Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity

The Devil's Hand: A Thriller (4) (Terminal List)

Review "The fourth book in Carr's Terminal List series is another intense international thriller featuring former Navy SEAL James Reece. He's now on a long-planned CIA mission related to the 9/11 attacks, facing down the threat of a potentially disastrous bioweapons attack." ― AARP, "New Novels for Spring" "Carr delivers engrossing backstory, incorporates current events seamlessly, and never flinches from breathless depictions of violence." ― Publishers Weekly ”Carr continues to draw on his own experiences as a SEAL to give the story a level of realism that writers who’ve not actually served sometimes have a hard time achieving.” ― Booklist " The Terminal List is widely regarded as one of the best debut thrillers of all-time, and rightfully so, but The Devil’s Hand is even better, and should go down as one of the best books in the genre, period." ― The Real Book Spy "An action thriller extraordinaire that is not to be missed." ― Providence Journal About the Author Jack Carr is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and former Navy SEAL. He lives with his wife and three children in Park City, Utah. He is the author of The Terminal List , True Believer , Savage Son , The Devil’s Hand, and In the Blood . His debut novel, The Terminal List , was adapted into the #1 Amazon Prime Video series starring Chris Pratt. He is also the host of the top-rated podcast Danger Close . Visit him at OfficialJackCarr.com and follow along on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at @JackCarrUSA. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter 1 CHAPTER 1 CIA Applicant Processing Unit Dulles Discovery Building Chantilly, Virginia Present Day “IS YOUR FIRST NAME James?” “Yes,” Reece replied. “Have you ever lied to get out of trouble?” Reece paused. “Yes.” “Do you intend to answer these questions truthfully?” Another pause. “Yes.” “Is today Wednesday?” “Yes.” “Have you ever committed a crime for which you were not caught?” “Yes?” “Are we in Virginia?” “Yes.” “Have you ever committed murder?” “Ah…” “Just yes or no, please.” “No.” Reece saw the polygrapher make a note. “Are you a United States citizen?” “Yes.” Through his peripheral vision, Reece saw the polygrapher make another notation and adjust a setting on his laptop. Great. “Have you ever been part of a group that has wanted to overthrow the United States government?” Reece sat in the nondescript room of what would have been a normal office park anywhere else in America. This one was located in Chantilly, Virginia, and was owned by a front company created by the CIA. Reece was halfway through day one of his three-day CIA processing evaluation. Even with his past experience and relationship with the Agency he still had to pass the medical and psychological screening tests to officially join the ranks of Ground Branch. Bureaucracy was, after all, bureaucracy. “Let’s try this again,” “John” said in a tone meant to convey exasperation. “Be sure to answer yes or no honestly. And remain completely still. Keep your eyes focused on one point on the wall in front of you or we will have to start all over.” Reece felt his pulse quicken. He’d been on the receiving end of an interrogation before, and then, just as now, he wanted nothing more than to tear his interrogator’s throat out. He’d completed a form in the waiting area, answering the exact questions he was currently being asked. He’d even gone over them with his “examiner” before being hooked up to the machine. “Have you ever been part of a group that has wanted to overthrow the United States government?” the polygraph examiner asked a second time. “No.” “Have you ever been in the employment of a foreign intelligence service?” Reece tried to reframe the question in his mind. Instead, a memory intruded; Ivan Zharkov standing in the snow outside his dacha in Siberia, the flames from the downed Mi8 helicopter smoldering behind him, the dead bodies of his security detail strewn about the ground around him, a security detail Reece had killed. Are you offering to spy for me, Mr. Reece? “No,” Reece responded. The polygraph examiner made another note. A blood pressure cuff squeezed Reece’s left arm, two rubber air-filled tubes called pneumographs encircled his chest and stomach to record his breathing, and galvanometers had been placed on the first and third fingers of his right hand to measure sweat secretions. His chair was fitted with a sensor pad, thanks to Ana Montes, a senior Cuban analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency who had been recruited by Cuban intelligence while in graduate school at Johns Hopkins. From 1985 until her arrest on espionage charges in 2001, she routinely passed classified information to Havana that was then transferred