Apocalypse now or never

This is a straightforward, no-holds-barred airport thriller. On one side are three Arab terrorists with a suitcase-sized nuclear device.

On the other are an old-fashioned New York Police Department gumshoe who knows the city's mean streets like the back of his hand, and a pulchritudinous and smart FBI investigator.

The good guys have five days to find the murder-minded terrorists and defuse the bomb before New York is vaporised and turned into a ghastly mushroom cloud.

Let's get one thing straight. This relatively slim volume has the potential to be a bestseller but it isn't in the same league as the earlier blockbusters by the same authors.

This isn't Is Paris Burning?, Freedom at Midnight or City of Joy or one of the other chunky volumes that turned Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins into a world-famous writing team.

The plot itself is an apocalyptic, worst-case scenario "" the stuff that American nightmares are made of. It opens with Saddam Hussein handing over the plans for a suitcase-sized nuclear bomb to international terrorist Imad Mughniyeh.

What's the next stop? Karachi, and a cave in Wazirstan where a sickly but deadly as ever Osama Bin Laden makes a cameo appearance. Saddam plus Bin Laden obviously add up to villainy on the grandest scale.

For good measure, the authors also throw in Lt Gen Hamid Bol, former chief of Pakistan's ISI whose fury at the Americans, his former allies, "had no limits" and Abdul Sharif Ahmad, "a brilliant nuclear scientist".

But at the last moment, the plotters decide on a spot of nuclear blackmail "" they will detonate the bomb in New York unless the Israelis move out from the illegal settlements in Palestine. Their ultimatum gives the Americans five days to arm-twist the Israelis into leaving "" and, of course, five days to find the bomb.

Once the objectives are decided the bomb is moved from Pakistan to the Rajasthan desert and from there into the SS Jewel of India sailing from Mumbai and captained by Hari Das Gupta. It's labelled as a crate full of basmati rice. Next stop: New York.

Meanwhile, a trio of terrorists (presumably, they qualify as suicide bombers on a gigantic scale?) are recruited from a Palestinian refugee camp and they cross from Canada into the United States.

The border between Canada and the US is one of the world's longest unguarded borders and Canadians going for their weekend shopping usually only show their driving licences to make the crossing.

Lapierre and Collins are, of course, former journalists and their old training shows throughout the book, which is a mix of fact and fiction. A White House staffer briefing the president explains that 21,000 containers land in US ports daily and only 0.5 per cent are checked.

"The amount of container cargo coming into this country unchecked is simply staggering. We inspect every suitcase arriving at JFK and Newark airports, but we let thousands of containers into Port Elizabeth without so much as a glance," says the White House director of counter terrorism in an alarming briefing to the president.

What's more, Lapierre and Collins point out only $600 million has been spent in recent years to improve security systems at ports. And, despite big advances in technology it's practically impossible to spot a nuclear device.

What's their solution? Lapierre and Collins seem to feel that more containers should be inspected though even they admit it would probably be physically impossible and would bring global trade to a halt.

What made Lapierre and Collins team up once again after an over 20-year gap? I happened to have lunch with Lapierre "" ok, ok that's a clunky piece of name-dropping "" so, I can testify that the authors are firmly convinced that the threat from Bin Laden, his gang and other like-minded Arab terrorists cannot be underestimated.

They believe the apocalyptic scenario outlined is only too likely. So they want to educate the world and spread the word about how simple it might be to smuggle a nuclear device into the United States and set off a chain of death and mayhem.

Lapierre admits that the research for Is New York Burning? was very different from their other books. That was because they were dealing with current events and not delving into the archives. They also talked to scores of American intelligence operatives who believe that Al Qaeda will go to any lengths to be one up on the Great Satan.

They were in a hurry to get this book on the stands because they were always worried he might be overtaken by events. Bin Laden might have been caught and later this year there's the possibility that George Bush Jr might lose the presidential election. If either of those events took place Is New York Burning? would have needed an extensive rewrite.

Should we accept the thesis outlined in the book? Personally, I'm not convinced that all Arabs hate the United States and I don't buy the theory outlined in Samuel P Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations".

I think Bin Laden and his gang are a bunch of anarchists who are more akin to the mindless murderers of the Red Army Faction. I'm not sure though that it makes them less dangerous.

What happens in the end? It wouldn't be giving away any secrets to say that the terrorists are outwitted by old-fashioned police detective work. New York doesn't go up in a cloud of smoke and Bin Laden is foiled. Does all that come as a surprise? I think not.

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IS NEW YORK BURNING?
Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins
Full Circle
Price: Rs 195
Pages: 305