To be honest, I began thinking about the problem of Islamic fundamentalism and the terrorist threat it poses, three months prior to September 11, 2001. I felt the need to work on something different after finishing ROGUE STATE.

I started working backwards, from June 2001. Originally, I figured I was talking one, maybe two books, but the list just kept growing:

1.The bombing of the USS Cole (October 12, 2000).

2.The TWA 800 explosion/shootdown/ accident (July 17, 1996).

3.The Khobar Towers boming (June 25, 1996)

4.The death of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown (April 6, 1996).

5.The Murrah Federal Building (April 19, 1995).

6.The BlackHawk Down ambush in Mogadishu (October 3-4, 1993).

7.The first World Trade Center Bombing (February 26, 1993).

8.The first Gulf War (January – March 1991).

9.Iran/Contra affair (1987)

10.The hijacking of the Achille Lauro (October 7, 1985).

11.The murder of navy diver Robert Stethem (June 14, 1985).

12.Numerous hostage takings in Lebanon (1983 – 1987)

13.The bombing of the Marine Battalion HQ (October 23, 1983)

14.The take over of the American Embassy in Tehran (November 4, 1979).

There are certainly more incidents than those, and I have many of them catalogued. When I reached the Embassy takeover, I realized that this was a watershed. For the first time, a nation state dared to assault the United States in the name of Islamic fundamentalism and they got away with it.

In my mind, the War on Terror did not begin when two airliners became missiles and destroyed the World Trade Center, or a third made it all the way to its target next to the hallowed grounds at Arlington National Cemetery and left a burning scar on the Pentagon. Nor can I neglect the passengers of the final flight that fought their hijackers to the death over a farm field in Pennsylvania.

In my mind, the War on Terror began when student radicals overran the American Embassy in Tehran and held American’s hostage for 444 days. They became emboldened by President Jimmy Carter’s inability or ineptitude to make the hard decisions he had been elected to make.

The TERROR WAR series is the story of the War on Terror beginning in 1979. The danger in writing any historical fiction is that people know what happens (or do they?) You may think you know what happened in the eighties, but you haven’t read my rendition.

To give you a sense of what FIREWALL is all about, let me relate a conversation I had with my oldest (now married) daughter.

“Dad, we were watching a Reagan biography on the History Channel. Did he really trade arms for hostages?”

“That’s a good question, what do you think happened?”

“I don’t know, I’m asking you.”

I gathered one of the early FIREWALL drafts and handed it to her. “Read this, then tell me what happened.”

But to complete the conversation might spoil the book for you. Let me leave you with this: FIREWALL is a mix of Historic and fictional characters who take you down the road called Iran/Contra and rattle your perceptions of what really happened.

Finally, I don’t know how many books will be in this series. This is what I know at this writing:

FIREWALL – Unanswered Call / Book 1 (1979-1989)

SCORCHED EARTH – Peace Dividend / Book 2 (1991 – 1995)

Untitled / Book 3 (1995 – 2000)

COLD RAGE / Book 4 (2001 – ?)

Rogue State

Reap the Whirlwind

Blood Covenant

Point of Honor

Firewall

No Safe Harbor

Douglas De Bono / DouglasDeBono.Com Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota E-Mail readermail@DouglasDeBono.Com

No Safe Harbor Everyone else ran away from the gunfire. Ike Kline ran towards trouble. The siege of the East Towne Mall begins…