By Darryl James, Published by Amazon Kindle 2021

In Sverdlovsk, USSR, in 1979, Dr. Olga Romanov is thrown into a sanitarium by the KGB to hush up an explosion at a military research facility that kills 75 people from Anthrax poisoning, including her children and husband. Olga is kept heavily drugged and is periodically raped by a deranged member of the hospital staff. A KGB Colonel recruits her to join a secret organization, Wildfire, and trains her to become an assassin code-named the Leopard.

In 1998, a CIA Section Chief, Bill Jenson, tracks a mysterious assassin, the Leopard. The CIA knows neither her nationality nor identity, only the trail of death she has left across Europe and the Middle East. A young, wealthy oil executive, Charles Johnson, goes to a business meeting in Kuwait and meets an attractive Austrian school teacher, Marlena Reinhart. That night, they are kidnapped by a Middle Eastern terrorist group and held for ransom. Marlena is beaten, raped, and planned to be killed. The Leopard visits the terrorists’ safe house and is appalled. The terrorists keep an innocent girl as a sex slave for their leader, Sayid. The Leopard rescues the girl and takes her to a private hospital in Paris to recover.

Charles’s father, Tom Johnson, a Vice President of the Company, and a Company Security Officer, Tran Le Trang, rush to Kuwait to save Charles. Tran, a former Viet Cong guerilla and police detective, helps rescue Charles. They find Arabic papers at the terrorist's house, which Tran turns over to the CIA. The CIA notices the papers reference the Leopard and Anthrax. The documents lead to an oil field site in the western Iraqi desert, where they find satellite evidence of SCUD missiles and Anthrax. A secret military raid into Iraq is staged using hi-tech Comanche helicopters to destroy the rockets and Anthrax. The CIA brings Charles on the mission because he is the only Westerner to have seen the Leopard’s face. Tran accompanies the CIA into France, searching for Marlena Reinhart, who they believe will lead them to the Leopard.

The Leopard’s boss, the elderly former KGB Colonel, upset with her rescuing Marlena Reinhart from their clients, sends assassins to kill the Austrian girl to rid them of this distraction. The Leopard warns a nurse caring for Marlena of the planned attack. Two Wildfire hitmen kill two of the hospital’s staff, but the nurse and Marlena escape to the Parisian countryside.

The American Special Ops raid into Iraq passes over an Iraqi armored column on exercises in the desert. The Special Ops team finds terrorists, technicians, and a small amount of Anthrax powder at the desert site, but the Leopard escapes. The Special Ops team fights its way through the armored column and returns to Saudi Arabia, while the Leopard and the terrorist leader smuggle the Anthrax into Israel, where a plane has been modified to spray Tel Aviv.

Meanwhile, Tran and the CIA search for Marlena Reinhart in France. The Colonel’s assassin, Jon LeClarre, finds the country house where the nurse and Marlena had fled. He is about to kill both women when Tran and the CIA arrive. Jon LeClarre kills the nurse, but Tran hides the girl in the forest, eluding the assassin.

The CIA and the Israeli authorities arrive at the crop duster’s hangar minutes after it departs on its deadly mission in Israel. The plane sprays a long, thin cloud across Tel Aviv. The terrorist leader, Sayid, sits content in the crop duster’s cabin, believing their mission is complete, and gleefully imagines the trap he has laid for the Leopard. Sayid, suddenly light-headed, turns to the pilot for help. The pilot smiles and says, “We switched the Anthrax toxin with a harmless mixture. No Israelis were killed.” Sayid, now paralyzed from a prick with ricin toxin, dies in the plane.

Olga, the Leopard, visits the Colonel at his villa in Spain. The Colonel points a revolver at her and pulls the trigger, but the gun doesn’t fire. She says, “Goodbye, Colonel,” as his manservant hurls him in his wheelchair off the balcony to the rocks below. Jon LeClarre is drinking a beer at a nearby villa when a package of CDs arrives. He forces the disks apart, causing a pop. The pop spews an Anthrax black powder into the air.

Charles and Marlena are treated to a lavish engagement party at his grandfather’s ranch in New Mexico. A sniper’s scope places crosshairs on Marlena’s chest. The sniper whispers, “Goodbye, Marlena, have a wonderful life,” but to her spotter’s puzzlement, she doesn’t shoot. The Leopard and her accomplice quietly slip away toward the Mexican border.