Bravo Cell One Nine was a covert team, a secret entity trained by American security and intelligence agencies, put together for the first time sixteen years previously. Raymond Favor, 28 years old; Arielle Bouchard, age twenty-two; Alex Mendonza, twenty-five; and Winston Stickney, thirty-one. Disparate personalities and backgrounds, each with his or her own area of expertise. The history behind the program? “Bravo sent teams . . . into foreign lands under deep cover to undertake the nation’s riskiest and most sensitive tasks, the darkest of black ops: kidnapping, sabotage, assassination. Bravo agents were multilingual, highly intelligent, adaptable, and resourceful. They were also fully deniable.” After five years of service, in a mutual decision, they all resigned. Now each financially independent, the team reassembles for what they believe is simply to “do a little good deed and then . . . just a vacation to . . . have some fun.” But you know what they say about good deeds.
The good deed in question entails finding an eighteen-year-old girl and her twin brother who disappeared within days of each other. She had not been seen since leaving her village in the Philippines and boarding a bus to Manila, 22 hours away, for a promised job. Her close-knit family is unable to trace her movements since that time, and her brother follows her path to Manila when no word is received from her. What does not initially seem a very complex task evolves into a grim mission which endangers all their lives.
Favor is somewhat like Lee Child’s Jack Reacher, down to the alarm clock in his head as well as his lethal capabilities, albeit with a difference. He has recently become introspective, and conflicted about the things he has done in the past. And he definitely is not a peripatetic loner who discards his clothing and purchases new apparel when the need arises.
This is a fast-moving, exciting thriller truly deserving of the appellation. Billed as “A Bravo Cell One Nine Novel,” this reader will definitely look forward to the next one. Highly recommended.
