Phantom in the Desert

Tensions in the Persian Gulf have been building for decades, senior officials inside government know Iran is nuclear capable. The nightmare scenario, a nuclear strike in the Gulf escalates into a global nuclear conflict as the major nuclear powers are forced to take sides. Saudi Arabia and Iran are engaged in a slowly escalating regional cold war, with occasional hot flashes. The intelligence community assures congress and executive branch officials, Saudi Arabia does not have a nuclear weapons program, a Gulf conflict will not go nuclear.

A brilliant and dedicated investigator is quietly digging in old classified files, he suspects Saudi Arabia had a nuclear weapons program many years ago. He travels with a colleague to the Arabian Peninsula; did Saudi try to go nuclear and if so, did they keep it going? Only a month after they finish their investigation, the world is shocked by the first atmospheric detonation of a nuclear weapon in more than fifty years. Chaos follows in the aftermath, whose bomb was it?

A new president and his closest staff of national security advisers, assisted by the young investigator, work quickly to try and prevent things from spiraling out of control. These clever patriots respond as they search for a strategy to avoid a regional or global nuclear conflict. The intriguing opening act in the Nuclear Proliferation Trilogy.