The Dogs of War: Fredrick Forsyth

A mining company finds platinum in a small, poorly run country in Africa and decides to stage a coup and set up a puppet dictatorship so they can mine the mountain for free. They contact the mercenary Cat Shannon to stage the coup. Most of the book is about gathering the supplies and men for the takeover. At the end the invasion was successful, but three of Shannon's men die. Once the Mining industry brings the new dictator in, Shannon shoots him. Shannon then escorts the mining man to the countries border and bids him farewell explaining that he would not see another bad dictator come to power and found his own man who was educated and who was once an islander. Interesting book, but geared towards boys will all the military planning.

Serpent: Clive Cussler

This was an interesting NUMA story, the first in the series I have read, but it seemed to move so slowly. There were interesting parts followed by scenes that seemed never-ending. The book starts with a ship wreck when two ships collide 50 years before the rest of the story takes place. By the middle of the book the reader forgets about the ships. A terrorism organization "The Brotherhood" which existed from the time of Columbus, tries to cover up scientific evidence that the Mayans had contact with Europeans before Columbus. An Archeologist narrowly escapes a massacre and helps NUMA uncover the plot. The brotherhood was trying to find the riches which would allow them to finance a civil war in the US so Mexico could regain land they lost to the United States.