Ghost (novel)

Ghost is a novel by John Ringo.

Extended Plot summary
Book 1:

Former SEAL Mike Harmon is attending the University of Georgia as a history major after retiring from the US Navy with 50% disability. Angered at the liberal slant of is instructors he has been letting his "bad side" out by stalking and scaring female students for fun.

While out frightening college girls he witnesses one get kidnapped. Without his cellphone he goes after the kidnappers van on his own. This leads him to a warehouse where women are being transported to another location for an unknown purpose.

As he realizes that he is dealing with Islamic extremists he is caught and engages the terrorists. He captures one terrorist and rescues two young women. He tortures the terrorist for information and leaves to rescue more kidnapped women. He discovers that the terrorists are about to escape with a plane load of women from the Ben Epps Airport. Having no other choice he slips into the 727 aircraft's nose wheel compartment in an attempt to make his way into the aircraft. Finding no way inside he rides out a flight to north Africa. There he uses a captured satellite phone to call US SOCOM. He is forced to endure a second flight that lands at a Syrian air force base.

Sneaking aboard the semi truck that is transporting the women he winds up at a WMD manufacturing site called Aleppo Four. There the Syrian president in alliance with Al Qaeda are planning on raping and murdering the fifty women they have captured over a 100 hour period.

Ghost reports in and is told to sit tight while the US Military mounts a rescue attempt. Once he discovers that the girls are being tortured, he mustard-gasses both the president of Syria and Osama Bin Laden. He rescues the girls before any further torture or killing can continue. With the help of Amy and a trio of girls who he nicknames "Babe", "Bambi", and "Thumper" he holds off a Syrian commando battalion.

Some of the girls use the Syrian's own transmission equipment to get word to the outside world. While Ghost is holding off the Syrians his old team of SEALs is being HALO dropped from a B2 Spirit bomber in order to get past the Syrian air defenses before the US Air Force can clear the way for the 101st Airborne. Ghost takes multiple gunshot wounds and nearly bleeds out while singing "Winterborne" by The Cruxshadows.

After the 101st Airborne extracts the girls from Syria the President of the United States orders a Nuclear weapon dropped on Aleppo Four as a warning to anyone else who would even think about such an atrocity.

Book 2:

Released from a Covert Military hospital, Mike visits some of the rescued girls before moving down to Florida for security reasons. He uses the reward money to buy a 45 foot Bertram yacht and learns how to fish for dolphin.

During a trip to shore he meets a pair of co-eds named Pam and Courtney. He invites them to his boat and he introduces the women to deep sea fishing. Soon the relationship becomes a BDSM-slanted ménage à trois.

Due to his being in the Bahamas he is contacted by the US government to stop a nuclear warhead from entering US waters. Intelligence tells him that a cigarette boat carrying five people will arrive on an island and move the warhead before a US Marine FAST Team can capture the nuclear device.

Mike eliminates the guards around the device but instead of a single cigarette boat with five men on board it is five boats loaded with Islamic extremists. During a serious firefight in which Mike is badly wounded the leader of the terrorists arms the warhead.

Mike escapes in a cigarette boat before detonation. The EMP from the blast fries the electronics of the FAST Team's Blackhawk and the pilot, Captain Kacey Bathlick, barely manages to auto-rotate enough to crash without killing everyone on board. A member of the FAST team manages to climb on board the boat Mike captured and finds Mike near death. Once again Mike finds himself in the same Covert Military Hospital.

Book 3:

When he recovers he heads back down to Florida thinking about heading to Europe.

Over the course of a few weeks he travels through Europe. Eventually he finds himself in Russia enjoying prostitutes, some of them in their teens. He is approached by a woman who notes that he is a "player" and offers to sell him a nuclear warhead.

Intrigued he follows the woman only to learn the device has been sold to the Chetchens. He contacts his US Government control. His Control introduces him to Russian Colonel Erikin Chechnik and the trio question the soldiers remaining on the base where the warhead was housed.

Mike charters a jet from "Chatham Aviation" and hears about the most likely suspect of the theft of the nuclear warhead. The suspect one Assadolah Shaath, is a Pakistani-born physicist, also being the terrorist who armed the warhead that exploded in the previous story.

Acting on a hunch, Mike flies to Bosnia and follows the slave trade as the vehicle that was last seen transporting the warhead was a type favored for human trafficking. Arriving in Bosnia he searches a city that is a human trafficking Hub for radioactive traces of the warhead and finds them. He secures a building that was used to refurbish the warhead and calls in specialists.

After the gunfight he walks to the nearest brothel and flashes a bundle of cash in order to have a blonde girl and treat her roughly. Afterwards he feels guilty and buys the girl from her pimp.

Taking the girl with him he checks CNN and finds that the Pope is visiting Paris. Figuring out that the Pope is the most probable target he heads there. Dropping the girl off at a hotel he quickly finds the nuke at the Notre Dame Cathedral. Shaath has set the device up to detonate via cellular phone and Mike follows him to Amsterdam's many gentleman's clubs. He enjoys the women until he finds Shaath and tortures the disarm code out of the man. Paris is saved but Mike becomes Persona Non Grata with several countries due to his actions leading up to disarming the bomb.

Along a back road to the country of Georgia, Mike stops for a drink and questions God as to why he does things for people who don't care and why couldn't he destroy Paris.