It's easy to imagine what could happen

Having read many adventure novels this past year by Clancy, Cussler, and Vince Flynn, I'm inspired to write my own thriller. After all, Tom Clancy foresaw an attack on Washington in his 1996 book "Executive Orders" where a terrorist flew a Boeing 747 into the Capitol building killing most of Congress, the Supreme Court, the President and his Cabinet. Shades of 9/11 Flight 93, which probably had targeted either the White House or the Capitol Building.

My prophetic thriller will deal with the breakout of the 100 Gitmo detainees from the Thomson, Illinois prison they will be moved into. Jihadists will follow there steps more or less:

• Jihadists will become sleepers in the small towns surrounding Thomson. They will blend into the local citizenry. Like 9/11, they will make coordinated moves from those cities at a "synchronize your watches" time to arrive at the Thomson prison simultaneously.

• Having detailed plans of the prison they will determine which areas of the prison to blast to smithereens with explosives, which will kill only the guards and not the detainees.

• The escape with their comrades will be orchestrated to perhaps use the Mississippi River to begin their departure, and then flown out in helicopters secreted in the escape vessel.

• The helicopters will fly to a secret airfield in Iowa where executive jets will fly them out of the country, equipped with adequate electronics to fool pursuit aircraft.

• A hero like Jack Ryan (Clancy's hero). Dirk Pitt (Cussler's), or Mitch Rapp (Flynn's) will save the day! Except in real life, as in 9/11, there will be no hero. After my book is published, "life will imitate art" and this nightmare will occur as sure as I'm sitting here writing this frightening missive.

Dave Souders

Arlington Heights