A U.S. president orders airstrikes in Syria after three Americans die in an ambush. The retaliation is swift, precise, and devastating. But what looks like justice is really the opening move in something much larger.
Within weeks, the administration abandons its Kurdish allies ? the same fighters who spent years tracking ISIS targets and losing their own people in the process. Turkish armor rolls across the border. The Kurds, who had no friends but the mountains, now have no friends at all.
Meanwhile, in Panama, a diplomatic crisis over Canal access escalates into a full-scale military invasion. American forces seize the waterway. The government falls. A blockade chokes the nation into submission. And in the waters off the coast, eleven men on a fishing vessel are killed ? nine by a Hellfire missile, and two more by a deck gun, because they made the mistake of surviving.
In Washington, Congressional debates rage over war powers and constitutional authority. In the Pentagon, a young signals analyst listens to an order she was never meant to hear: "No recovery. No survivors. Kill them all. Finish it. This comes from the top." She saves the file. It is a federal crime. It is possibly treason. It is the only thing she can think to do that feels like the right thing.
The Price of Friendship is a political thriller about what happens when alliances become transactions and friendship becomes a commodity with an expiration date. From the burning of Qamishli to Panama's surrender, from Congressional hearing rooms to drone operations centers, it follows the people caught in the machinery of power ? soldiers who follow orders they know are wrong, diplomats who negotiate deals they know will be broken, and the rare few who decide the record matters more than their careers.
This is Book 3 in the Red White & Blue Land series. Like its predecessors, it was written before the events it describes made headlines ? scenarios involving the abandonment of Kurdish allies and confrontation over the Panama Canal appeared in this novel before they appeared in the news.
Richard Warburg is a molecular biologist, patent lawyer, and multi-genre author. He is the grandson of Fred Warburg, publisher of George Orwell's 1984. He has 15 published titles across political thrillers, science fiction, healthcare nonfiction, and memoir.
