Target: Hollywood

Two cousins raised in the slums of Beirut. One determined to strike terror in the heart of American decadence. The other desperate to stop him. A plot from the dawn of America's war on terror by award-winning author and former CBS News Middle East correspondent Lawrence Pintak.

"As Beirut rushed beneath him, Ali could see tiny figures on the roofs of some buildings. Down there were his family and friends, the gunmen and religious fanatics. Everything he loved and hated of his former life. Down there lived the demons he wanted to escape but must now confront."

Ali Ghaddar had made a new life for himself far from the violence of his native Beirut. But even Northwestern University wasn't far enough to keep the demons at bay. Each new terrorist outrage back home left him feeling more angry and helpless.

So when his girlfriend's father was kidnapped by a militia group controlled by the cousin he once considered a brother, it didn't take the CIA long to convince him to go back and try to save him. In the process, he stumbled on a chilling plot to strike at the icons of Hollywood in an audacious high-profile attack. Working with OSIRIS, a secret anti-terrorist strike team, Ali plunged back into the nightmare he thought he had escaped, torn between family ties, the desperate need to save his girlfriend's father, and the realization that the fate of countless Americans lay in his hands.