Landing Party — T.J. McFadden

One final mission with a tired ship and an exhausted crew. ... The men and women of the destroyer USS KIMMEL are on the 7th month of a 6 month deployment to the Med when they get one last mission- retrieve a defecting Libyan officer. But what they get is a dead Libyan officer, a live CIA agent and the location of Americans being held hostage in Libya. A rescue mission is planned out, but when an accident destroys the rescue team, with the clock ticking, the mission falls to the crew of the KIMMEL. Led by a renegade CIA agent, a former paratrooper and an ambitious Captain, the sailors of the KIMMEL must improvise equipment, organize a landing party and strike deep into Libya before a terrorist deadline runs out. LANDING PARTY is in the same genre as Tom Clancy's HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, with a dash of THE GUNS OF NAVARONE thrown in for good measure. It is unique in that it's heroes are not officers, not elite Navy SEALS or commandoes, but normal sailors, the men and women of the Ragged Fleet, ordinary people who must find within themselves the strength to do extraordinary things. Written from the Deckplate point of view by a veteran of the Navy, LANDING PARTY is a fast paced story set in the Navy of today, about the men and women who take our ships to sea.