Fallen Angel, by Major Jeff Struecker and Alton Gansky (B&H Publishing Group, 2011)
Sgt. Major Eric Moyer heads an American Special Ops team sneaking into Siberia to reach downed US satellite Angel-12 and to rescue a second captured Spec Ops team. Also in the race are a covert Chinese military team and a Russian splinter group.
Fallen Angel has everything a good international military thriller needs: high tech, strategy and intrigue, bad guys, and a great cast of good guys with strong leadership. Moyer’s crew are efficient, experienced, and they have a change to pull this off despite terrorist pressure to abort the mission. Wisecracks keep them sane in a deadly mission and make the read more fun. Parts are a bit grittier than I like, but the worst is off-stage.
The authors successfully juggle multiple plot threads and points of view and pull it all together into a high-stakes, fast-paced race to a satisfying finish. Don’t start chapter 34 if you can’t read to the end in one sitting.
Fallen Angel is the third novel about Moyer’s team, and it mentions to the results of previous missions. Spoilers or not, this is one series I want to go back and read from the beginning. Major Jeff Struecker is a real life Black Hawk Down veteran, and award-winning co-author Alton Gansky is well-known in Christian fiction.