Under Siege (novel)

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Under Siege is a 1990 novel by Stephen Coonts. A drug cartel boss is captured and brought to Washington, D.C., for trial. The cartel fights back with portable anti-air missiles, snipers, bomb trucks, and suicide squads armed with submachine guns. Grafton, now part of a joint military task force, helps plan anti-drug aid and is assigned to a National Guard unit in Washington to stop the cartel. The president is shot down in his helicopter. Snipers kill a senator, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, and the attorney general. Local drug dealers turn on each other with grenade launchers. The Army, National Guard, police, FBI, and Secret Service hunt the attackers. The cartel strikes a National Guard armory. Frustrated Washingtonians rally and lynch hundreds of addicts. Critics such as Kirkus Reviews called the book pessimistic with an implausible ending, saying the characters feel more at home in the air than in the streets or halls of power.