You just never know what the result will be when a journalist turns
novelist. Charles Jaco, who gained worldwide recognition during the
Gulf War with his reports of SCUD missile attacks on Saudi Arabia, has
garnered nearly three dozen national and international journalism awards
over the course of his career, including two Edward R. Murrow awards.
Of course, journalism and fiction are two vastly different breeds of
cats, and excellence in one does not necessarily translate to excellence
in the other. For Dead Air, his first novel, Jaco has chosen
to stick with a topic he's well acquainted with: the Gulf War, seen
from a reporter's point of view.
Peter Dees, a veteran television correspondent for Globe-Star
Television (GTV), is in Haiti with his producer covering the political
changes there post-Baby Doc Duvalier, especially the emerging radical
priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide. When Dees' producer is found murdered
execution-style with a bullet to the back of his head and another through
his left eye, and the assassin is identically killed very shortly after,
Dees can only assume that it has something to do with the contents of
the laptop computer his producer left with him for safekeeping just before
his death.
What he finds on the computer is a file with barebones evidence that
somebody in the U.S. is shipping anthrax to Iraq, where Saddam Hussein
may be developing a new generation of chemical and biological weapons.
Dees checks several other chemical names he finds on the laptop with
GTV's mainframe and discovers among others a precursor for the nerve
gas sarin. Dees asks Melinda Adams, a female producer he chances to get on the phone when he
calls GTV, to check into a U.S. company called Archgate, another informative
scrap he's gleaned from the laptop. She tips him that there's going to
be a correspondent opening in Cairo, and he jumps at the chance to unravel
the story that might be the reason behind his friend's death.
Once in the Middle East, Dees begins digging, using every resource
and trick he can come up with to unearth the mystery of where the U.S.-originating
chemicals are ending up. As Iraq begins pressing the border of Kuwait
and the U.S. military moves into the first stages of the Gulf War, Dees
meets up with Melinda Adams in real life. She's an intelligent and
beautiful woman, and Dees falls for her in exactly no time.
As employees of the globe-spanning GTV, Dees and Melinda Adams are
granted access to places and people that other networks will be kept
waiting indefinitely for. GTV's bossman McKinley Burke and his right-hand
man Timothy Volga pull strings behind the scenes that Dees can only
guess at. But when Dees tries calling the mystery company Archgate and
reaches GTV offices, he realizes that he's become an increasingly expendable
pawn in the power games of political and corporate giants. In danger not
only from Iraqi explosives and chemicals but from the very people he's
supposed to trust most, Dees goes rogue. Using GTV as the network is
using him, he risks it all to uncover a conspiracy of earth-shattering
proportions.
Jaco fills Dead Air with Gulf War facts and impressions--
the often macabre sights and sounds of combat, the clash of cultures,
the constant fear of chemical and biological contamination. Weaving
fact and fiction, he creates an ominous tale of betrayal that will have
conspiracy theorists in thrall. Dead Air may not brim with
brilliant characterizations and intrepid prose, but it's got the action
and intrigue to make it a passable escapist summer read.