PANDORA’S LEGION

In the latest ground-war thriller from Coyle (They Are Soldiers, 2004, etc.) and Tillman (Dauntless, 1992, etc.), al-Qaeda sends disease-injected human time bombs to the Great Satan, so the Great Satan sends a private commando force to Pakistan to put a stop to the nonsense.

Who you gonna call when political correctness means you can’t use profiling or when your own army is stretched to the limit in Iraq? Strategic Solutions, Inc. Located conveniently in the Northern Virginia suburbs of D.C. and staffed with the baddest, toughest, smartest, most disaffected ex-servicemen available in the U.S., SSI and its Naval Academy ex-admiral founder Mike Derringer stand ready to take on those odd jobs efficiently and on time. Time being of the essence when evil veterinarian-turned-viral-assassin Dr. Ali is busily sending out already fatally ill jihadists loaded with the deadly Marburg filovirus, hoping to wipe out as many Crusaders and other infidels as possible. Derringer assembles a crack testosteronic team to send to Pakistan to identify, hunt down and eradicate Dr. Ali and his henchmen. The team’s special secret weapon is beautiful, rich, rock-climbing Dr. Carolyn Padgett-Smith, a British specialist in filovirus diseases. But there are no secrets in Pakistan, where al-Qaeda loyalists outnumber the good guys. Dr. Ali quickly gets wind of the strike force, and he’s especially enraged to know that a woman is included in the force. A woman with a gun! The province of Baluchistan starts to run with blood as the SSI specialists and Dr. Ali’s troops shoot, stab, whip and otherwise torture each other in their frequent encounters. And while the blood is spilling, the sinister veterinarian purchases two boys from an impoverished family and sets them on a fatal course.

Action-filled revenge fantasy for desk-bound Terminators.