A Plane Heist Goes Outrageously Awry in This Brisk Spy Thriller
At the outset of Elliot Ackerman's lively thriller 'Sheepdogs,' a mysterious benefactor offers the two protagonists a million dollars to 'repossess' (that is, steal) a private jet from an airfield in Uganda and fly it to France.
It's a strange proposal, scant on detail. But the men, both military veterans, accept at once. After all, 'war is a racket,' as the Marine general Smedley D. Butler wrote (in a line adopted for the novel's epigraph), and they aren't going to miss this rare chance to cash in.
Before taking the job, the protagonists — one American, the other Afghan — had found themselves stranded on the margins of civilian life. Sqwerl, a former Marine and C.I.A. paramilitary, disclosed classified information to the press in the wake of a disastrous raid in Now Zad, Afghanistan. (His name is a phonetic rendition of 'squirrel' — 'because Marines can't spell.') In retaliation, the C.I.A. fired and sued Sqwerl, winning the right to garnish his earnings for years to come.
Cheese, Sqwerl's partner and a onetime ace for the Afghan Air Force, fled Kabul immediately before the Taliban secured the capital in 2021. He and his pregnant wife now live as refugees in a tiny apartment on the outskirts of Austin, Texas, surviving on Cheese's meager wages as a gas station clerk.
Predictably, the scheme to steal the plane goes awry. A determined assassin, it turns out, has Sqwerl in his sights. More threatening still is Uncle Tony, a shadowy C.I.A. operative who hasn't forgiven Sqwerl for talking out of turn.
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