Chronic readers of this column are surely aware that one of my favorite authors, who also happens to be a personal friend, is Kurt Schlichter. Kurt has written eight novels in his Kelly Turnbull series, and I’m not sure I let more than a couple of weeks pass between their release and my devouring of them. They’re a rollicking good time — the lead character is a certifiable bad-ass, an old-school action hero in the Sly Stallone-Chuck Norris tradition, whose adventures are set against a backdrop of an America of a decade or two in the future which has split apart into red states and blue.
Somebody at some point ought to take those books and turn them into a TV series. I’d be shocked if they didn’t make a hit show. They’re way too much fun not to be. (READ MORE: Woodrow Wilson: A Madman, or Merely Misunderstood?)
But Schlichter’s newest fiction offering, The Attack, isn’t quite as fun — which is not to say it shouldn’t be on your reading list.
In fact, The Attack is mandatory reading.
This isn’t a light, breezy, fun novel. This is a gut punch. And then a head slap.
I’m not giving away anything by way of spoilers when I tell you the plot of the book – Schlichter gives it away in the first few pages. It’s like this: all those military-age males making their way across our southern border from the kinds of countries that set off red flags? The ones that Donald Trump caused such consternation when he declared a moratorium on immigration early in his presidential term? In The Attack, the bill comes due for letting them in.
That bill is paid in blood.
Some 10,000 jihadist terrorists, sponsored by Iran, are set loose on a three-day kamikaze assault on the American homeland in the novel. Before they’re done they manage to kill well over 100,000 Americans in the worst terrorist attack in human history.
On the first day, the terrorists stage a wave of mass shootings in public places — schools, malls, police stations, airports — and use man-portable air defense missiles to knock jumbo jets out of the sky near airports across the country. On the second day, after a national stay-at-home order is in place as a means of preventing more mass-casualty attacks, four-man shooter teams assault suburban neighborhoods all over America in a savage murder spree. (READ MORE: Biting the (Left) Hand That Feeds Him)
On the third day, which in the book is Aug. 29 of this year, they go after our infrastructure — cyber attacks, rifle shots to power transformers, assaults on oil refineries, and so on.
The story is told as an oral history and each chapter is the personal story of someone who survived The Attack — a cop in Cincinnati, an HVAC contractor in suburban Philadelphia, a Secret Service agent, an Army general, a traumatized 15-year-old girl made an orphan on the second day, the owner of a refuge for dogs made homeless by the murders of their owners, and many more.
The tales these fictional characters tell come off as very, very real. The most striking — and disturbing — thing about The Attack is that what Schlichter describes in its pages isn’t just plausible, it’s quite likely.
Our border is wide open, and people from the worst and most hostile places on earth are streaming across. It’s hard not to believe that the migrant invasion doesn’t contain thousands and thousands of people who hate America and seek to do us harm.
And you saw what 19 of them could do on Sept. 11, 2001.
Schlichter wrote The Attack after he saw what Hamas managed to do to Israel on Oct. 7 of last year. His conclusions are very valid — as is his judgment of the likely performance of our president and vice president should such a crisis occur.
I’ll leave the result of that for the reader to find out for himself. It’s an interesting scenario, to be sure.
The Attack deserves both your readership and your consideration. You shouldn’t just devour this excellent book — it should do for recognition of the possibility of terrorism affecting your life what Bill Fortschen and Newt Gingrich did several years ago for the recognition of the threat an EMP poses when they wrote One Second After. You should act on what Schlichter is telling us. (READ MORE: The Enduring Ronald Reagan)
We are far too soft a target and we need to do a much, much better job of protecting ourselves. We’ve outsourced that function to the police, and in lots of places in America, the cops are stretched to their limit on a good day. Should a collection of four-man shooter teams set out into your part of town looking to kill as many Americans as they can before being martyred for Allah, Baphomet, or even Klaus Schwab, the chances are good that your self-defense capabilities are all that will save your family from a fate the book describes for countless of our countrymen.
It’s a book told from a conservative perspective, but it’s universal in its lessons to our people.
Get it, read it, take it to heart. It’s an important book — one of the most important you’ll read all year.
