Publisher's Synopsis
Eleven years after Osama bin-Laden's targeted assassination, and twenty-one years after the deadliest terror attack of 11 September 2001, al-Qaeda is masterminding a second mega terror attack in the USA. It's going to be much more devastating than its predecessor, claiming the life of tens of thousands of Americans.
Bin-Laden's successors have set themselves two main goals: to avenge the USA for eliminating their venerable leader, and to establish al-Qaeda's status as a terror organization that dares challenge the most powerful superpower. That dubious reputation was snatched from them by the ISIS terror group; but al-Qaeda's leaders were convinced that the mega attack at the Super Bowl finals in Atlanta, Georgia, will position them again at the top of the terror pyramid.
Heading the task force is Lutfi bin-Jalal, a senior al-Qaeda militant, part of the think tank that masterminded the 9/11 Twin Towers attack in New York, and one of the top ten names on the FBI's most wanted list. His task team includes three more terrorists of the FBI's wanted list, each 'worth' millions of dollars.
Shawn Scott, a withdrawn American kid, tends to hole up in his room most of the day, addicted to computer games. Like so many geeks, he has set himself a challenge: to crack the operating system of every new version of a computer game as soon as it hits the market. Each success increases his passion to become an expert hacker. Greedily he devours manuals and handbooks with instructions on how to hack even the most secure websites. Soon enough, he joins a clandestine hackers' group.
On his 14th birthday, a uniformed officer accompanied by two female soldiers, knocks on the Scott's family door in a quiet Atlanta suburb. Sergeant Freddy Scott, they inform sadly, was killed in an al-Qaeda terror attack in Afghanistan. His body was nowhere to be found. Shawn refused to come to terms with the news.
An investigative report he comes across one day in Time magazine, deals with cyber activities of the elite unit linked to the National Security Association (NSA). The report describes spybots embedded into computers, routers, cell phones, and all kinds of smart devices for the purpose of mining sensitive data from friendly and hostile elements alike.
The article gets Shawn charged up. He is determined to hack the CIA's website and the Pentagon's computer system, in order to mine classified information about his father's real cause of death. He discovers classified transmissions made on the day of his father's death, containing pieces of information which the military hid from him and his mother.
Lutfi bin-Jalal, the mega attack's mastermind, arrives in Atlanta on a fake passport, presenting himself as a respectable businessman and close family member of Dubai's royal family. Emily Scott, Shawn's mother, an architect by profession, meets bin-Jalal at random and falls head over heels for his oriental charm.
Shawn has his suspicions about the debonair man who's captured his mother's heart. Planting a tracker program in bin-Jalal's cell phone, Shawn is shocked to find out that the guy working his magic on Emily is a senior al-Qaeda member, and high in the FBI's wanted terrorists list.
Shawn is in no rush to share the news with his mother, not to say the FBI. Instead, he keeps close track of the terrorist's moves, and comes upon a chilling scheme to carry out the most vicious terror attack in modern history.
Atlanta Touchdown is the story of an American computer whiz kid, who recruits a bunch of Arab children, and a drone-addicted friend, to thwart al-Qaeda's mega attack on the 2023 Super Bowl Finals.
