Star Over Chingat

A top secret Russian military satellite is about to fall to earth and scatter itself across the northern desert of Naurlandia, in the African Sahel. US Secretary of State Malcolm Trowbridge, an unreconstructed Cold War warrior, intends to recover a sensitive decoder from the satellite debris as part of his ongoing turf battle with the CIA and to discomfit the Russian bear. Foreign Service Officer Paul Scarborough, from the State Department's special ops section, quickly finds himself on his way to Naurlandia—his mission: take possession of the decoder with the help of a disaffected high-ranking member of the Naurlandian government. Soviet embassy security operatives, sandstorms, US bureaucratic turf battles, slippery desert tribal politics, and paid assassins all stand between Paul and the decoder. Worse, the machinations of US Ambassador Victor Lana—an ambitious, self-serving careerist whom Washington warned away from the operation to protect official US credibility—deals himself in to reap glory for himself and to improve his career prospects.