to the Soviets. Later, that information was sold to China, North Korea, Venezuela, and Iran. Her Cuban handlers had trained her to manipulate her polygraph by contracting her sphincter muscles, which is why Reece now sat on a sensor. He was also in socks, his feet resting on two individual pads. All movements would be recorded by the polygraph. The room was small, but not claustrophobically so, about twice the size of a single patient room at a doctor’s office. Reece thought it was possible the off-white walls had faded to their current hue by absorbing the fear that permeated the space on an almost daily basis. There was a camera visible in the upper left-hand corner, but Reece was sure the CIA had concealed a few others so as not to miss a single eye twitch or muscle movement. Though he stared at a blank wall, a mirror had been installed just off-center, two-way of course, for observation. The room was bare of any additional distractions other than the small table to his left where the polygrapher sat with his computer. It was unquestionably designed to make CIA candidates as uncomfortable as possible. “Have you ever committed a crime for which you were not caught?” Visions of his dead wife and daughter caused his heart rate to increase. Reece swallowed as he remembered watching the silver Mercedes G550 SUV crest the rise on the mountain road outside Jackson through the magnification of his Nightforce NXS 2.5-10x32mm scope, just before pressing the trigger to send a Barnes Triple Shock .300 Winchester Magnum through the brain stem of Marcus Boykin, the first person Reece had eliminated on his quest to avenge his family and SEAL Troop. “Mr. Reece?” his examiner asked. “What?” “We have to get through these questions. Have you ever committed a crime for which you were not caught?” Reece felt the working end of his Winkler/Sayoc Tomahawk catch in the bone and brain matter of Imam Hammadi Izmail Masood’s crushed skull before twisting it out and going to work on the gristle of the terrorist’s neck muscles. Reece had freed the head from the terrorist’s body so he could impale it on the spiked fence of the mosque as a warning to the others that death was coming for them all. “No,” Reece lied. “Have you visited antipolygraph.org to prepare for this examination?” “Yes.” This answer visibly perturbed the examiner. “Are you sitting down?” “Yes.” “Have you ever committed murder?” “I thought we covered that.” “Just yes-or-no answers.” Again, Reece’s mind accessed memories he’d never be able to repress. He remembered hitting send on the cell phone that detonated the suicide vest on political fundraiser Mike Tedesco, turning him and SEAL Admiral Gerald Pilsner into human mist. He remembered shoving the HK pistol into Josh Holder’s mouth, feeling teeth breaking around the long suppressor before the .45-caliber bullet blew the back of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service man’s head off. “No.” “Have you ever plotted to overthrow the U.S. government?” Reece thought of the EFP, Explosively Formed Penetrator, he’d built. It was an instrument of terror overseas, but Reece had used the tactics and techniques of the enemy on home soil. He’d become an insurgent. The IED sent a slug of molten copper through the armored Suburban of Congressman J. D. Hartley in SoHo, eviscerating the conspirator and bringing the reality of war to the home front. Reece saw the look of abject horror in Secretary of Defense Loraine Hartley’s eyes as he shot her twice in the chest and once in the head in her Fishers Island mansion. “No.” “Is the wall white?” “Sort of.” “Once again, just yes or no.” “Yes.” “Have you ever been involved in the torture of enemy combatants?” The odor of vomit and piss from the floor of Saul Agnon’s hotel room keyed the memory of the attorney’s waterboarding and untimely death via a concoction of illicit drugs Reece had acquired to make the murder seem like a drug overdose, giving Reece the time he needed to eliminate his remaining targets. Reece saw the horror in Captain Howard’s eyes as he eviscerated the JAG officer with the sinister curved blade of the HFB karambit. As his guts slipped through his fingers and spilled onto the soft jungle floor, Howard frantically attempted to shove them back inside. Reece skewered them to a tree and forced the lawyer to walk around the trunk, his entrails escaping from his stomach until he collapsed at its base to be eaten alive by the creatures of the swamp. Reece thought of passing the vodka to General Qusim Yedid in Athens, a glass spiked with a Novichok liquid-soluble precursor. And he remembered filling the 60cc syringe with capsaicin to inject into Dimitry Mashkov to elicit information that led to the location of Oliver Grey. “No,” Reece said. “Have you used illegal drugs you have not mentioned previously?” Reece shut his