Danger Close - When the Measure of a Man is Truly Tested - F.D. Crandall

There are so many secrets, and so many have lied - and died - to keep them...

Neal Archer, a former Marine MARSOC operator in the Persian Gulf, now working for a private intelligence group run by his former commander, retired Marine Colonel David Roberts. They secretly conduct covert operations for the U.S. and friendly countries that can't be associated with such activities, providing them with plausible deniability.

Archer is searching the globe for Tomas "T.R." Rocha, a former U.S. operator, now an international criminal wanted for supplying weapons and explosives to terrorist cells worldwide, including Al Qaida and the Taliban.

Archer and Rocha cross paths leaving death and destruction in their wake. But Archer thinks that Rocha is trying to leave the life of a weapons dealer and return to the country he left as a traitor. Rocha is tracked to California, to an inland port in California where he has a cargo ship filled with a shipment of advanced armaments and weapons-grade plutonium for the terrorists.

As Archer closes in on Rocha, he stumbles across an opportunity to catch not only Rocha, but the high-ranking extremists buying his wares. After a running gun battle between the terrorists and the team in and around the port, where local police become involved but don't know who the players are, Archer becomes trapped by the terrorists, out of ammunition and cut off from the rest of the team.

Rocha, who has watched with agony the situation he has put his old comrades in from the bridge of his leased ship, offers the final blow to his terrorist customers, as he gathers all the ranking extremists in the hold of the ship and detonates the cache of explosives hidden throughout the vessel, killing himself and the leaders of Al Qaida. The resulting explosion destroys most of the Port of Sacramento.

While the local police and the Department of Homeland Security try to sort out the destruction at the port, Archer and his team return to Washington D.C., where Archer and Roberts have a change of heart about their old nemesis; from an internationally wanted supporter of world terror to a rediscovered patriot who, in the end, gave his own life to save his friends and his country.