"Target: Nimitz"

Gary Carter, an Orland resident and a retired U.S. Navy Captain who served aboard the USS Nimitz, has imagined a taut confrontation between U.S. and Iranian interests in the Strait of Hormuz. His timely historical novel starts in the Spring of 2006 in Tehran as the country's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Hamid Javad Ghorbani, calls for plans to strike back against the Great Satan. "The primary target of the operation," he says "must be the zealot’s aircraft carrier Nimitz."

The President of the United States, Edward Michael Sheppard, is at first unaware of the plot. That will change. 

"Target: Nimitz" ($17.95 in paperback from BookLocker.com; also for Amazon Kindle) follows Frank Warren, "assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Readiness; Captain, U.S. Navy (ret)," now living with his wife, Mary, in Northern California. That is, until Warren applies for the "assistant to the assistant" job at the Pentagon. Then it's off to D.C.

Carter draws on years of experience, and extensive research (the novel has 40 endnotes as well as a list of characters and a glossary of military acronyms), to bring the reader into the inner workings of the Department of Defense, the White House Situation (Sit) Room, and the Nimitz, now becalmed in international waters in the Persian Gulf with both nuclear reactors offline.

"Like a small town, an aircraft carrier has its own rhythm and pulse; it has unique sounds, smells, and routines, such as the shrill of the bos’n’s pipe marking certain events throughout the day. ... Sailors adjust to the gentle rolls and pitches that the sea induces on its 100,000-ton visitor."

Warren is worried about the Nimitz, "the mighty fist of American power." He learns that Iranian boats are "huddling" in several groups surrounding the carrier. How should the U.S. respond? Warren has an idea, an audacious plan involving a B-52--and who would have guessed, for a person in his lowly position, that he would be explaining it to the President in the Sit Room?

The writing will gladden the heart of Tom Clancy or Stephen Coonts fans, replete as it is with military detail and the tense question: What will happen next in the "fog of war"?