The Common Defense

In Mexico to instruct its army on counterterrorism techniques, army veteran Captain Mark Isen finds his mission expanded by the arrival of German terrorist Heinrich Wolf and his deadly attacks on the United States

In the near future of Ruggero's second techno-thriller (after 38 North Yankee ), U.S. "advisers" have been assigned to the Mexican army as part of an anti-drug campaign. Infantry captain Mark Isen and Delta Force major Ray Spano, already aware that the local authorities bitterly resent their presence, run into larger troubles when neo-nationalist German terrorists, led by Heinrich Wolf, infiltrate Mexico and attack U.S. targets with bombs and nerve gas. The planned climax of Wolf's campaign is a strike against Washington on July 4; Isen and Spano have 48 hours to stop him. Ruggero, who demonstrates sound knowledge of the U.S. Army's inner dynamics, has a good ear for dialogue and the ability to create effective characters--the relationship between Isen and his wife is especially convincing. But these virtues are subverted by his focus on two tangentially connected themes. The question of whether U.S. armed forces can provide a quick fix for the drug problem outside the country's borders is posed but never developed, and Ruggero switches to a conventional terrorist adventure that overshadows the initial, more promising story line. In the end, the reader is left unsatisfied.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Captain Mark Isen, who slugged it out heroically with present- day Koreans in Ruggero's 38 North Yankee (1990), now travels to Mexico to advise that country's unenthusiastic troops in the drug war. In exchange for economic concessions and an easing of immigration regulations, the Mexican government has agreed to Operation Sentinel--a joint effort between the Mexican and US military to weaken and defeat the drug merchants who have been operating with impunity in northern Mexico. The operation is not going well. Bitterly and openly resented by the Mexican officers, minimally armed, and unsure of their authority, the American advisors make little headway until Mark Isen arrives. Relieving the demoralized advisor attached to a small army unit near Tampico, Isen finds scrubby, undisciplined, poorly supplied troops led by an intelligent but ineffectual officer. Isen tactfully applies his weak Spanish and his formidable soldiering skills and sets to work showing the prickly Captain Cortizo how to shape his men into a fighting unit. While Isen battles national pride, corrupt police, brutal heat, and hobbling regulations, Heinrich Wolf, a German in the pay of the still-dangerous Soviets, executes his elaborate plan to bring the tools of his terrorist trade through Mexico and into the US in order to bring that cocky nation to its knees--and Mark Isen's war on drugs becomes ten times trickier. All of this is bad news for Mrs. Isen, who would very much like her husband home and in a nice, safe instructor slot at West Point. As usual, Ruggero is all business. Mark Isen is a soldier's soldier and the story is a soldier's story--well told, but with no frills or comforts for the casual civilian. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Captain Mark Isen, hero of Ruggero's 38 North Yankee ( LJ 5/1/90), makes a second appearance, this time in a technothriller set in Mexico. Isen, assigned to a U.S. Army drug interdiction program, has to cope with Mexican opposition, incompetence, and apathy in his primary training and liaison role, as well as with a group of German terrorists armed with chemical weapons that is operating out of Mexico. A fast-paced piece of genre fiction, the book is somewhat weakened by Ruggero's treatment of his Mexican and terrorist characters, whose individuals remain little more than cardboard stereotypes for the Americans to encounter. This weakness is unlikely to influence readers looking for a military thriller, however, and the title will undoubtedly be in heavy demand, particularly with readers of Ruggero's first novel. Recommended for collections where the works of Tom Clancy and Larry Bond have been popular.-- Stanley Planton, Ohio Univ.
Chillicothe Lib.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.