
 

Dr. Ronald Hull has created a magnificent story here, one that keeps you excited in your linear search for the next adventure to leap from the pages. One has to wonder how Dr. Hull could amass such detail and plot as he does from the confines of a wheel chair. The book reads as if Ron were himself present and reporting from the trails of Genghis Khan and Marco Polo, and even that of bin Laden. The answer has to be that he avails himself of prodigious research and a vivid imagination, not to mention an overload of tenacious energy. This is fiction with pizzazz.
 

I did find a couple of minor negatives. I believe the book would have been even more focused and compelling early on if the short chapters 2, 3 and 6 were excised. They showcase some of the author’s impressive command of military armament and demonstrate the dangers of post-blast operations in a radioactive area, but in my opinion they tend to dilute the main theme through exposition of a few characters, most of whom are ancillary at best. They delay getting to the heart of the real story with background not necessary for the plot. There were also a number of places that a rigorous line editing operation would have corrected and made smoother. 
 

In my overall assessment of War’s End these are small irritations that will receive attention by the author before the second printing and will have little negative significance for your enjoyment of this great book. I highly recommend it for its thrilling action adventure motif and style. It should also appeal to those with a desire to explore the virtues of a different and perhaps more effective way to accomplish the security goals of freedom loving societies — security goals that hurling vast armies and armaments at will-o-the-wisp terrorists exercising their suicidal and hit-and-run tactics apparently don’t accomplish. Four stars for this book! It could be screenplay material!            
 

© 2005 R. Leland Waldrip