Book Review: Operation Cavolo

Reviewed by Peggy Kurkowski

Alpha Team is racing the clock to stop a global toxin conspiracy, but a web of deceit and betrayals threatens their search for an antidote before millions of innocents die. 

When a mass poisoning alerts the members of Alpha Team to a rogue actor out for vengeance, they have eighty-four hours to avert the lethal countdown and find the antidote in Operation Cavolo, the second book in the Silent Codename series by E.S. Benton.

Six months after stopping the nefarious organization Fellscient from unleashing global natural disasters via the weather, Alpha Team and their alphabetic siblings Bravo, Charlie, and Delta, are back to stopping one-off criminals. But Fellscient will not be stopped in their quest for world domination, and one Captain Frederick “Kale” Bridge has a vial up his sleeve that promises to bring the world to its knees.

Ten years ago, Kale and his team were ambushed in a remote jungle village and imprisoned and tortured for sixteen months. Kale escaped with the help of a mysterious agent, and now acts out his vengeance by poisoning food in a major factory. Indeed, for Kale “revenge is much like whisky. It might burn, but it’s worth it, and the longer is ages, the better it gets.” 

When people fall sick, and many of Kale’s personal targets die, Alpha Team and their urbanely dressed French boss (named Bosse) must act quickly to find the antidote. Meanwhile, Scott (aka Alpha One) welcomes a recruit, Mia (Alpha Seven) whose on-the-job training is about to get quite dangerous, indeed. 

Along with the return of their previous nemesis, Alpha Team learns that a diabolical leadership structure within Fellscient known as the “Five Limbs of the Beast” is looking for a replacement “limb” after the demise of one of its members in Operation Storm’s Eye, the first book in the series. Scott quickly learns that Kale is gunning for the position and will dangle the poison cure above their heads to achieve his aims. 

Benton is a skillful action writer whose elaborate battle pieces are clever, inventive—gun grips that are coded to the blood vessels, for one—and just absurdly fun to read. With Alpha Team once again inserting themselves into death-defying firefights, Benton uses cinematic jump cuts in time to reveal each operative’s role as the mayhem unfolds. It is Mission Impossible on steroids. 

But the closer Alpha Team gets to Kale, the more secrets are revealed of past associations and hidden truths. Benton has compelling surprises in store for his characters and even bigger decisions of loyalty they must make individually. 

For Daniel (aka Alpha Two), the mystery of his parents’ death in a car accident is uncovered as well as the sinister machinations of those engineering Alpha Team’s involvement in tracking down the antidote. Daniel’s undercover operation introduces the team to the evil Grenham, who also seeks to manipulate Kale for his own evasive purposes, but Daniel is wise to what Grenham’s story really is. After all, he knows that “the first person to dictate a story controls the narrative.” 

Benton improves on his first outing by providing more backstory for Daniel, Scott, and Anthony (aka Alpha Five), who all seek closure for events in the first novel, but the sheer number of plot twists and new enemies introduced can be hard to follow in this one. Still, better an embarrassment of riches than a plot plagued with a poverty of ideas.

Can the team find the mastermind of chaos manipulating each of them? Benton teases that there is more in store—even after a cliffhanger and explosive denouement deep in the jungles of Senegal—as Alpha Team finally catches up to Kale in a showdown that could make allies enemies and vice versa. 

Buckle up, action lovers…Operation Cavolo gives you what you came for and then some, upping the ante in this compelling fight against the forces of evil.

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