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Moving through the silent void above planet Earth at five miles each second, KH1100, called Squint by its creators, is the world's newest, most covert spy satellite. Eons ahead of its contemporaries, when fully operational Squint will give America more than just the ability to track people on the ground. Its advanced design will allow real-time digital imagery from a remote planetary orbit that can relay pictures of objects the size of an orange in a picnic basket.
Drew Montana, a thirty-five year old engineer specializing in satellite telecommunications software at the top-secret National Security Agency, and Ted Pakula, his supervisor, are in charge of grass roots logistics for Squint.
While working out a minor camera enhancement problem in the software graphics program that is impeding receipt of clear final images from Squint, Montana, and sexy Laura Robbins, a software analyst employed by a private contractor working on the project, decide to conduct a final test of Squint. Contrary to the rules, they monitor a civilian target; a rally at Baltimore's Convention Center featuring Peter Forster, Republican presidential candidate. Horrified, Drew and Laura are reluctant witnesses as Forster and members of his entourage are cut down in a hail of bullets fired by unknown assassins. Because their view is as clear as if they had been at the scene themselves, they can identify the perpetrators.
When Drew and Laura decide to show the Squint photos to Ted Pakula, people begin to die. First Ted himself is killed in his own office. Then the body of Steve Su, a member of the National Council of Counter Intelligence, to whom Pakula showed the pictures, is found on the banks of the Potomac River, in Washington, D.C.
Montana and Robbins, their love growing, do not know who is friend and who is foe as they try to unravel and expose a conspiracy of major proportions, with tentacles stretching all the way to the White House and members of the Mob.
Compounding the problem for Drew and Laura is the need to keep the Squint Project from becoming public knowledge while ferreting out the conspirators and protecting themselves from those who seek to keep their part in the vicious murders from being discovered.
In this novel, as in his first, August in the Caribbean (Northwest Publishing, Inc., Salt Lake City, Utah), Mike Gabriele has constructed a dynamite plot guaranteed to keep you turning the pages to see what happens next. In Drew Montana, Mike has a protagonist who is both likeable and believable. On the distaff side, Laura Robbins is a beautiful woman, intelligent, warm, sophisticated, yet vulnerable; a woman about whom every man dreams.
As the story builds, so does the love of Drew and Laura for each other. Working together, they hatch a plot of their own to expose the killers and bring them to justice.
No wonder this novel was a Hollywood Film Festival Discovery Award winner, and received The Publisher's Excellence Award at the Baltimore Sun.
Anthony J. Sacco writes from Pine Bluffs, Wyoming. He’s the author of two books; The China Connection and Little Sister Lost, suspenseful mystery thrillers set in political and historical modes respectively, and classified as Christian inspirational novels. He is at work on his third book. Visit him on the web at www.SaccoServices.com or e-mail him at AnthonyJSacco@hotmail.com.