eyes, remembering the drugs his Troop had been given prior to their last deployment. Those PTSD beta-blockers had sinister side effects, side effects that a group of military, political, and private sector conspirators needed to cover up an ambush in Afghanistan and the murder of Reece’s family in their Coronado home. “No.” “Did you intentionally falsify information on your application or security paperwork?” “No.” “Have you ever stolen anything from your previous place of employment?” Reece remembered rolling the dolly down the hallway to his Troop’s weapons locker in the SEAL Team Seven armory and loading it with rifles, NODs, AT-4s, LAW rockets, a machine gun, claymores, and C-4 to load out for his mission of vengeance. He’d liberated it all before the admiral and his JAG had suspended his security clearance. “No.” “Have you ever stolen anything worth over five hundred U.S. dollars?” “No,” Reece said, unsuccessfully attempting to block the vision of himself loading the stolen ordnance into the back of his Land Cruiser. “Do you have any undisclosed relationships with foreign nationals?” The faces of Ivan Zharkov, Marco del Toro, and Mohammed Farooq flashed through his mind. “No.” “Have you ever kept a war trophy?” Reece paused. “No.” “Have you ever sold government property?” “No.” “Have you, or do you know anyone who brought back enemy weapons from overseas?” “No.” “Is there anything in your background that would disqualify you from getting this job?” Reece remembered his best friend and former teammate, Ben Edwards, holding up the detonator attached to strands of det cord wrapped around investigative journalist Katie Buranek’s neck, her head battered and bruised, tears streaming, bandana securing her mouth. Ben had watched in utter disbelief as Reece killed financier Steve Horn and the secretary of defense before centering his M4 on the CIA assassin’s face and pressing the trigger, eliminating the final target on his terminal list. “Mr. Reece?” “No. Nothing.” “John” removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. He then made a production of turning off the computer, though Reece knew quite well that it continued to monitor his vitals and that the audio and visual recording devices in the room were still running. He wondered who was watching through the two-way glass. “Mr. Reece, this is not going well.” “Really? I’m shocked.” “You must take this seriously. I have to tell you, almost every answer you’ve given indicated deception on the polygraph, even your name.” “Well, I’ve used a couple aliases.” “We covered this, Mr. Reece. Just any names not denoted on your employment questionnaire.” “It’s been a busy couple of years, John .” “Let me converse with my supervisors. I’ll be right back.” “John” left Reece alone in the room, still tethered to the computer and still under surveillance. Reece looked at the camera in the corner and shook his head. Fuckers. Reece knew the polygraph was largely theater. Yes, the machine measured blood pressure, breathing, sweat secretions, and muscle movements, but there was a reason that results of a “lie detector” test were inadmissible in every court in the civilized world. Its value was in making the candidate think it could detect deception. It was an expensive prop, one that had gotten more than one candidate over the years to admit to crimes that they would almost certainly have gotten away with otherwise. Reece had visited the antipolygraph.org site years ago as part of a battlefield interrogation course he’d attended in the SEAL Teams. It was the approved “tactical questioning” course of instruction, meant to provide left and right limits to operators in the field who might not have the luxury of having a BIT, or Battlefield Interrogation Team, attached to their unit. The techniques taught at the approved interrogation school were more akin to how a detective would interview the suspect of a crime in the United States. Reece wouldn’t learn the darker arts of interrogation until he was detailed to a CIA covert action unit in Iraq at the height of the war. There he would learn techniques that had come in handy over the years, techniques that were not part of a manual and were not searchable via Google. Reece shut his eyes. Calm down, Reece. This is all part of the game, a game you need to win. Remember why you are here; you made a promise to Freddy Strain’s widow. “I’ll find who did this, Joanie. I’ll find everyone responsible.” The triggerman was still breathing: Nizar Kattan, a Syrian sniper Reece had vowed to put in the ground. An assassin Reece needed the CIA’s robust intelligence capabilities to locate. There was also the letter. A letter and a safe-deposit box key from his father. A letter from the grave. Later, Reece. Just get through the day. Reece’s day had started early that morning with a blood draw. He had given a urine sample