Destination Gold

""I am the War Lord and the wrathful God of Combat and I will always lead you from the front, not the rear. I will treat you all alike--just like shit."" These first two of ""The Rogue Warrior's Ten Commandments of Specwar,"" posted at the beginning of Marcinko and Weisman's latest exercise in literary violence (after Task Force Blue), sum up the authors' macho approach. Even so, thick-skinned readers might relish the second commandment. As before, Marcinko casts himself as hero. He is in Russia and on a personal vendetta to extract revenge against whomever assassinated his old friend Rear Admiral Paul Mahon, along with Mahon's family, including Marcinko's godson, Adam. The Rogue Warrior connects Russian crooks with U.S. and Syrian arms dealers. His roughest opposition, as usual, comes in the form of America's stick-in-the-mud bureaucrats, but he must battle Russian thugs as well until he completes his case against a venal diplomat and a merciless arms merchant. As Lovejoy is to antiques, Marcinko is to martial arts. An ex-SEAL, he continues his instructional monologues on weapons, tactics and history even as he is plunging fist or weapon into somebody's flesh. He manages to throw salient jabs at America's security apparatus, too. Readers partial to Marcinko and Weisman's fierce brand of escapism will find this bottling to be vintage and undeniably potent. (Mar.)