Juggernaut by Adam Baker takes place during the final days of Saddam Hussein’s reign in Iraq. How, you may ask, is this something that could contain zombies? Here’s how it works. In the book, and as part of the plot, the rumor is that sometime before the second invasion of Iraq, Saddam had his personal fortune shipped to the Western Desert. This is where he had previously released chemical weapons against the Kurds who live in that region and following that release created a fence and renamed it the Contaminated Zone.
This is where Baker’s Juggernaut comes in. A second string, Private Military Company (PMC), hears the rumor about Saddam’s gold and decides to track it down. Unknown to them, one of the people they contact for assistance has already been contacted by a shadowy CIA agent who wants something that is also in that convoy. What awaits them in that desolate place is more than just gold and some super secret intelligence item. There be zombies in that there wasteland.
Heralded as a cross between Three Kings and The Walking Dead, Juggernaut is a taut zombie action adventure with well developed characters and a solid plot. It has moments of terror accompanied with moments of tense dialogue that sets the pace throughout the story.
But, and this was coming from almost the first page.
There are some serious technical issues. What stands out to me and by now most of the people who have read my reviews know what I’m referring to, the ever present disease known as poor research.
Within the first chapter there is a major issue with a soldier who is sitting in the doorway of a low flying Black Hawk. That’s Black Hawk; two words not one as in Blackhawk. This soldier apparently does not have a sling on his rifle as he tosses it to another soldier who is inside the helicopter. Let’s look at that action for a moment. Sure, that sounds kind of cool but tossing a live weapon inside a helicopter while said aircraft is in flight is not only a direct violation of safety, it’s the most stupid thing someone could do. Moving on, we have another character introduced as a marine. Sorry, that’s Marine. Marine is a title and needs to be capitalized. Said former Marine somehow has a West Point ring on his finger. Some of you may ask why that’s an issue. Here’s the problem with that. West Point is the U.S. Army’s military academy. Marines don’t attend that academy because they aren’t part of the Army. Marines attend Annapolis, the Naval Academy because Marines are part of the Navy and are considered to be Naval Infantry. That being said, no way would a former Marine lieutenant be wearing a West Point ring. Then there is the lack of capitalization when referring to the U.S. Air Force. That is a proper noun therefore it needs to be capitalized. Throughout the story there are constant references to clips and magazines and the ever present reference to STANAG magazines. Let’s address the whole clip/magazine issue first. A clip is a term that references the old stripper clip from the M1 Garand rifle of the WW2 era. It was a simple metal clip that rounds were attached to and then inserted into the rifle. Modern military rifles do no use a clip, they use a magazine. The term clip has seem life inside several books, movies and even badly researched television shows and is an incorrect term when referring to a modern military, magazine fed weapon. Now we have the whole STANAG magazine issue. A STANAG magazine is simply a Standard Agreement magazine adopted by NATO forces, hence the whole acronym. It’s not a special magazine, nor is it a really high quality magazine; it’s simply a standard 5.56mm compatible magazine. Oh, and that 5.56 not 5:56 when referring to the caliber of the M16/M4 rifle. Later in the book, there is a mention of one of the PMC contractors going full auto with his AR-15. Really? The AR-15 is the semiautomatic only version of the military M16 so it would not have a selective fire switch that would allow it to fire fully automatic. Just not going to happen. There is a mention of the M249 SAW using a 200 round drum. That’s not going to happen either. The standard drum magazine for the M249 is 100 rounds. There is a 200 round ammunition box that the linked belts are stored in but there is no 200 round box magazine. There is even a mention of one of the contractors feeding shells into his shotgun then racking the slide. Maybe he racked the pump action but definitely he didn’t rack the slide. These are all reasons why I offer my services as a Military Technical Advisor for authors. There will always be a few issues no matter how well someone researches but this many?
While Juggernaut is a tense zombie thriller that had a relatively believable cause for an outbreak, to me, it really lacked the tactical and technical savvy required to make this an outstanding novel set within contemporary times. If you can overlook what I mentioned above and just read it as it stands, a zombie thriller, then Juggernaut is an outstanding story that uses a real world cause for the zombies and tosses in some political thrills and plenty of action.
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