Blood Anger

Blood Anger is a fast-paced thriller set in four primary locations: the Washington-Baltimore metropolitan corridor; the Caribbean Island of Curacao; Caracas, Venezuela; and Havana, Cuba. But the action begins at the Great Wall of China. A young and unpredictable Communist leader of North Korea is being given a tour of the Wall. Chinese military intelligence officers hope to impress the young upstart. He has a beautiful companion. An assassin targets the unsuspecting high-profile tourist. Shots are fired and the sniper escapes with the aid of a surprising ally. The drama of the assassination attempt segues to an incongruent event at the Comcast Center at the University of Maryland where a men's basketball game attracts President Harris O'Neil's teenage daughter and her high school teammates from the girl's basketball program. Also attending the game is Jack Fitzgerald, a federal bureaucrat who coaches a boys AAU team from Baltimore. He is meeting his high-energy 17-year-old players at the game. When they rendezvous, Fitzgerald is entertained by the boys' discovery that the president's daughter and her teammates are quite attractive. Team leader Dante Brown makes a move to meet Bibi. The clumsy, but flirtatious encounter smites Brown's love interests. So, when on the trip back to Baltimore, he hears that the government vehicle in which Bibi and her friends were riding, is attacked by terrorists, and that the president's daughter is missing and assumed kidnapped, he vows to find her and rescue her. Jack Fitzgerald and the PAL All-stars have been involved in adventures to stop crime before. Fitzgerald knows instinctively that Brown and the others will try to find Bibi O'Neil. He warns them against them doing anything that would interfere with the work of professional lawmen who would not want them in the way. Coincidentally, the troublemaker with a hand in Bibi's kidnapping is the same villain who was involved in the PAL All-stars' first vigilante episode, although Fitzgerald and the boys are unaware. Nor is the villain aware that the PAL All-stars have a stake in his actions. The villain is North Korean-born billionaire Pak Yong-sung. Pak is brought into the kidnapping through a Chinese acquaintance -- a military intelligence officer who has hired Pak to provide the sniper at the Great Wall. Further twists to the connection complicate the attempts by the bad guys to solicit a ransom from the President of the United States. The president and his cabinet, meantime, try to come up with a cause for Bibi's abduction so they know how to search for her kidnappers. The bad guys send an important clue when they kill a California lawmaker to make sure the president knows that his daughter's life is at risk. Simultaneous to the drama unfolding in Washington, D.C. because of the abduction, U.S. military are put on alert when a small fleet of Chinese Navy vessels traverse the Panama Canal and enter the Caribbean. They carry non-military equipment that Pak and his colleagues recognize as deep water drilling equipment. The Global Anchor team learn that China and Cuba are joining forces to search for oil in the Gulf of Mexico within miles of the Florida Keys. When the Chinese fleet takes a side trip to Caracas, Venezuela, the Global Anchor team investigates why. So does the Canadian espionage network that operates from the Canadian Embassy in Washington. Canada buys a large quantity of its oil from Venezuela and could be a prospect for Cuban oil if discovered. The Canadian government is nervous, though, about China's intentions with its military ships leading the enterprise. The search for a surprisingly resourceful Bibi O'Neil, the international drama in the Caribbean, and Pak Yong-sung's mercenary involvement that he believes will further his philosophical efforts to manage the world's well being, all are affected by the teenage athletes from Baltimore. How is what Blood Anger unravels.