The Sahara Intercept, the fifth book in the Secret Cold War Series, was recently released on Amazon. Kindle and paperback editions are available.
The Sahara is the world's largest hot desert. It covers about 3.5 million square miles; about the size of the United States. It is about 5,000 kilometers (3000 miles) across. In 1977, I traveled from London to Nairobi, crossing the Sahara in a all-wheel drive Bedford Truck.
December 1977, I arrived in Bangui, the capitol of the Central African Empire, a few days after the coronation of Emperor Bokassa. Eager for a change of fare, I happened on a small cafe and enjoyed a fresh dish of yogurt. It was delicious. A large picture of Colonel Kaddafi hung over the door, the owner was a Libyan expatriate. The next day I was laid-low by a vicious stomach bug, naturally, I blamed the yogurt, and Kaddafi by association.
A few weeks later, while eating lunch in a gravel pit in Eastern Zaire, I found an expended .50-caliber armor-piercing tracer bullet. The next day I arrived in Kisangani, a city still not fully recovered from dystopian violence of the Simba rebellion supported by Che Guevara. I kept the bullet, and after some research, I presumed it to have been fired from an aircraft piloted by Cuban exile pilots employed by the CIA during the nineteen-sixties. Cubans fighting Cubans in the heart of Africa.
Kaddafi and Che, two players in the Cold War bringing conflict and suffering to the people of central Africa. The Sahara Intercept attempts to give the reader a glimpse into the secret cold war in the heart of Africa, using a fictional story interwoven into a timeline of real events.
The Sahara Intercept is a work of fiction interwoven into a timeline of real events. The following events actually occurred:
1. The Ustica Mystery: The Italian airliner was shot down on 27 June 1980. A bomb or a missile was suspected, but no official blame was ever assigned.
2. Bombing of the Railway Station in Bologna, Italy on 2 August 1980.
3. Incident with U.S. Air Force ELINT Aircraft on 16 September 1980.
4. The Libyan Invasion of Chad.
5. Military coup in Turkey on 12 September 1980.
6. Libyan attack on N'Djamena airport by Libyan Tu-22s on 9 October 1980.
The military units, American, French, Chadian, and Israeli are real and operate as described. The Chadian Air Force used surplus Skyraiders and French mercenary pilots as described in the novel.
The cities of Tamanrasset, Agadez, Bangui, and Kisangani are described as they existed in 1977. Kisangani was worse, the author having witnessed two thefts in one day.
The Škorpion Brigade and Lukas Penwell's organization are fictional.