The year is 2018 and the current president, Thomas Paxton Knowles, decides to initiate a United States military operation in Uganda--called "Jungle Peace' --with the objective of eliminating the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a particularly nasty terrorist group that just recently slaughtered a group of doctors and American relief workers. The operation in Uganda is approved by a UN vote, though China--which has troops on the ground in neighboring Sudan--votes against it and sends two ships to shadow the movements of US naval forces in East African waters. Despite tensions with China, Knowles hopes that Jungle Peace will be a quick, clean operation that will, in the months preceding US midterm elections, add to the already wide popularity he and his fellow Republicans are enjoying as a result of the current economic boom.

On Wall Street, Ed Grey is about to lead his investment company, Red River, into some lucrative short-term bets. One of his stock traders has heard that the bank Fidelian has some losses it needs to declare, so the plan is to short Fidelian and three other banks in anticipation of a brief market correction, and thus make significant profits off of the short-term market dip...

Genre: Thriller