by DAN MICHAEL
This fourth Bart Dobbins novel is set about ten years into the future. Marijuana has been removed from the Federal Schedule 1 Class of Controlled Substances, and is legally available in all states and U.S. territories in both prescription and OTC forms. All U.S. sales are controlled and heavily taxed by state governments. Prior to legalization, the De Santos drug cartel was making millions of dollars monthly from their marijuana distribution in the United States. Their choice was to either switch to hard narcotics distribution, or negotiate a monetary agreement with America. Bart continues as an investigative reporter and a neutral intermediary messenger between the De Santos drug cartel and the United States Government.
Bart had helped establish a prior secret agreement between the two principals dubbed ‘OPERATION LANDSLIDE’. The arrangement had worked for everyone’s benefit by providing the cartel with an alternate source of income while greatly reducing narco trafficking and narcotic overdose deaths in the United States. The cartel was receiving several million dollars a month from the U.S. in exchange for not trafficking narcotics into the United States. The agreement also allowed the cartel to sell black market marijuana under the radar without being regulated or taxed by the states. But the agreement came crashing down.
A handful of states, addicted to tax revenue, ignored the DEA’s guidance to stand down regarding the cartel’s bootleg sales, and shut De Santos down hard. The cartel retaliated by shipping vast quantities of lethal narcotics into those states, and attacked those sates via a highly contagious engineered virus. Innocent men, women, and children were infected with a an incurable disease for which there was no vaccine. When the agreement was so harshly violated by both sides, they stopped communicating through Bart.
Bart wrote an expose’ about the failed Operation Landslide, hoping to spur both sides toward a new secret pact. As a result, he became a target of a failed assassination attempt on his life. He didn’t know which side wanted him dead for exposing the failure of Operation Landslide; maybe, it was both sides! He nonetheless persevered when one of the principals approached him with the basis of a new deal.
Simultaneously, Bart was examining his current relationship with Sally, a wealthy young attorney, while realizing he still had unresolved feelings for Blair, an infectious disease scientist searching for a vaccine against HIV. Both women were now unwittingly endangered because of their relationship to Bart.
Bart enlists the aid of his friend, homicide detective Lt. Trent, to determine how to keep himself and his girlfriends safe. As a result, Bart and his circle of friends spend time hiding out on a charter catamaran in the Caribbean operated by the honorable and competent Captain Larry. Bart and friends are shuttled by seaplane and private jet in their effort to stay alive while Bart tries to help the two reluctant parties reach a new and improved narcotic trafficking treaty.
Old relationships, current challenges, and future possibilities are all up in the air, literally!