The Journal

Why has it been so difficult for the most powerful nation on earth to win The War on Terror and The War on Drugs?

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Laden is killed on a raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Among many other items, bin Laden’s journal is seized, but soon disappears from evidence. Two years before, two members of a task force charged with finding high-value targets had become disillusioned and left the military after a hopeless stand-off with bin Laden, who wrote of that encounter in his journal. He mentions two people by name in his journal – Ferd Greco, whose best friend Clancy Fifnik also knows about what transpired, and Alan Anders, their CIA task force director. Anders has the journal.

In 2012, Greco, Fifnik and their Muslim friend are framed in an agency-orchestrated bombing in NYC. Realizing from their own sources what is happening, they team up with retired spec-ops friends to exfiltrate the US and hunt for The Journal, all the while being hunted themselves. This is a story of the power of The Deep State, venality and virtue, self-dealing and self-sacrifice, and the darkness some will endure on their path to redemption.

David R. Serra is a Vermont attorney who lives with his wife somewhere in the Midwest. He is a lifelong student of history, and this is his first novel. As a former "Army-brat," he highly esteems the US military and our institutions of government. He hopes the main premise of this book is indeed fictional.

Henry Brinton is an author and pastor in northern Virginia. He and David Serra have been friends for over 50 years.