Unquiet Mind — Simon Gray

cayden callejon (pov) - two years since the murder of his girlfriend in trinidad. his disillusionment deepens when child suicide bombers, attack three schools in england, putting his brother’s youngest son in hospital with a coma.sly williams, a miami based homeland security agent involved in the failed attempt to free his girlfriend, contacts cayden with news on maalik, the man responsible for his girlfriend’s murder.three al-qaeda operatives arrive in the peruvian rainforest, to negotiate with the deranged drug smuggler who has developed a method of hypnotising local boys into suicide bombers. He sees himself as the new inca king, exacting vengeance on behalf of his ancestors by turning the west against their children.cayden’s animus to the world results in a snap decision; he gets on a flight to miami.quantico; the u.s. marines’ base in the united states, is targeted. The u.s. authorities become frantic. all leads, no matter how tenuous must be investigated. Assets are stretched - sly williams is forced to commit cayden to peru.cayden meets jess babbacombe. a filmmaker and conservationist, younger than cayden by ten years. a mutual attraction develops, but cayden realises he can never move forward until he deals with the past. He has no choice but to follow sly’s plan to go after maalik.however, sly’s plan is ill conceived. maalik is waiting for him. cayden survives by the timely intervention of the cia but the u.s. government have not given up on using cayden as bait and encourage his further involvement by pushing jess back into his life.maalik’s people trafficking and smuggling skills enabled him to ship the children from the amazon. but he has double-crossed the insane Inca, and as cayden, sly and jess get closer, he is torn between a desire to escape or finally kill cayden.cayden, controlling his fear, pushes onward. deep in the amazon jungle, his consuming desire to sluice away the detritus from his past, gives him the courage to finally kill maalik, in the process saving jess (who produces an internationally successful film) but unfortunately too late, to save sly.