Disclaimer #1: The Dan Snyder character in The Bin Laden Plot is not the Dan Snyder who owned the Washington Commanders. I use real people’s names for most of my characters — individuals who have helped me as a writer or who have won the option to be a major character at one of my book release parties. Brenda Verbeck is one of them, and Dan Snyder is her brother, both in real life and in the book. Another example is Jason Johnson, the Pentagon Navy chief who Mixell killed. He’s my son-in-law, who wanted to be a character in the book, and I obliged.
Disclaimer #2: The details of the raid on Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound in this novel have been simplified to avoid bogging down the story and to avoid areas where there are conflicting accounts of what happened. Additionally, the retelling in this novel blends fact with fiction to support the storyline. For those interested in the details, there are several unclassified and slightly different versions of the raid available via open-source documents.
Finally, the usual disclaimer: Some of the submarine tactics described in The Bin Laden Plot are generic and not accurate. For example, torpedo employment and evasion tactics are classified and cannot be accurately represented in this novel. The dialogue also isn’t 100 percent accurate. If it were, much of it would be unintelligible to the average reader. To help the story move along without getting bogged down in acronyms, technical details, and other military jargon, I simplified the dialogue and description of operations and weapon systems.
I did my best to keep everything as close to real life as possible while attempting to develop a suspenseful (and unclassified), page-turning novel. Hopefully, it all worked out and you enjoyed reading The Bin Laden Plot!
ALSO BY RICK CAMPBELL
The Trident Deception
Empire Rising
Ice Station Nautilus
Blackmail
Treason
Deep Strike
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rick Campbell is a retired Navy Commander who spent more than twenty years on multiple submarine tours. On his last tour, he was one of the two men whose permission was required to launch the submarine’s nuclear warhead — tipped missiles. Campbell is the author of several novels, including The Trident Deception and Deep Strike. He lives with his family in the greater Washington, D.C., area. You can sign up for email updates here.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
First published in the United States by St. Martin’s Press, an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group
THE BIN LADEN PLOT. Copyright © 2024 by Rick Campbell. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271.
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by Nikolaas Eickelbeck
Cover art: sunset © shunli zhao/Getty Images; waves © andrejs polivanovs/Shutterstock.com; underwater waves © Johan Holmdahl/Shutterstock.com; submarine © zieusin/ Shutterstock.com; underwater texture © Allexxander/Shutterstock.com; torpedo © Aleksfoto/Shutterstock.com; torpedo stream © noraismail/Shutterstock.com; bubbles © Tracey Jones Photography/Shutterstock.com; metal texture © Andrey_Kuzmin/Shutterstock.com
eISBN 9781250277114
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First Edition: 2024