and completed his vision and hearing tests. He had an appointment at medical the following day to complete his physical. He’d taken the 567-question MMPI-2 psychological test, which he’d found both amusing and irritating. He would have to sit down with an Agency psychologist on his third day. Reece knew the MMPI was designed to uncover psychological issues that might be disqualifying to a candidate applying for employment with the Central Intelligence Agency. It was administered to uncover repressed aggression, psychoticism, alcoholism, anxiety, marital distress, fears, depression, anger, cynicism, low self-esteem, defensiveness, antisocial behavior, schizophrenia, and paranoia. Paranoia. Reece noticed that day two contained a long block of “free time” in his printed schedule. He knew this was a placeholder to “retake” the polygraph. Enough SEALs had gone through CIA processing over the years that it was anything but secret. Day three was set aside for an office visit with Victor Rodriguez, director of what was now called the Special Activities Center. The SAC ran the paramilitary wing of the Agency. Vic had tried to recruit him for Ground Branch at their very first meeting when Reece had landed on the USS Kearsarge in the Adriatic Sea after he and Freddy Strain had taken out Amin Nawaz, the terrorist known as Europe’s Osama bin Laden. Reece had agreed to finish the job he’d started at the behest of the United States government to track down and turn or kill a former CIA asset he’d worked with and befriended in Baghdad. That mission had led to Freddy’s death from a sniper’s bullet in Odessa. His relationship with Katie had taken a bit of a hit when he’d disappeared into the Siberian tundra for six months, tracking the CIA traitor responsible for the death of Reece’s father, a legendary Vietnam-era SEAL and Cold War CIA case officer. Reece glanced at the Rolex Submariner on his wrist, a watch that his father had purchased at the PX in Saigon, a watch that had been slipped from his dead hand in a back alley in Buenos Aires. Reece had taken it back from the man responsible before sending him to the afterlife with seven hundred grams of RDX from a Russian claymore. The polygraph examiner had been gone for ten minutes. Was he really meeting with a supervisor? No chance. They were just making him sweat. It was all part of the interrogation playbook: convincing unwitting subjects to admit to disqualifying crimes and thereby putting a feather in the cap of the polygrapher who “caught” them. They were especially fond of “catching” and disqualifying those with special operations backgrounds. Katie had been supportive of Reece’s decision to accept a provisional contract with the CIA. She had been with him from the start of the nightmare and helped uncover the conspiracy that led to the ambush of his SEAL Team in the mountains of the Hindu Kush and the slaying of his young daughter and pregnant wife. She’d waited and wondered when he disappeared off the coast of Fishers Island, New York, after saving her life, and she’d been by his side as he recovered from brain surgery at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Their relationship had taken a romantic turn in the mountains of Montana before they’d been targeted on home soil by a Russian mafia hit team at the direction of Oliver Grey. She’d been through a lot, and even though she had been less than happy when he went off the grid in Russia, she understood. Reece was on a mission, one that was not yet complete. Reece heard the door mechanism click and turned his head to see the director of the CIA’s Special Activities Center enter the room. “Jesus, Reece, can’t you do anything the easy way?” Victor Rodriguez asked. Vic was second-generation Agency. He was a former Army Special Forces officer whose father had led a squad in Brigade 2506, the CIA-trained group of Cuban exiles that had attempted the 1961 overthrow of Fidel Castro in what would become known as the Bay of Pigs. Vic had worked his way up through the ranks and had started recruiting Reece when he’d headed the Special Operations Group, the paramilitary side of what was up until 2016 called the Special Activities Division. He still preferred the older nomenclature. He was now responsible for SOG and the Political Action Group, two entities whose work was, more often than not, connected. The dark side of the Agency was in his blood. He’d grown up under the ever-looming specter of Bahía de Cochinos and had vowed to never again allow a failure at the nexus of intelligence and covert action. Victor Rodriguez was responsible for the third arm of U.S. foreign policy; when diplomacy and overt military pressure or intervention failed or was not possible for political reasons, the Special Activities Center was the Tertia Optio : the third option. Vic had convinced Reece to