17-year-old Carl Hobbes has just pulled off the impossible: He's hacked into Fort Knox and opened the vault doors from his home computer. Unfortunately, the government has tracked him down. They make him a deal: if he tells them how he did it, and swears to secrecy, he'll get off the hook. Otherwise, he's looking at a public trial and a very, very long prison sentence. Carl agrees to tell the United States government everything. For his debriefing, they fly him to an undisclosed, sub-zero facility known as the Guantanmo of the North. The freezing barren wasteland doesn't bode well, and Carl gets even more nervous when he's manhandled into a cage alongside some of the world's worst terrorists. Carl tries to keep calm, knowing that he's only there till he can be debriefed. By the end of the weekend he'll be back home and it will all over. That is, if he lives that long.
Despite the author's efforts, it's hard to feel much sympathy for Carl, despite his youth and relative innocence. The majority of the time he's either being arrogant, too naive, or downright whiney. It's only toward the middle of the book that the real story begins to come out - explaining the disdain the guards feel toward Carl and the reason he's been flown to the Arctic Circle containment camp. At that point, both Carl and the plot start to get more interesting. And once it gets going...it REALLY gets going. Gunfights, explosions, mercenary plots and double identites keep the adrenaline rushing till the fiery, freezing finale!
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