IRP #1

[Matt]

Part One: Summary
The Protagonist Dominic Caruso works for the Campus, a secret off the books military intelligence organization that fights terrorism around the world. While Caruso is in India, training with an ex-Israeli commando, the Israeli and his entire family are attacked by Palestinian terrorists. Caruso is the only one to survive and blames himself for not stopping the attack in time. The United States Government investigates the attack, and during this investigation, they discover that someone has illegally accessed information that exposed the commando to the attack.
Ethan Ross is an employee of the CIA. He is tired of his government and employer keeping secrets from the public and wants to do something about it. He uses his girlfriend’s security clearance to leak CIA data to a whistleblower organization. This is an organization that protects those who leak data and exposes top secret information to the public. As part of the CIA investigation into the data breach, all CIA employees take a polygraph. Due to suspicious results, Ross is made a suspect. Ross panics and executes a scrape, which is a massive theft of information to use as a bargaining chip.
Ross hoped that his 1.5 terabyte scrape was enough to help him negotiate a pardon, but negotiating is now too large a risk as Ross is a suspect. Unbeknownst to Ross, the Russians, Venezuelans, and Iranians also know about the scrape and are competing for the data. First to strike are the Iranians, who attack Ross’ house. They fail to get the scrape but kill Ross’s girlfriend. The murder is pinned on Ross, who is proclaimed America’s most wanted man. Gianna Bertoli, the head of the organization that Ross leaked to, makes a deal with the Venezuelan Government: Ross gets out of the U.S. safely, Venezuela gets the scrape. He is expedited out of the U.S. to a safehouse in Panama. Caruso and Adara Sherman, a fellow campus operative, follow him there. The Russians strike next, and Russian special forces raid the safe house.They too fail to capture Ross, who escapes by helicopter with Mohammed, an employee of Bertoli who accompanied Ross to Panama. Caruso and Sherman catch the next plane back to Washington D.C., where Caruso finds out from the CIA that Ross and Mohammed flew out of Panama to Geneva, Switzerland. Caruso and Sherman fly to Geneva in pursuit. The next day, Ross plans to give a press conference to expose the data for the whole world to see. The FBI catches wind of this and prepares to strike Ross at his hotel. The plan is botched, and Ross escapes once again, this time by van. He is chased through the Swiss alps by the FBI and Caruso, and the chase culminates in a shootout on the highway. Ross and Mohammed escape again, this time by a hijacked rescue helicopter. In a final act of defiance, the pilot crashes the chopper. Ross, Mohammed, and two Hijackers survive and regroup in a vacant vacation chalet. Here Mohammed reveals to Ross that he is secretly working for the Iranians, and takes the scrape from him. Meanwhile, Caruso followed Mohammed and Ross from the crash to the Chalet. Caruso crept to the edge of the woods and aimed his rifle at Ross’ head through the chalet window and fired…





***SPOILER***
The shot kills Ross. Mohammed takes off down the mountain road pursued by Caruso. All of a sudden Caruso stopped running and answered his satellite phone. Mohammed was confused but continued running down the hill. Unbeknownst to Mohammed, there was a full regiment of U.S. Army infantry training less than five miles away. They were sent up the mountain road by the CIA to intercept Mohammed. He was apprehended halfway down the hill, the scrape was thoroughly destroyed, and everyone went home.

Part Two: My experience
I really enjoyed reading this book. It was fast-paced, entertaining, and it was hard to put down. There were so many plot twists, that you could never seem to guess what was going to happen next, and I really like that in a book. There were no boring or slow parts. It was all action, all the time. It kept me thinking as if I was the main character and it was really mentally stimulating. The author also expertly weaves fact and fiction so that I still managed to learn an amazing amount of things from a fictitious book. I also really enjoyed that, even though this book is a work of fiction, it has a plot that is very realistic and could happen in real life. This is a very typical book of what I usually read. For my first Independent Reading Project, I wanted to pick an author, genre, and series that I knew well. I have read the previous ten books in this series and I have loved every single one of them.

Part Three:
The big idea word I chose for this book is Man’s Struggles.
This big idea word is displayed in several different ways throughout the book. While it does not seem to be an obvious component of the book, it is a major factor in many of the events that take place in the book. In one sense, Caruso is struggling against himself because he feels responsible for the death of his friend, the Israeli Commando. “ The more he thought it over, the more certain he became, he had failed Arik (the commando) and his family” (Greany 82)There is a battle in his conscience over whether he could have prevented his friend’s death. Greany writes, “He had a feeling he was going to be second-guessing his every action for a long time to come” (Greany 59)The entire reason why he goes through so much to capture Ross is that he wants to clear his conscience of that struggle and avenge his friend’s death. Ethan Ross was also struggling against his own conscience. In his case, he was struggling between continuing to work for a government that held secrets from his people or expose those secrets at risk to his own safety. He eventually chose to expose those secrets, but at the cost of his own life. Caruso was struggling against his fellow man in Ross as well. He stalked Ross through the jungle, chased him up and down mountains, and even though Ross was eventually apprehended, Caruso went through the biggest struggle of his life to do it.