Quicksand

“You weren’t prepared for chaos. Because that’s what you set in motion, with every bullet fired, with every missile launched. Chaos.”

He was born Michael Warnick, a native of Duluth, Minnesota. A high school linebacker. An all-American kid. But the world would come to know him as Umar ibn Hassan. . .

An eloquent and charismatic cleric, the American-born Hassan has made a name for himself with the Islamic State in the Egyptian Sinai. A powerful symbol in the fight against the West.

For months, the CIA, working in coordination with Egyptian Special Forces, has been trying to capture Hassan. They’ve failed.

So now, their mission has been “simplified”: kill him.

Boots on the ground, replaced by a drone in the sky. Simple, efficient. Clean.

But as the moments tick down to the strike, as the Reaper’s cameras look down from twenty-five thousand feet above the desert, one thing becomes devastatingly clear. . .

This is not the end. This is only the beginning. And the consequences for making the wrong call could prove incalculable.