Review: You never know who your enemies may be
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 29, 2012
The US government has an alphabet soup of groups, all supposedly reporting to the president and all having their own agendas. The Project is not one of these, as it is set up by the President so that he would have one agency he could explicitly trust. It's made up of  well trained covert operatives, all of whom report to their director Elizabeth Harker. Elizabeth and her team are completely loyal to the President, their country and each other, not necessarily in that order.Recently returned from their last op, Nick Carter uses a hard work out to wrestle with his personal demons and his confusion over his budding relationship with Selena Conner. He is joined by Selena, who gets a phone call from a friend, Keven McCullough, asking her to see if she can translate some pictures of cuneiform tablets. As soon as Nick and Selena get to Kevin's office he tells them that the friend he received the pictures from, Jim Campbell, was murdered the night before.Jim worked for the CDC and had been in Iraq researching clues to ancient famines. He sent the pictures with a message that Keven should have them translated, and to be careful. Selena translates part of the document as an inventory from the treasury of Darious III in Babylon. It tells of a golden urn filled with gold, sealed, graven with a black horse and an inscription saying the urn contains the Curse of Demeter Erinys, the Greek goddess of the harvest and was sent to someone in Greece.Taking the copy of the document with her so she can study it, she and Nick leave as a package is delivered to Keven. As they are walking away, the sky lights up, and they are knocked from their feet with debris raining down upon their head. There has been an explosion in the building, right where Keven's office would have been.Back at Project headquarters, it is discovered that another man Campbell had been in contact with was killed with a car bomb. The team's computer guru, Stephanie, manages to tap into their last phone conversation, in which Campbell discloses that the he thinks the urn might have contained spores from infected grains that caused a horrible famine. Campbell thought this could possibly be a way to find a cure for a nasty crop blight called Fusarium. Since Selena speaks Greek and is a whiz at ancient research, the director decides to send her on her first solo mission to Greece to try to find the location of the urn.It turns out that more than one party are interested in the urn. A nasty Russian mobster named Zviad Gelashvili is determined to get his hands on it. The Russian government's equivalent to The Project is also watching what's going on and would love a way to take Gelashvili down. Once again the team of The Project must go against impossible odds to discover just who is behind the murders, what they are after and take them out. They may find that the enemy could very well be in their own back yard.What can I say about Mr. Lukeman's writing? His style is so descriptive that we hear the sound of bullets as they whiz by,  we smell the musky smell of long decayed bones in an underground crypt, we feel the pain of torture, and see the sights of a small Greek village. His characters are real; we know their thoughts and feel like we are right there beside them.The entire team of The Project is back together again, led once more with unshakable skill by Director Harkins. Nick and Selena are dealing with their relationship while both are fighting their own personal demons. Stephanie will find herself in a position of peril, and must rely not only on her training, but her own self resolve to get through. Ronnie Peete, legendary for his tracking skills in his Marine Recon unit, is back along with Lamont Cameron, who even with his arm in a cast can hold his own. The team is joined by an unlikely ally, Nick's Russian equivalent, Arkady Korov, a walking, thinking lethal weapon.Once again, Mr. Lukeman has transported us into his world of spies, espionage and things that go boom. If I had one complaint about this book, it would be that when I finished I felt like I had not had enough. I wanted to hold my hands out and like the fictional Oliver, beg "please sir, may I have some more". If you enjoy a good action packed, modern drama/thriller you won't be disappointed, except when it's over and, like me, you are left wanting more.Member of the Paranormal Romance Guild  Dual Review Team