Two cousins raised in the slums of Beirut. One determined to strike terror in the heart of American decadence. The other desperate to stop him. A plot from the dawn of America's war on terror by award-winning author and former CBS News Middle East correspondent Lawrence Pintak.
"As Beirut rushed beneath him, Ali could see tiny figures on the roofs of some buildings. Down there were his family and friends, the gunmen and religious fanatics. Everything he loved and hated of his former life. Down there lived the demons he wanted to escape but must now confront."
Ali Ghaddar had made a new life for himself far from the violence of his native Beirut. But even Northwestern University wasn't far enough to keep the demons at bay. Each new terrorist outrage back home left him feeling more angry and helpless.
So when his girlfriend's father was kidnapped by a militia group controlled by the cousin he once considered a brother, it didn't take the CIA long to convince him to go back and try to save him. In the process, he stumbled on a chilling plot to strike at the icons of Hollywood in an audacious high-profile attack. Working with OSIRIS, a secret anti-terrorist strike team, Ali plunged back into the nightmare he thought he had escaped, torn between family ties, the desperate need to save his girlfriend's father, and the realization that the fate of countless Americans lay in his hands.
Pintak, Lawrence: - Lawrence Pintak is a journalist and scholar who has reported from four continents. A former CBS News Middle East correspondent, Pintak covered the birth of modern suicide bombing and the rise of anti-American terrorism in Beirut, the Iran-Iraq War, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and a variety of other stories across the Middle East. His career extends from the Carter White House to the Indonesian revolution, Armenia to Zimbabwe. He has won two Overseas Press Club awards, was twice nominated for international Emmys and was named a "Fellow of the Society" by the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) in 2017 for his "extraordinary contribution to the profession" of journalism.Pintak was the founding dean of The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University, dean of the Graduate School of Media and Communications at the Aga Khan University in East Africa, one of the founders of the Centre for Excellence in Journalism in Karachi, and director of the Kamal Adham Center for Journalism at The American University in Cairo. He has also been a non-resident senior scholar at the Middle East Institute and non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. Pintak's 2019 book, America & Islam, was a finalist for the Religion News Association annual book award. He is a frequent contributor to publications such ForeignPolicy.com, The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Vox.com, Axios.com, and other media outlets. Pintak holds a PhD in Islamic Studies (Univ. of Wales, Trinity Saint David). Twitter @Lpintak. Website: Pintak.com.
