Tom Hansen
Gila Bend is a political thriller with astonishing subplots that will leave you wondering (and worrying) if the manifestations could really happen! A history teacher from the tiny bedroom community of Gila Bend, Arizona, unexpectedly teams up with a dishonorably-discharged ex-Colonel from the US Air Force, to save America from a covert hostile takeover led by foreign dignitaries. Wealthy British parliamentarian, Lord John Shaffer, discovers a potent hallucinogen (tungis) during a falconry hunting expedition in Yemen that when mixed with coffee destroys the memories of those who drink the java.Shaffer recruits Russian Directorate Chief of the KGB, Yegor Bovnik, Russian General Leonid Sokolov, and Sultan Tariq Nassar to overthrow the United States government by exporting the mind extinguishing coffee to the US in the hopes of poisoning the eighty-three percent of adult Americans who drink at least one cup daily. Sultan Nassar’s palace in the desert oasis of the Rub’ al Khali wasteland of Saudi Arabia is the location where the coffee is manufactured.Because no one would suspect American schools to be involved in an international criminal conspiracy, the coffee is stored in hidden areas of selected campuses throughout the United States. Lord Shaffer recruits teachers who need extra income to aid in the storage and distribution of the packaged java without telling them exactly how the coffee is going to be used.To move the product into Gila Bend Charter School, a fake immigration raid is staged to temporarily clear out the building of students and staff. But the mission fails when two students escape by stealing a school bus as a phony ICE agent fires his weapon at them. The chaos that follows is witnessed by a passerby who is shocked that an officer would shoot at young kids. He grabs a hunting rifle and kills the man, then quickly loads up fifteen teachers and leads the fake ICE agents on a high-speed chase out of town. Near the small village of Ajo, Arizona, the two students ditch the school bus and join their teachers in the bed of the truck.As the novel unfolds, a mysterious multitude of twists and turns will lead you from the Cold War to the present and will reveal a shocking revelation about a great American statesman. The surprise ending discloses a critical link between political corruption in our nation’s capital, the incomprehensible activities taking place in Sultan Tariq’s oasis in the Rub’ al Khali (where stonings and beheadings are a weekly occurrence), and the shocking events in the sleepy town of Gila Bend.While Washington government is frozen in its tracks, new world order is about to evolve! 3