The modern world is in danger. Armed groups plan attacks. Nature unleashes disasters. How does one deal with these problems all at once? James Rollins has the answer—Sigma Force, and you can brief yourself using their latest operation, “The Eye of God: A Sigma Force Novel” (William Morrow, New York, 2013, 410 pages).
If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if you mixed Tom Clancy’s covert mission action novels with Dan Brown’s science-history mysteries, then wonder no more. Sigma Force is the ultimate fictional task force, “a covert wing of Darpa, made up of former Special Forces soldiers who had been retrained in various scientific disciplines to protect against global threats,” Darpa being the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, basically the United States Department of Defense arm tasked with developing cutting edge technology for military applications. The Sigma Force operators are essentially Navy SEALs with PhDs—science soldiers who can figure out what’s gone wrong and then pick up firearms to shoot some bad guys.
It’s a concept that’s so over-the-top that it works, mostly because Rollins has thrown himself fully into the idea. He dared imagine the Sigma Force headquarters as being hidden beneath Washington, DC’s Smithsonian Institution, of all places. A former veterinarian, Rollins had been successful writing all kinds of novels (the paperback kind that you find at airports), but Sigma Force, which he introduced in 2004’s “Sandstorm,” is without a doubt his greatest creation, with the team sent on one outlandish mission after another.
“Eye” is Rollins’ ninth Sigma Force novel and he wastes no time in plunging the reader into a somewhat ridiculous but gripping premise. A top secret US satellite has fallen to Earth but has left the government with a scary vision: America’s eastern seaboard in flames. Meanwhile, the Vatican receives a parcel containing a skull and a book made from human skin—both come from ancient warlord Genghis Khan—with inscriptions revealing the end of the world, in four days’ time.
Naturally, Sigma Force gets thrown into the fray with Director Painter Crowe assigning Commander Gray Pierce (see, even the names are farfetched and yet effective) and several operatives to recover the satellite. The unit includes, most memorably, Duncan Wren, with magnets in his fingers, and Monk Kokkalis, armed with a powerful prosthetic hand.
“Eye” features a race around the world against doomsday—sending them everywhere from Pyongyang and Rome to the Aral Sea and Ulan Bator—along with Vatican scientist Monsignor Vigor Verona, Italian Carabinieri officer Rachel Verona, American astrophysicist Dr. Jade Shaw and, just for the hell of it, Eurasian assassin Seichan.
There are gunfights and scientific endeavors—the plot hinges of the so-called “dark energy,” left over from the universe’s creation—and Rollins unabashedly mixes the two with a whopping mystery that involves St. Thomas and Attila the Hun. There’s an urgent chase for lost relics amid fireballs from the sky and an ominous comet. If you are the least bit skeptical about such things, “Eye” is not for you. This is a big, muscular yarn bristling with weaponry and puzzles, with Rollins trying to outdo himself with yet another improbable twist. He is extremely efficient at it, moving the plot along at a blistering pace, not letting the reader ponder the implausibility of it all, because, darnit, we’re saving the world—with science and SIG Sauer pistols.
“The Eye of God” is a macho mystery novel with the bang-bang to go with the Big Bang, an addictive guilty pleasure that makes readers look forward to future fictional missions as James Rollins reloads with two Sigma Force novels out later this year, continuing his own innovative art of war.
Available in paperback at National Book Store.
