Black Ops: Presidential Agent Series, Book 5 by W. E. B. Griffin

Book 5 is a continuation with what have become familiar and likable characters. Very little action but a very good soap opera. PW: The first disturbing reports reached Delta Force Lieutenant Colonel Charley Castillo in the form of backchannel messages concerning covert U.S. intelligence assets working for a variety of agencies suddenly gone missing and then, suddenly, inexplicably, found dying. Or dead. One in Budapest, Hungary. One in Kiev, Ukraine. One in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, mere klicks from the Iran border. And then one in Virginia, along the Potomac River, practically in the shadow of CIA headquarters. Castillo finds the information both infuriating and fascinating, particularly after a recent experience with two CIA traitors whose own deaths were swift and suspicious. Despite there being some similarities, though, he thinks there's something different with these new cases, something he can't quite put his finger on. At first, it's idle thought, but Castillo expects it's only a matter of time before the commander in chief assigns him and his group of troubleshooters in the innocuously named Office of Organizational Analysis to look into the deaths while all those intel agencies fight among themselves trying to put the pieces together. Meanwhile, Castillo has problems of his own - fallout from recent missions involving a clandestine rescue of a DEA agent from South American drug runners, and the confiscation of some 50 million dollars from thieves in the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal. He's made more than a few enemies, he knows - both foreign and domestic. And then comes another back-channel message, this one delivered personally by his lethal friend, the Russian mobster arms dealer. All that has happened so far, he says, is just a warm-up for what's about to come out of the Kremlin.