“Not my favorite Rucka book, but not a bad read either.
This does contain one of my absolute favorite action movie moments, which is the part where two dudes in an office have this argument regarding embedded agents (paraphrased):
“If those men make a move, the terrorists will start shooting! The hostages won’t have a chance!
“Those men are the only chance those hostages have!”
I feel that, as a society, we should make a decision regarding this situation now, in the sober light of day, before our friends or daughters or whoever are revealed to be one of the kidnapped people. It comes up often enough in books and movies that we’re going to feel like real assholes if we don’t think it through ahead of time here.
I’m putting my vote in the Let’s Go For It camp. If these pieces of entertainment have taught me anything, it’s that there’s always one hotshot guy on the team who can’t hold back and is going to start shooting anyway. Or there’s one terrorist on THAT team who feels the need to continue doing his terrorist stuff, but also feels like this would be a good time to try and cop a feel off one of the hostages or something. That’s always bizarre too. Isn’t launching a nuclear missile enough? Do you really need to also grab someone’s ass? And then the ass grabber always gets very incensed when the terrorist leader says something like, “Hey, what the hell man? Let’s focus on this whole nuclear missile situation.” Seriously, the ass grabber acts offended, like the leader guy was telling him that he wasn’t going to be allowed to have a gun anymore, or that his menacing glare was now forbidden.
Anyway, this had almost nothing to do with Alpha. I’d recommend one of the Atticus Kodiak books first. But if you’re into those, Alpha will do you just fine.”