Book Review – Vince Flynn’s “Executive Power”
Executive Power is the fourth book in Vince Flynn’s popular Mitch Rapp series of action thrillers. Executive Power continues the story following the events in Separation of Power, though almost everything in Executive Power is new material versus being a direct sequel and continuation from the previous novel.
Executive Power begins with the attempted rescue of an American family being held hostage by Muslim radicals in the Philippines. A Navy SEAL team arrives on the shore of an island, but they walk into an ambush. Somebody back in Washington, D.C. spoke about the mission and the rescue team’s mission was compromised. The SEALs make an armed retreat and escape from the forces, but two of the super soldiers are killed in action.
Back in the U.S., Mitch Rapp’s cover was blown after the press went overboard telling the story about how he led a team of commandos into Iraq and stopped Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons program at the end of Separation of Power. Instead of outright leaving the CIA like he wanted, the head of the CIA, Dr. Irene Kennedy, persuaded Mitch to stay with the organization and become a top-level analyst concerning international terrorism.
Mitch’s story in this novel begins as he and his new wife, Anna Rielly, a news reporter he rescued during the White House hostage event in Transfer of Power, are on their honeymoon in the Caribbean.
After he returns from the Caribbean, Mitch learns about the botched rescue mission. Analysts in the CIA quickly discover a series of e-mail communications between Washington workers and the American ambassador in the Philippines, and it doesn’t take long before Rapp, Dr. Kennedy and President Hayes learn the true scope of the corruption both in Washington and in the Philippines.
Another rescue mission is organized, only this time just a handful of people are aware of it. Mitch Rapp recruits his retired Navy SEAL friend Scott Coleman to lead a team of commandos back into the Philippines. The mission is two fold: the corrupt general in charge of the Philippine army needs to be dealt with, and the American family must be rescued. They’ve been held captive for several months now and their fate continues to look more bleak.
Mitch leaves behind his wife, assuring her that he’ll be running the show from behind the scenes and not being involved with the direct action, and flies out to the Philippines. Once there he stays on a U.S. ship and coordinates the operation until he’s needed directly in the field. With a team of Navy SEALs already on the island in position, Mitch arranges a meeting with the top general and confirms his suspicions. After the meeting, a Navy SEAL sniper shoots and kills the general. While this was taking place, other SEALs were tracking the recently discovered American hostages.
Knowing that the timing is critical, and using a major weather system (a system just shy of a tropical storm) as cover, Rapp ignores the promise he made to his wife and leads the Navy SEALs into the terrorist camp. The commandos efficiently eliminate dozens of terrorists and the American family is safely rescued. The only problem is that Mitch Rapp is shot in the ass. It’s a wound that he cannot hide from his wife. When she finally discovers the wound and learns that Mitch was in the thick of the fight, she goes ballistic and gives him hell.
Meanwhile, over in France on the Mediterranean coast, a mysterious man simply known as “David” meets with a wealthy Saudi prince and plots the destruction of Israel and the formation of a Palestine nation. David talks the prince into giving him an additional $10 million to help pave the way for this plan. Afterwards, David heads to Jordan and assassinates a high ranking (and quite evil) general in the Iraqi army. He then travels to Israel and has a secret meeting with the leader of the Mossad, Ben Freidman. David provides information about an upcoming meeting with about a dozen terrorist leaders. In exchange for the information David requests two suitcases filled with explosives.
The meeting date arrives and David uses his contacts to gain access to the meeting in the Israeli town of Hebron, a town that happens to be full of Arabs and Palestinian supporters. David is able to plant the suitcases and get into an armored car before detonating the explosives. Of course, the Mossad isn’t going to sit back and let this mysterious man take care of the evil doers, so they use a couple of Apache helicopters to fire missiles into the complex and level it. Unfortunately, over a hundred innocent people are killed during the explosions. According to David, it’s all part of the plan.
After the attack at Hebron, David uses fake identities to make his way to New York City. Once there he uses a sniper rifle to assassinate the Palestinian ambassador, further enraging the Arabs overseas. But he’s not finished yet. David then travels to Washington, D.C. and plants a massive car bomb near the White House. However, the American government is not his target. David’s target is instead the ambassador from Saudi Arabia, Prince Abdul Bin Aziz.
The Saudi ambassador had just delivered an ultimatum to President Hayes. If the United States does not support France’s resolution in the United Nations to basically create an independent nation of Palestine out of Israeli territory, then the Middle East will stop sending oil to the U.S. The U.S. will survive such an embargo, but the economic effects will be devastating and President Hayes will almost certainly lose his bid for re-election in the next presidential election.
After delivering his message, the Saudi ambassador is killed in the car bomb explosion orchestrated by David. Now it looks like there was a conspiracy to have the ambassador killed after he delivered bad news to the president. This further blackmails President Hayes into voting for France’s resolution in the U.N.
That is, until Mitch Rapp and the analysts in the CIA find the evidence to prove that the conspiracy was actually conducted by a radical Palestinian going by the name of David. The second half of Executive Power involves the CIA finding the evidence and Mitch quickly tracking down David as he travels back to southern France to meet with the Saudi prince. David is betrayed and killed by the prince’s bodyguard, but Mitch Rapp kills the bodyguard and then the Saudi prince. All of the evidence about what really happened is handed to the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, and the resolution from France is pulled from the U.N. It turns out that the French ambassador was found guilty of accepting a bribe to create the resolution in the first place.
So is Executive Power any good?
I’ll rate Executive Power as being a decent Vince Flynn novel. It’s certainly better than the previous one, Separation of Power, but this one is nowhere near as good as his earlier works of Term Limits and Transfer of Power.
It felt like Executive Power was two books in one.
The first half of Executive Power primarily focused on the Navy SEALs’ return mission to the Philippines, and everything that happens over there. It goes into quite some detail with the SEALs insertion and traversing of the jungle terrain along with the effects of the tropical storm. Throw in the assassination of the Philippine army general and the rescue of the American hostages, and there you go.
The action in the terrorist camp is very quick and there’s no story with having the American family walk through the jungle in the middle of a tropical storm to reach boats on a beach for the extraction. All of that is quickly summarized in a memo after they return to the U.S.
The second half of Executive Power mainly deals with David’s terrorist attacks against Arabic targets despite himself being a Palestinian. It’s all designed to make Israel look at fault and for world opinion to demand the Jewish nation to stop the violence and allow for the creation of the Palestine nation. The analysts in the CIA are very good at what they do, and it doesn’t take long for them to find evidence and put together pieces of the puzzle.
Don’t look for a whole lot of action in the second half of Executive Power apart from the terror attacks. The second half is more about solving the terrorism mystery and racing against time before the U.S. is forced to vote in the U.N. resolution. The outcome is predictable for the most part, and, as usual, Mitch Rapp gets to kill somebody of great importance.
Like at the end of Separation of Power, the ending was rushed when Mitch Rapp easily sneaked his way into the Saudi prince’s limousine and then quickly killed the bodyguard and then the prince himself. This element alone could have been a fantastic series of chapters as Mitch tracked and had an epic showdown with the prince and all of his wealth and power, but instead Vince Flynn took the easy route and gave us a quick and rushed ending to this story.
Oh well.
Readers will take note that this is Vince Flynn’s first novel since the 9/11 terror attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C. There are some references to those real attacks along with the focus of this novel being driven by a renegade Palestinian who seeks to enrage the Arabic world spark a crisis in the Middle East.
As it was previously stated, Executive Power was a decent story that continues the action in the Mitch Rapp series of novels. With some fine tuning here and there, Executive Power could have been an outstanding story.
