PROLOGUE to new book

                                            
His left-hand griped the steering wheel. His right-hand chocked the leather gearshift knob. Tense body ached with excitement, now steering a course for the final adobe of the righteous. His being was consumed with shahada, giving himself to Allah. He drank the Turkish tea, flavored with drops of narcotics, more to heighten his awareness than promote courage. 

Trained by Iran’s IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) at the Sheikh Abdullah Base in Lebanon’s Bakaa Valley, the soon to be martyr painstakingly did his mental checklist; connect the wiring, no rapid acceleration until at the building, a left turn at the airport gate, a right turn toward the Marine barracks, continue forward and accelerate once the sentry attempts to stop his 19-ton water truck. Inside the parking garage detonate the death package. It was now time. 

With dilated eyes, macabre stare, and a sense of purpose, Ismail Ascra accelerated the Mercedes-Benz truck into the basement parking garage. At 6:22 in the morning, he triggered the device and ten tons of TNT erupted in a furious explosion; the four-story building collapsed. 241 sleeping Marines would not awake. 

The day was not unlike any other fall coastal North Carolina day, dry mild temperature augmented by a cool ocean breeze. Diana Rocco was preparing a snack in anticipation of her two children coming home from grade school. Sheila was 10-years-old, smart and mature beyond her years. She seemed always taking care of Seve, her younger sibling by 2 years, at times a mother figure to the 8-year-old knucklehead. The mom was preparing a snack before dinner anticipating in 20 minutes the onrush of youthful exuberance. 

The day was not unlike any other fall coastal North Carolina day, dry mild temperature augmented by a cool ocean breeze. In the officer’s family housing area on Camp Lejeune, Diana Rocco was preparing a snack in anticipation of her two children coming home from grade school. Sheila was 10-years-old, smart and mature beyond her years. She seemed to be always taking care of Seve, her younger sibling by 2 years, at times a mother figure to the 8-year-old knucklehead. The mom was preparing a snack before dinner anticipating in 20 minutes the predictable onrush of youthful exuberance. 

As Diana glanced out the kitchen window in search of the yellow school bus, her vision captured the moment that caused her to gasps and dropped the dishes into the sink. Her body convulsed and her mouth experience a wretched aftertaste that gushed from her gut spasms. Her shaking hands would not stop. She knew the purpose of the dark government sedan rolling into her driveway and stopping. Having been a veteran Marine wife of ten years, she recognized the baneful routine. 

A man in a dark suit with a pastoral white-collar exited the passenger side. Walking behind the government sedan was a Marine lieutenant colonel, dressed in his dress green uniform, painstakingly maneuvering toward the house and its front door entrance. 
 
Diana Rocco made the sign of the cross, fell to her knees, regain her strength, and slowly moved to answer the doorbell. The two gentlemen on her porch were there to notify her that Captain Davis Rocco, her husband of 12 years, would be coming home in a flag-draped coffin. A Hezbollah driver of the truck bomb had broken her family.

All her strength would be needed as Sheila and Seve hopped off the school bus and chased each other up the driveway in the excitement of the usual “home from school” snack. Racing each other through the front door, their shenanigans stop when they saw their puffy-eyed mother extending her arms out to embrace her children. The next few days were a difficult, hallucinatory, surreal experience shared by hundreds of family and friends at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune. 
Eight-year-old Seve Rocco could not fully absorb the disaster. He couldn’t put all the pieces together, didn't understand who would kill his dad and why his classroom friends were missing fathers too. A decade later, he had his answers, course of action and a path for retribution.