Eli Cohen, Prime Minister of Israel, realizes that Israel stands alone should military force be necessary to destroy the Iranian nuclear program. The problem he faces is that without U.S. military support, Israel does not have the necessary conventional forces. Military planners become bogged down in circular thinking and inevitably turn to the use of tactical nuclear weapons.A brilliant young Mossad agent, Amit Margolis, is brought in to shake up the planning. He conceives a plan, known as Esther's Sling, which is anything buy conventional. Along with an Israeli Air Force general named David Schechter, the pair are placed in command of preparing and executing the plan.Margolis impersonates a Russian oligarch to form a new air cargo carrier based in United Arab Emirates. The company, Swiss Arab Air Cargo, begins flying cargo around the Middle East, including into Iran. Meanwhile, inside Israel, the growing Esther's Sling team is preparing the Israeli Air Force and Special Forces for the attack on Iran.Eli Cohen issues the "Go" order and the plan is executed. The first action is an attack on a joint Syrian-Russian-Iranian radar command and control center by al Qaeda, led by an al Qaeda warrior controlled by Mossad. Shortly afterwards, on the eve of a new moon in October, a small team of Israeli commandoes departs Israel for a journey into Iran. The team crosses the mountainous Iraq-Iran border in the Kurdish north. A rendezvous is made with an Armenian trucker named Hamak Arsadian. The team is transported to their target: the Iranian early warning radar site at Dehloran. The team takes control of the radar site a couple of hours before most of the Israeli Air Force passes through Iraq and over the airspace watched by the Dehloran site. Computer viruses are inserted into the closed Iranian air defense network and the IAF slips unseen into the heart of Iran. As the IAF passes into Iranian airspace, the hardest targets - the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and the underground complex at Fordow - are attacked just as Amit Margolis envisioned years earlier. Esther's Sling, the destruction of Natanz and Fordow, frees up the airplanes of the IAF to attack the many other sites that comprise the Iranian program in a single sortie.
About the Author: Ben Brunson is the author of Esther's Sling and The Falstaff Enigma. He writes thrillers grounded in the gritty reality and cutting-edge technology found in Tom Clancy novels. The father of three finds inspiration from his lifelong study of history and the complexity of current events. He lives in Florida and is always ready for a pick-up game of lacrosse.