THE PATH TO FREEDOM is a riveting read about a woman who
loses her self-esteem,
then turns around and becomes a covert anti-terrorist
operative. I read it at a sitting.
The story starts in Algeria where Vince and his squad of
anti-terrorist US soldiers are trying to extract a female
from a setup with a drug dealer. The girl decides to tell
the drug dealer the truth but he uses her as a shield,
then, foreseeably, throws her out of his helicopter. The
squad shoots him down, but needs to train up another
female.
THE PATH TO FREEDOM tells us how Sarah Stevens is disgusted
to be thrown out of the Air Force. Okay, she's overweight.
Well, obese. But she's still a capable soldier and knows
several languages, besides having hostage negotiation
training. She has no money or job plans. When she finds
her boyfriend cheating on her, her self-esteem hits rock
bottom. She takes the advice of her former senior officer
and signs up for a free boot camp for weight loss in the
Nevada desert. Here with other former girl soldiers, she
eats high protein, low carb, high veg meals, with no soft
drinks, and runs and hikes all day. The weight falls off
and after two months Sarah doesn't recognise herself. She
is selected for further training in self-defence and
weaponry.
Sarah ends up joining Vince and his handsome, capable crew,
getting a crash course in Arabic and targeting a sleazy
Middle Eastern playboy who uses money from smuggling to
finance terrorism. Dressed in millionaire clothes, wearing
transceivers in her pearl jewelry and GPS in her watch,
Sarah boards the sheik's yacht and convinces him that she's
a good-time girl. In this man's world, AK-47s are sold by
the ton and cost six dollars each. When he hosts a party,
wealthy socialites and US senators flock to meet him and
give him cheques for a children's charity in Iraq -
gullible people, who never dream that they are financing a
terrorist training camp. Sarah can only keep the sheik's
attention by sleeping with him, but there is no danger of
losing her heart, for she secretly has fallen for Vince.
Then the sheik spontaneously whips her off to Libya, and
even greater peril....
I'll definitely be reading more of Lisa Pietsch, who has a
background in the material she writes.
Sarah Stevens is a washed-up military cop whose life is a
shambles until she is offered a position on an inter-agency
anti-terrorism task force by the CIA. The thirty-year-old,
overweight, down-on-her-luck Stevens goes to a secret
training camp where she is transformed into a sexy and
deadly agent whose mission is to find and stop, by any means
possible, the financiers of terrorism against the United
States and its allies. Although she goes into it thinking
that it is just a job, Sarah soon discovers that this is a
new life loaded with adventure, including the handsome Vince
Hennessee, her team leader, and unimaginable danger in the
form of Hassan, the man she has to destroy