Table of Contents
Praise forIntercept
What happens when the courts spring a bunch of bad guys? A retired Navy SEAL has to clean up the mess. This fast-paced thriller ranges from the Hindu Bush to northwest Connecticut in a plot as relevant as tomorrows news.
Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review
In all, Intercept is a fun read.... A good book for a summer evening on the front porch swing....
Conservative Monitor
... an exciting action packed.... The story line is fast-paced throughout... readers will be hooked....
Harriet Klausner
Robinsons Intercept is definitely a page turner... Readers who are fans of Vince Flynns novels would likely find this a book worth reading.
New Mystery Reader
Praise forDiamondhead
Diamondhead is a fabulous action-packed thriller.... Mack [Bedford] is terrific as an obstinate hero...
Midwest Book Review
The plot is as fresh as todays news.
Cape Cod Times
Praise for Patrick Robinson
One of the crown princes of the beach-read thriller.
Stephen Coonts, New York Times bestselling author of The Assassin
Gripping.
Tampa Tribune
Inspired.
San Jose Mercury News
Patrick Robinson has tapped into our fear.
Herald Express
Robinson [crafts] a fast-paced, chilling, yet believable tale.
San Francisco Examiner
If you like your techno-thrillers in ripping yarn form, youll love... [Patrick Robinson].
Guardian (London)
OTHER BOOKS BY PATRICK ROBINSON
Novels
Ghost Force
Hunter Killer
Scimitar SL2
Barracuda 945
Slider
The Shark Mutiny
U.S.S. Seawolf
H.M.S. Unseen
Kilo Class
Nimitz Class
Diamondhead
To the Death
Intercept
Nonfiction
Lone Survivor (written with Marcus Luttrell)
Horsetrader: Robert Sangster and the Rise and Fall
of the Sport of Kings
One Hundred Days: The Memoirs of the Falklands Battle
Group Commander (written with Admiral Sir John Woodward)
True Blue (written with Daniel Topolski)
Born to Win (written with John Bertrand)
The Golden Post Decade of Champions: The Greatest Years
in the History of Thoroughbred Racing, 19701980
Classic Lines: A Gallery of the Great Thoroughbreds
A Colossal Failure of Common Sense:
The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers
(written with Lawrence G. McDonald)
PROLOGUE
THE MOST REVERED SQUARE OF BLACKTOP IN ALL THE UNITED States military somehow looked even blacker beneath a pale, quartering moon, which was presently fighting a losing battle with heavy Pacific cloud banks.
Its name, the grinder, could give a man the creeps. It was a place where men had, for generations, been crushed, their spirits broken, their will to succeed cast asunder. It was a place where dreams were ended, where limitations were faced. It was a place where tough, resolute military men threw in the towel, publicly, and then slipped quietly away.
It was also a place that represented the Holy Grail of the US Navy SEALs, the place where their battle had begun and ended with the awe-inspiring moment when the fabled golden Trident was pinned on the upper left side of their dress uniform.
No member of the US Navy SEALs has ever forgotten that moment. And for all their lives, the holders of the Trident strive to live up to its symbolic demands. Everyone who receives it expects to earn that honor every day throughout the entire tenure of their service.
Such a man now stood alone on the north side of the square. Commander Mackenzie Bedford was back where he belonged, right here on the grinder, the place where he had once stood as his entire class voted him Honor Man, the young officer most likely to attain high command in the worlds toughest, most elite fighting force.
There were only twelve of themthe survivors of a six-month ordeal, which had seen 156 applicants crash and burn, most of them DOR, or Dropped On Request. They were good guys who just couldnt make itcouldnt take the murderous training, the endless pounding along the beach, the cold Pacific, the swimming, the rowing, the sleep deprivation, the log-lifting, the elephant runs. Not to mention the stark SEAL command, Push em outshorthand for a set of up to eighty eye-popping, muscleburning, brutal nonstop push-ups. For most of them it was just too much.
But the SEAL instructors do not want most of them. They want only the elite, the young iron men with the indomitable will to excel, the guys with the strength, speed, and agility, who would rather die than quit.
Not to mention the brains. There are no stupid SEALs. Seventy-five percent of them have college degrees, and they fight and struggle their way through outrageously demanding courses: weaponry, marksmanship, Sniper School, navigation, map reading, unarmed combat, mountaineering, parachute jumping, even medical courses, in preparation for battlefield duty.
SPECWARCOM commanders have one everlasting comment about the dreaded BUDs course that bars entry to their establishment: Its harder to get in here than to Harvard Law School. Different, but harder.
Commander Bedford, dressed in dark blue for the first time in more than a year, walked quietly across the grinder, relishing every step. Hed dreamed of this moment since his court-martial on a charge of mowing down innocent, unarmed Iraqi civilians on the banks of the Euphrates River.
The officers who presided over the legal proceedings did not believe the Iraqis were innocent, unarmed, or even civilians. And the SEAL commander was found not guilty. However they had issued an officers reprimand, which finished him in the United States Navy.
There was not one member of the SPECWARCOM community who believed this could possibly be fair. But it took a year to reinstate him under the most extraordinary circumstances. Last night, he dined with Rear Admiral Andy Carlow, the newly promoted commander-in-chief special operations command, and had agreed he should begin the second half of his career as a senior instructor.
And now he was on his way to a meeting in the office alongside the grinder with six of the instructors, including the chief, a Southerner named Captain Bobby Murphy, a veteran of the Gulf, and a man who would always hold a special place in Macks heart.
The instructor had stepped forward to shake his hand when Mack received his Trident. Hed said simply, Im proud of you, kid. Real proud.
Since then, they had become friends, trained together, and served together on the front line in Baghdad. And now he was going to see him, to take up his new appointment, a six-month stint as a senior BUDs instructor.
It was slightly unusual for a newly promoted SEAL battlefield commander to work as an instructor. But Mack had requested the position to test his fitness and to bring his vast combat knowledge to a new generation of SEALs who might one day serve under his command in another theater of war.
