The Bin Laden Plot by Rick Campbell

Published by St. Martin's Press on April 23, 2024

I love submarine novels. I don’t know why. I just do. When Rick Campbell writes scenes on submarines, I am tense and fully alert, as if I am anticipating the need to dodge a torpedo. When he writes scenes that take place on land, my response is more ho-hum.

In The Bin Laden Plot, Campbell tries to spice the story with political intrigue that is completely over the top (meaning it is fairly routine by modern thriller standards). The idea of a “rogue U.S. organization covering its tracks, operating outside the law, willing to murder anyone who threatens to expose what they’ve done” is just another Tuesday in Thrillerworld. A bit more original is the premise that Osama bin Laden might have been taken prisoner rather than being killed. Anything can be true in Thrillerworld, so I decided to roll with it until Campbell got me back into a submarine.

Many of the protagonists, including Director of CIA Christine O’Connor and action hero Jake Harrison, have appeared in Campbell’s earlier novels. Another returning character is the mysterious Khalila, who is working for the CIA despite the fact that nobody trusts her, probably because she makes a habit of killling her partners. This novel reveals Khalila’s true identity which — no shock here — is over the top. Intelligence agencies make unintelligent decisions all the time, but bringing Khalili into the fold is too incompetent to pass as credible.

Central to the story is Brenda Verbeck, the Secretary of the Navy. Her brother made a secret deal to sell certain goods to Iran that violate American law. Verbeck learned about the deal from communications intercepted by a clandestine program that she oversees. To protect her brother, Verbeck has arranged to kill everyone who has knowledge of the communication. Over the top much? Oh, we aren’t even close to the pinnacle yet.

Verbeck also has to destroy a data archive that holds the communication, which involves destroying a small autonomous submarine and a rather larger one. She tasks Capt. Murray Wilson with destroying the subs. Wilson commands a submarine that has appeared in earlier novels in this series. Oddly, when Verbeck orders him to destroy submarines with the flimsiest pretext, Wilson obediently says yes without asking deeper questions about the necessity of sinking them. I guess following orders is more important than questioning bizarre orders.

I learned something from this novel that I probably would have learned by paying attention to the real world. I didn’t know that the military buried bin Laden’s body at sea, supposedly to prevent it from becoming a shrine to his followers. That was a convenient ruse if bin Laden was captured alive. Campbell has given conspiracy enthusiasts something new to get excited about, although I suppose they were blogging about it years ago.

The rest of the plot is standard. Iran is doing evil things. Russia is helping. America saves the day with torpedoes and manages to avoid political ramifications that, in the real world, would probably lead to war.

Harrison is a standard action hero, meaning one who is devoid of personality. He had a thing once with Christine but she kept putting him off so he married someone else. Christine regrets her decision. Harrison doesn’t. Campbell pushes that subplot forward in an unexpected way and promises to resolve it in the next book. I’m looking forward to it for the submarines, not for the romance story.

The ending features a typical villain who can’t stop boasting about his vengeful genius as he holds multiple people hostage. If bad guys would just shut up and be bad, they’d be a lot more successful. Still, I give Campbell credit for not forcing a happy ending.

For action fans, a prolonged fight scene near the novel’s end is a payoff that’s worth the wait. The submarine warfare scenes that usually enthrall me are a bit perfunctory, but the story moves quickly and — for readers who are willing to tolerate unlikely plots — it achieves a reasonable level of excitement.

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Deep Strike by Rick Campbell

Published by St. Martin's Press on March 16, 2021

Deep Strike is a story of submarines chasing and shooting torpedoes at other submarines. That’s what I look for in a Rick Campbell novel. The rest of the book is an ordinary thriller, but the underwater scenes are exceptional. This is the sixth book in a series but if you just read it for the action, you can easily get by without the context provided in the earlier novels.

The plot is driven by a villain named Lonnie Mixell who (too coincidentally) was the college buddy of Jake Harrison, a CIA paramilitary operations officer who has played the role of hero throughout this series. Mixell is a SEAL who went to prison and now has a grudge against the American government.

Using funding from al-Qaeda, Mixell bribes a Russian submarine captain to fire missiles at twenty American targets. The Russian captain accepts the bribe because his daughter has a disease that won’t respond to conventional treatment, although a very expensive treatment will save her life. That’s just a bit too convenient, but it sets the action in motion and maybe that’s all that matters. The Russian thinks he’s firing conventional missiles, not knowing that additional bribes have resulted in nuclear warheads being substituted for conventional warheads. As if that won’t cause enough mayhem, Mixell has an additional plan to cripple the American government that is revealed late in the novel.

Harrison has his work cut out for him, but much of the story takes place underwater. Early in the novel, an American submarine trails a Russian sub as it leaves port. Unaware that the Russian sub is commanded by a desperate man who plans to attack the US, the American commander thinks he’s on a routine mission.

After the mission takes an unfortunate turn, it’s up to a bunch of smart people with expensive technology to figure out where the Russian sub might be headed. Another American submarine sails into action, leading to the aforementioned submarine warfare. Campbell always combines technical precision with tactical savvy to create gripping scenes as submarine crews shoot and dodge torpedoes.

Some aspects of Deep Strike are bothersome. In the tradition of implausible thrillers, a villain captures a hero, wastes time explaining his plan to the hero, and then keeps the hero alive so that the hero can thwart the plan. Why doesn’t the villain just kill the hero before he carries out the plan? Because then the thriller wouldn’t have a happy ending.

