Kat In Harm's Way (Paperback or Softback)

The adventure begins as Kat Fernando, an orphaned child, homeless and desperately in needed of a home and a job, approaches the Army for sanctuary. She is only seventeen, so she is too young to join without a guardian's signature which is of course impossible. At first the Army won't take her, but she gets a reprieve. She has a lot more going for her than the average teen, she is brilliant with an amazing talent for languages, she is also tall, strong, and athletic. She is also very attractive and captures the attention of a man with a plan. With the help of this man, a major with Military Counterintelligence (M-CI) who chooses to remain in the shadows, she signs a contract and they let her in. Kat becomes a translator and, being quite happy in that job, has no interest in doing anything else, let alone becoming a combat soldier. But the major wasn't attracted by her beauty, he recognized her military potential and secretly begins the long process of training her to work for him as a spy. At the beginning of 1991, Kat has been in the Army for three years and is a corporal when trouble sparks in the Middle East and Kat is deployed to Dharan Saudi Arabia to translate for the Coalition Forces as Desert Storm begins. This is the opportunity that the major has been waiting for and he initiates her first test under fire. She is sent her into the battle zone with five untested men. She is attacked by one of them and is shot in the back as she runs for cover. The major's mission isn't a complete failure, she showed true leadership up until the shooting, and she didn't die.

After her recovery, more tests follow, each one more dangerous than the last and her skills improve beyond all expectations. The only problem the major has with her now is that while recovering from the GSW she fell in love with Colonel Harmon Toucksberry. Potential Special Agents like her are not supposed to have relationships. Now the major must try everything he can to ruin it for her.

Kat soon becomes an exceptional Special Agent with M-CI, a highly skilled fighter, a combat helicopter pilot, and, following a battle on a mountain top in Honduras, she is a decorated hero. With her new position she is immediately drawn into the investigation of a crime syndicate which is becoming a potential threat to America's national security. Their main business is corporate espionage, political corruption, and murder. Kat is put into the field, undercover on a mission to find an agent from Europol, who is working in deep cover against that crime syndicate in St. Petersburg. Kat's mission is to locate her, find out what information she has and, if possible, bring her out of Russia. The agent is uncooperative and, in her panic, nearly gets Kat killed.

The threat to America is increasing exponentially and their targets in Europe are leading them straight to a company in Canada involved in a secret project in the Nevada desert.

The threat against the Canadian company becomes real and Kat is sent to protect the CEO from the assassins who were sent to eliminate him. Kat thwarts their efforts and extracts the name of the head of the crime syndicate, but her methods are problematic, forcing her superiors to disavow her and fake her death. An outcast now, Kat plans to continue her fight against the crime boss and along with her M-CI major Paul Delyn concocted a cover identity that will attract the attention of Delph Petrus, a thoroughly evil man. Now as Anita Franco, Kat becomes a gold-digging harlot, a favorite of the tabloids and paparazzo across Europe who have dubbed her the Happy Widow of Ibiza. Her cover is so tantalizing that Petrus can't help himself and invites her in only to find that she has come to kill him.

With here success comes pain and sadness, though she survives her ordeal she loses everyone and everything she valued and must live out her life as Anita Franco in a lonely little dacha on the Ukrainian coast of the Sea of Azo

Hugh Russel is a Toronto born writer, sculptor, armature musician, and broadcaster living in the farming country of central Ontario with his wife, Cheryl