THE SAMSON STRIKE by Williamson, Tony

Atheneum, New York, 1980. US first edition, hard bound in dust jacket, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2, FINE/FINE CONDITION, 249 pages.-----------------------------------------------Out of the dark North Sea swell stretches oil platform Samson, over four hundred million dollars' worth of cold steel and concrete, capable of pumping four hundred thousand barrels of oil a day—and the imminent target of one of the most daring terrorist attacks ever."It will be in our power to set fire to the North Sea, to create a disaster unparalleled in history. The Samson platform has more than twenty wells, each capable of pumping twenty thousand barrels of oil a day. That sea of blazing oil will spread, engulfing other oilfields, blocking shipping routes, putting a mushroom of smoke over half Europe. There would be no way to put it out. It would burn for years. . . . The governments of Western Europe would have to concede to every demand, free all our people, pay whatever price we asked."On the opposite sides, two men, more alike than they'd ever like to think: Walter Grant, a former SAS officer, kicked out for brutality, now a ruthless mercenary with a brilliant scheme for a Palestinian seizure of Samson; and Jonathon Stagg, Grant's former partner, still an SAS man, but a loner with a habit of doing things his own way—and the rules be damned.Each knows the other intimately—and each is engaged in the deadliest manhunt of his career. For if one of them is to win, then one of them has to die . . . and on the outcome may hang the fate of millions.