Defended Target

About the Book

New York City has long been recognized as a potential terrorist target. Law Enforcement Agencies have gone to great pains to device elaborate measures designed to defend and protect the city, particularly large service installations and infrastructures with heavy concentrations of people. But the plans contain a deadly flaw. They are too high tech and based on the assumption that only one massive attack, initiated and planned from abroad to inflict the most damage, is the only possible scenario. Therefore, when a series of localized, but devastating bomb and rocket attacks begin to rock communities, the existing counter measures prove inadequate and ineffective against the virtual war of attrition the Agencies are faced with.
The City’s deliverance falls to the resourceful but reclusive Mikhail, whose brilliance as an engineer is matched only by his insight into security matters and his pragmatism in dealing with terrorist threats to American interests everywhere.
Mikhail has long figured out that terrorism has no set method or site preference to demonstrate its wanton disregard for human life and property Therefore, the City’s reliance on and deployment of an arsenal of fixed electronic gear as the counter terrorist measure of choice, is woefully inadequate. The plan lacks the flexibility needed to meet contingencies and is futile against the ever-changing methods and homegrown devices that characterize terrorist cells’ activities and likely to be adopted in City neighborhoods with devastating effects.
With help from business associates and like-minded individuals, Mikhail handpicks a counter-terrorist team to address the challenge. The team is made up of individuals from different ethnic backgrounds and religious and political orientations. Is this a gamble, considering the delicate and dangerous assignments that are to follow or it is an extension of Mikhail’s business acumen to a life and death situation in which the team members’ differing backgrounds reinforce one another and coalesce into an unrivaled anti-terrorism capacity to fight and defeat the enemy?
Colonel Tieri is the soldier, policeman and intelligence operative, a rare combination in any one individual! Mikhail’s choice as leader of the team, he enters the scene with skepticism about belief systems and leaves with a different perspective on things. Robinson, the savvy New Yorker, has lived in the city for more than two decades. He has a penchant for preoccupying himself only with essentials, but his assimilation into city life is gone so far that he is on the verge of losing everything that has a bearing on his African cultural heritage. Konate, the veteran operative on loan to Mikhail, is steeped in his native lore, but with it he brings new dimensions to methods of investigating and carrying out assignments. The redoubtable Penguin, so named because of her squat figure and manner of walking, is quick-witted, independent minded and argumentative, obviously a match for the men in what is supposed to be a man’s world.
Before the team settles in, Mikhail’s worse fears are realized. A terrorist cell rears its ugly head in the city and for a time seems to gain the upper hand, anticipating the team’s every move and operating with impunity. Is there a traitor amongst them? Who might the traitor be? The mere thought of such a serious security lapse so early in this unfolding drama is worrisome. Who is behind the cell’s activities? Which of the two powerful and uncompromising adversaries will survive the on-going battle, how and for how long?
For the answer, the reader is exposed to the thinking of the ordinary person in the street on terrorism and other current issues as he is led through the streets and environs of New York City, through the highways and back alleys of the Pennsylvanian hinterland and back to New York City.

About the Author

Salifu Yamusah studied at the University College of Ghana and at Columbia University, where he earned a PhD. He worked with Ghana’s Foreign Ministry and subsequently with the New York City Public School system. He is now retired and lives with his family in New Jersey.