Rum Soldier

In the late 1970s, at the height of the Cold War, a welterweight named Loi Whitlow loses a bout with epilepsy and faces a future of waxing floors in office buildings. The local Army recruiter offers an alternative. Five years later, as an ROTC cadet, Whitlow hits his stride. He meets Sabrina Delk, a classmate with a pedigree and security clearance. When he's summoned to Fort Myer, in northern Virginia, it's not a training exercise. It's not academic. It's about the future of a Caribbean nation torn between the US and Soviet Union. A nation on the brink of civil war.

The Soviets have oil, massive reserves on land and offshore. With military bases in the Middle East, they have influence on, if not control of much of the world's petroleum supply chain. By 1983, they're closing in on Venezuela, owner of the largest repository of undrilled oil in the world. A stone's throw from Caracas, on the island of Grenada, Cubans are building a military airstrip with Russian guidance. The U.S. has two liabilities there, a small group of medical students and a professor with a certain skill. A skill the enemy must never acquire. Sabrina later explained it like this: "The Prof's methods had become... unsound. There was a coup. He wouldn't leave. So we sent Whitlow to get him."