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.