''Eagle Trap'' is a novel by British writer Geoffrey Archer, published in 1993 by

Bantam Press Bantam Press is an imprint of Transworld Publishers which is a British publishing division of Penguin Random House. It is based on Uxbridge Road in Ealing near Ealing Broadway station, London, the same address as Transworld. It releases har ...

. The story concerns an

Royal Marines The Royal Marines provide the United Kingdom's amphibious warfare, amphibious special operations capable commando force, one of the :Fighting Arms of the Royal Navy, five fighting arms of the Royal Navy, a Company (military unit), company str ...

officer tasked to stop a nuclear Terror attack.

Plot

The plot of the book opens during a failed rescue raid by the British SBS unit in

Beirut Beirut ( ; ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, just under half of Lebanon's population, which makes it the List of largest cities in the Levant region by populatio ...

in 1992. A force from the unit, led by Captain Peter Brodrick of the Royal Marines, failed when they tried to rescue Richard Bicknell from the captivity of a Lebanese criminal organization, led by Abdul Habib. During an air strike that was carried out as a diversion for the operation, Bicknell and Habib's brother are killed. Seeking revenge, Habib obtains a nuclear weapons with the aim of blowing up the British

Aircraft carrier An aircraft carrier is a warship that serves as a seagoing airbase, equipped with a full-length flight deck and hangar facilities for supporting, arming, deploying and recovering carrier-based aircraft, shipborne aircraft. Typically it is the ...

"Eagle" because the Harrier Fighter planes that attacked Beirut took off from it. Captain Brodrick, an experienced officer who fought with the Marines in

the Falklands War The Falklands War () was a ten-week undeclared war between Argentina and the United Kingdom in 1982 over two British Overseas Territories, British dependent territories in the South Atlantic: the Falkland Islands and Falkland Islands Dependenci ...

, Geoffrey Archer, ''Eagle Trap'',

Arrow An arrow is a fin-stabilized projectile launched by a bow. A typical arrow usually consists of a long, stiff, straight shaft with a weighty (and usually sharp and pointed) arrowhead attached to the front end, multiple fin-like stabilizers c ...

, 1993, page 68: "What had it all been for? The commando course, the toughest endurance test in the world; the yomping across East Falkland in 1982, fighting with his bare hands on Mount Harriet; his escape from death in

Lebanon Lebanon, officially the Republic of Lebanon, is a country in the Levant region of West Asia. Situated at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian Peninsula, it is bordered by Syria to the north and east, Israel to the south ...

". is assigned to the aircraft carrier, as the new commander of the Royal Marine security unit in the task force against drug trafficking. He must stop Habib at all cost.

References

{{reflist 1993 British novels