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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