A fragile state. A strategic sea lane. A bomb hidden in a "humanitarian" convoy.
Samir Qadri used to smuggle for a cause. Now he drives for whoever pays, numbing himself with qat and whatever he can get into his veins. When foreign investors fund an aid convoy to the capital, Sammy grabs the chance: one more run, one big payout, and maybe enough to put his family beyond the reach of war.
But one truck in the convoy is different. Its paperwork is vague, its cargo heavily shielded, and its sponsors far too interested in the exact moment it reaches the city.
In the cab ahead sits Johan Hale, an ex Legion security contractor hired to "keep trouble away from the cargo." Johan's real mission is buried under layers of cover: track the radiological device hidden in the aid, stop it before it turns the airport and downwind districts into a long term exclusion zone, and survive long enough to make sure the truth can't be buried with the fallout.
Thousands of kilometres away, shipping tycoon Victor Kalt watches the convoy inch across the desert on satellite feeds. His target isn't the city itself, but the fear its destruction would unleash. With the world's trade already vulnerable to blockages and attacks, one dirty bomb in the wrong place could make his private super port and "secure corridor" the only route global commerce dares to use.
In a palace that smells of dust and failing air con, a besieged president is handed an ultimatum: sign away control of the coast and its future, or gamble that the threat is a bluff—and risk losing his capital in the most public way imaginable.
As the trucks grind toward the outer ring, delays, road washouts, and jittery checkpoints erode everyone's margin for error. Sammy fights his own cravings and the ghosts of the men who threw him away. Johan juggles competing handlers and a driver who may be the bomb's most unpredictable fuse. Victor tightens the screws, convinced he can script the crisis and its profitable resolution.
But on the last stretch of road, where dust, heat and fear converge, the plan fractures. To stop the device without triggering it in the wrong place, Johan must reveal who he really works for. Sammy must choose between the story others wrote for him and the one he can still claim. And a government used to being someone else's pawn must decide whether to own its own nightmare.
CHOKEPOINT PROTOCOL is an international thriller that blends convoy level tension with boardroom ruthlessness and political chess. Fans of Mark Greaney, Mick Herron, and John le Carré's more contemporary, logistics driven espionage will find:
•    High stakes action built around real world vulnerabilities in global trade
•    A morally complex Israeli operative forced to choose between orders and conscience
•    A damaged local driver whose last chance at meaning comes with a fuse attached
•    A billionaire antagonist who treats radiological terror as just another bargaining chip
•    A frontline view of how "managed risk" looks from the bottom of the chain
In a world where the shortest route between ports has become a weapon, one convoy and one decision point will decide whether a capital survives—and who gets to own the lanes that keep the world alive.