The Bin Laden Plot

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I hope you enjoyed reading The Bin Laden Plot!

As I mentioned in the author’s note of the previous novel, Book 6 (Deep Strike) was a mini-reboot to the Trident Deception series, moving Christine from the White House to Langley and pulling Harrison from the Navy so he could play a larger role in the series. Book 6 was also the beginning of a secondary plot involving Mixell and his childhood friends Jake and Christine. As detailed at the end of Deep Strike, there was a debt to be paid, which Mixell took out on Angie.

I telegraphed her demise in a previous author’s note, mentioning that Angie stood between Jake and Christine, which needed to be resolved, and that I’m a thriller writer — I don’t write divorce court scenes. If you were upset upon Angie’s death, that’s a good thing. It means that even though she appeared in only a few chapters, you connected with the character, which is what I was hoping for.

The next novel completes the Mixell/Christine/Jake storyline with a twist. Hopefully you’ll enjoy that novel as well.

Disclaimer #1: The Dan Snyder character in The Bin Laden Plot is not the Dan Snyder who owned the Washington Commanders. I use real people’s names for most of my characters — individuals who have helped me as a writer or who have won the option to be a major character at one of my book release parties. Brenda Verbeck is one of them, and Dan Snyder is her brother, both in real life and in the book. Another example is Jason Johnson, the Pentagon Navy chief who Mixell killed. He’s my son-in-law, who wanted to be a character in the book, and I obliged.

Disclaimer #2: The details of the raid on Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound in this novel have been simplified to avoid bogging down the story and to avoid areas where there are conflicting accounts of what happened. Additionally, the retelling in this novel blends fact with fiction to support the storyline. For those interested in the details, there are several unclassified and slightly different versions of the raid available via open-source documents.

Finally, the usual disclaimer: Some of the submarine tactics described in The Bin Laden Plot are generic and not accurate. For example, torpedo employment and evasion tactics are classified and cannot be accurately represented in this novel. The dialogue also isn’t 100 percent accurate. If it were, much of it would be unintelligible to the average reader. To help the story move along without getting bogged down in acronyms, technical details, and other military jargon, I simplified the dialogue and description of operations and weapon systems.

I did my best to keep everything as close to real life as possible while attempting to develop a suspenseful (and unclassified), page-turning novel. Hopefully, it all worked out and you enjoyed reading The Bin Laden Plot!