A second plot thread involves Harrison’s partner, who seems to be a psychopath. Harrison is warned to keep an eye on her because her partners tend to die. Instead of reporting her behavior when she engages in unnecessary violence, or later when she ponders killing Harrison to prevent him from reporting what he saw, Harrison gives her a pass. I mean, team loyalty is one thing, but letting a crazed killer stay in her job without at least calling the boss’ attention to her professional inadequacies seems like piss poor job performance. The plot thread is an unnecessary distraction, particularly since another of Harrison’s partners also turns out to be less than ideal. How much bad partner drama does a thriller need?

The scenes leading up to and following the submarine warfare are standard thriller fare. They are executed with competence, but they aren’t fresh or exciting. Harrison’s non-relationship with CIA director Christine O’Connor, a character who played a central role in some earlier novels, gains no traction in this one. They both fret about what might have been but that’s old news, recycled from earlier novels. Neither of them has enough personality to make the reader care about their relationship. As far as I’m concerned, everything else in the book is ho-hum background to the real point of a Rick Campbell novel: submarines in action. But for me, and perhaps for other fans of submarine thrillers, that’s enough.

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Treason by Rick Campbell

Published by St. Martin's Press on March 19, 2019

Treason is the fifth novel in Rick Campbell’s Trident Deception series. The only other one I’ve read is the third, Ice Station Nautilus. I enjoyed that one because I’m a sucker for submarine novels. Happily, there are submarines in Treason, although submarine fans will need to wait until Chapter 12 to voyage below the surface of the sea. The two series entries I’ve read share some central characters, but can easily be read as stand-alone novels.

The focus is on National Security Advisor Christine O’Connor, with whom Russia’s post-Putin president would like to have an affair. Since Christine killed some important Russians in an earlier novel, the president’s libidinous intent is unsettling to other members of the Russian government, who believe that justice requires Christine to be assassinated before the president has a chance to get her into bed. Fortunately for Christine, they aren’t the president. Unfortunately for Christine, sleeping with Russia’s president does not occupy a position on her bucket list, and she has been invited to his summer home for what the president hopes will be a tryst. What’s a National Security Advisor to do? Détente between the sheets?

Christine is still peeved at a SEAL named Jake Harrison because, after she twice rejected his proposals, he promised to wait for her, then stopped waiting after ten years. Don’t promises like that come with an automatic expiration date? Before the novel is over, Christine will have another unreasonable reason to be angry with Harrison.

Before that soap opera unfolds, a group of Russian military leaders plot an unsanctioned act involving a secret weapon that, they believe, will cripple NATO and allow Russia to reclaim Ukraine, the Baltic States, and half of Poland. Their success requires them to get Russia’s president out of the way until he is on board with the plot or dead, whichever is most convenient. Unfortunately for Christine, she has a front row view of the coup. The coincidence that once again places Christine at the heart of the action is a bit contrived and the secret weapon isn’t all that believable, but thrillers often require the suspension of disbelief, so I rolled with it.

Other aspects of Treason are also a bit of a stretch — particularly a SEAL invasion of Russia's Ministry of Defense, which didn’t strike me as even remotely plausible — but after the initial set-up, the novel sustains such a rapid pace that the reader won’t have time to wonder whether the story is credible. Sometimes plausibility gives way to enjoying the action on multiple fronts. Christine and Russia’s president try to stay a step ahead of the Russian plotters who want to kill them; the American president and his team try to figure out why America’s military technology has fallen under Russian control; and the submarine sends a Navy SEAL team into Russia on a rescue mission before engaging in an undersea battle against a bunch of Russian subs. Fun stuff.

Campbell doesn’t put much effort into characterization, but Treason works well as a military action novel. Even with SEALs running around, the emphasis isn’t on tough guys being tough. A female protagonist who isn’t in the military and who manages to be tough without having a tough guy persona makes the story more interesting than testosterone-laden action stories. Given my fascination with submarine novels, I particularly enjoyed the detailed submarine chapters, but I recommend Treason to anyone who enjoys military thrillers or fast moving action stories.

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Ice Station Nautilus by Rick Campbell

Published by St. Martin's Press on June 28, 2016

I’m a sucker for submarine novels. This one has four submarines, torpedo battles, undersea rescues, SEAL shootouts with Spetznaz, and all sorts of technical jargon that sounded convincing to me, given that I know nothing about submarines apart from what I glean by reading submarine novels.

A new Russian ballistic missile submarine is carrying a secret. The USS North Dakota is assigned to monitor its maiden voyage. As might be expected when submarines play tag under the polar ice cap, things go wrong pretty quickly, and the story turns into one of survival and rescue. But while the American Navy goes about its rescue mission, the wily Russians hatch a more nefarious plot. That leads to the aforementioned torpedo battles and polar shootouts.

National Security Advisor Christine O’Connor and presidential military aide Steve Brackman are the main characters, although a full cast of military and political characters round out the story. This is the third novel in a series and, while I didn’t read the first two, it works well as a stand-alone. Relationships between the central characters, however, are probably more meaningful to readers who followed the series.

While much of the story is predictable, it is predictably exciting, and occasional surprising moments are rewarding. The story moves at flank speed. Characters have enough characterization to carry a thriller and the plot is no more far-fetched than is typical in a modern action novel. Credible excitement is about all I ask from a submarine novel, and Ice Station Nautilus delivers.

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