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![[The Enemy Within]]( ../images/enemywithin.gif)
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His name is Bond. Larry Bond.
And like the British secret agent with whom he shares a surname, author Larry Bond works in a world of international intrigue, bad guys with global ambition, good guys with pure hearts, and technology of the most advanced kind. However, unlike the cartoony and make-believe world of James Bond (really, a missile base inside a volcano?), the world of Larry Bond is an all-too-real one. His books ask What if? in a way that makes you not quite sure you want to know the answer.
![[Larry Bond]]( ../images/larrybondmug.gif)
A former officer with the U.S. Navy, Bond writes what have become known as techno-thrillers, including Red Phoenix, Cauldron, and Vortex. He was also instrumental in helping Tom Clancy write the best-selling Red Storm Rising. Bond's newest book is The Enemy Within, about an Iranian general who uses a campaign of terrorist acts within the United States to mask an even more ambitious plan. Working to stop him is the combined weight of U.S. armed forces and law enforcement, led by the stalwart team of Colonel Peter Thorn and FBI agent Helen Gray, who, as usually happens in situations like this, become involved romantically. Love among the ruins of the United States, you might say. And we're talking serious ruins.
In Enemy, Iranian general Amir Taleh's minions destroy, murder, bomb, and terrorize Americans from east to west and everywhere in between. "Taleh's purpose is to hit us in so many different places and so many different ways that no one feels safe," says Bond. "He ties us up in knots in order for his larger plan to work. And he plays with our minds by disguising the whole thing as a race war." Along with a fast-paced and action-filled plot, the book can also be seen as a sort of warning that something like this actually might happen.
"Someone like Taleh could actually be alive today," says Bond. "We've seen men like him in Carlos the Jackal, in Abu Nidal. It's never been a question of possibility or ability, it's been a question of will. There have been individual events like the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombings that have traumatized the country. What if there were the equivalent of one of those tragedies a week? I hate to say it, but if there is ever anyone with both ability and will, we could be in a lot of trouble."
The by-the-book reality of Bond's books makes the scenarios he describes that much more frightening. He worked hard to make Enemy as real as possible, both in terms of terrorists' current tactics and weapons, and in the military, law enforcement, and political reactions to their acts. "My goal is always that when someone who does what I do reads this, I don't want them groaning. That sense of reality is very important," he says.
Bond learned about that reality during six years as a naval officer, including four as an antisubmarine warfare officer on a destroyer. After his military service, he worked with the Naval Reserve Intelligence Board and as an analyst for defense consulting firms. He first used his knowledge of the world of strategy and tactics to devise commercial war games. One of those games, Harpoon, connected him with Clancy, and a new career was born.
"Tom used Harpoon to set up some of the scenarios in Hunt for Red October. He had some questions about it, and we began talking. I read the manuscript and had some suggestions for terminology. But he'd really done his homework. We then worked together on Red Storm Rising. We fought out the entire book on manual war games, often using Harpoon. As for the writing, I was basically his apprentice," says Bond.
The apprentice graduated to craftsman, and Bond began to work on his own novels. His years of experience in the military world were both resource and jumping-off point for his work. Former colleagues have become research sources. Visits to bases to witness American troops in training add to the verisimilitude. He has also made "extensive" use of the Internet. "Although I'm just beginning to learn how to fully mine it," he adds. While the strategic, tactical, and technical side of the equation was almost easy for him, the "novelistic" part of writing has been a harder chore. "One thing I've been criticized for in the past is not making the characters more real. That's something I worked hard to improve with Thorn and Gray.
"People are interested in the technology, but what they really want are vivid characters that they can connect with," he says. "The planes, the subs, the tanks, are there for the same reason horses are there in a Western. Now there might be a time when a cowboy has the best, fastest horse in the West, but it's really there just to get him to the pass in time to save the day."
When Bond created the multilayered character of Taleh, personal past and possible present overlapped. "When I was at Officer Candidate School in 1975, I studied with a company of Iranian officers, including the first six women in the Iranian Navy. The Shah was still in power, and he was training his soldiers in Western weapons, including Spruance-class destroyers.
ŇAs I thought about Enemy, I wondered, What if some of those guys, having learned so much about America, had survived the purges, had survived the Iran-Iraq war, and had ascended the Iranian leadership? That 'what-if' was the trigger for much of Taleh and his actions."
Taleh's knowledge of American society, gained during training in America similar to Bond's, makes him aware of the vulnerability Americans have as a result of freedom. While Bond claims that "to send a message, you should use Western Union," he does have some thoughts on the relationship of freedom and protection.
"We choose to live in a free, mobile, and open society. And we are so connected by today's communications. And one of the costs of being able to do that is the possibility that someone like Taleh could do what he does in the book. We are vulnerable to that kind of attack. Is our freedom worth that price? There are a lot of ways we could make the job harder for Taleh--stricter controls on some materials, gun control, national identity cards. But you can imagine the cost. As for me, I'm happy with the kind of society we have."
Can books like Bond's, and Clancy's and others', have an impact on that society? Red Storm Rising convinced Iceland to renegotiate its defense reinforcement treaties with the U.S. Hunt for Red October was used at the U.S. Naval War College as a text. Maybe The Enemy Within will make Americans take a look around and see the world for what it may become.
And have an answer ready if someone out there asks, "What if . . . ?"
James Buckley, Jr. is a writer in Santa Barbara, California, at work on his first novel, among other things.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.