sign on as a contractor and had put on the full-court press when Reece returned from Russia. He wanted the former frogman on board as a SOG paramilitary operations officer. In a late-night phone call a month earlier, Reece had agreed. This three-day screening was part of the process. If Reece passed, he would get an EOD, or Enter On Duty, date and then begin his training at the Farm. “Can you just tell the twerp to finish up so we can get through this?” “It doesn’t work like that. We discussed the poly, Reece. You need to pass just like everyone else. How hard is it? Medical, dental, piss in a cup, answer some questions. You have a presidential pardon, so even if you are technically lying on the exam you are actually telling the truth.” “Doesn’t mean I have to like it.” “No, but you have to do it. Isn’t that even some SEAL saying?” “ You don’t have to like it, you just have to do it ,” Reece confirmed. “Good. Just do it. You are being given a lot of leeway because of what you and Freddy did to save the former president. And even though it’s not officially recognized or condoned, there are rumors swirling about you taking out Oliver Grey. The Agency, and the counter-intel folks in particular, do not take kindly to turncoats in our midst. They missed Nicholson, Ames, and Grey. It’s rumored you gave Grey the sentence most of the Agency wishes on traitors.” “I’m answering these as best I can, Vic.” “They’re just counter-intel and lifestyle poly questions. You know the drill; your examiner will tell you to come back tomorrow. Play nice and let’s get you to the Farm.” “Understood. Just tell ‘John’ to stop pissing me off.” “Play nice,” Vic repeated before turning to exit the polygraph room. “And please don’t throw him through the two-way mirror. Those things are more expensive than you think.” When “John” returned, Reece lowered his heart rate the way he would before taking a long-range sniper shot. He focused on Katie’s smile and answered with the correct yes and no answers. It wasn’t every day you got to beat a lie detector test. Passing the polygraph meant Nizar Kattan was one step closer to death. Two days later Vic sifted through Reece’s test results. No drugs in his system, no sexually transmitted diseases, vision and hearing well above Agency standards. It was the polygraph and MMPI test that concerned him. The MMPI had resulted in paranoid and aggressive personality traits, which was not totally unexpected considering what Reece had been through over the past three years. Vic shifted his focus from the Multiphasic Personality Inventory to the polygraph. IS YOUR FIRST NAME JAMES? FALSE POSITIVE HAVE YOU EVER LIED TO GET OUT OF TROUBLE? TRUTHFUL CONCLUSIVE DO YOU INTEND TO ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS TRUTHFULLY? DECEPTION INDICATED IS TODAY WEDNESDAY? TRUTHFUL CONCLUSIVE HAVE YOU EVER COMMITTED A CRIME FOR WHICH YOU WERE NOT CAUGHT? TRUTHFUL CONCLUSIVE ARE WE IN VIRGINIA? TRUTHFUL CONCLUSIVE HAVE YOU EVER COMMITTED MURDER? DECEPTION INDICATED ARE YOU A UNITED STATES CITIZEN? TRUTHFUL CONCLUSIVE HAVE YOU EVER BEEN PART OF A GROUP THAT HAS WANTED TO OVERTHROW THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT? DECEPTION INDICATED HAVE YOU EVER BEEN IN THE EMPLOYMENT OF A FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SERVICE? TRUTHFUL CONCLUSIVE HAVE YOU VISITED ANTIPOLYGRAPH.ORG TO PREPARE FOR THIS EXAMINATION? TRUTHFUL CONCLUSIVE ARE YOU SITTING DOWN? TRUTHFUL CONCLUSIVE HAVE YOU EVER COMMITTED MURDER? DECEPTION INDICATED HAVE YOU EVER PLOTTED TO OVERTHROW THE U.S. GOVERNMENT? DECEPTION INDICATED IS THE WALL WHITE? TRUTHFUL CONCLUSIVE HAVE YOU EVER BEEN INVOLVED IN THE TORTURE OF ENEMY COMBATANTS? DECEPTION INDICATED HAVE YOU USED ILLEGAL DRUGS YOU HAVE NOT MENTIONED PREVIOUSLY? DECEPTION INDICATED DID YOU INTENTIONALLY FALSIFY INFORMATION ON YOUR APPLICATION OR SECURITY PAPERWORK? DECEPTION INDICATED HAVE YOU EVER STOLEN ANYTHING FROM YOUR PREVIOUS PLACE OF EMPLOYMENT? DECEPTION INDICATED HAVE YOU EVER STOLEN ANYTHING WORTH OVER FIVE HUNDRED U.S. DOLLARS? DECEPTION INDICATED DO YOU HAVE ANY UNDISCLOSED RELATIONSHIPS WITH FOREIGN NATIONALS? DECEPTION INDICATED HAVE YOU EVER KEPT A WAR TROPHY? TRUTHFUL CONCLUSIVE HAVE YOU EVER SOLD GOVERNMENT PROPERTY? TRUTHFUL CONCLUSIVE HAVE YOU, OR DO YOU KNOW ANYONE WHO BROUGHT BACK ENEMY WEAPONS FROM OVERSEAS? DECEPTION INDICATED IS THERE ANYTHING IN YOUR BACKGROUND THAT WOULD DISQUALIFY YOU FROM GETTING THIS JOB? DECEPTION INDICATED FINAL POLYGRAPH TEST RESULTS: INCONCLUSIVE Vic closed the file and looked at the faded black-and-white framed photograph on the wall of his office. The men wore World War II–era “duck hunter” patterned camouflage uniforms and carried an assortment of small arms, including a Johnson M1941 held by Vic’s father. Never again , Vic thought. On the front cover of the file he signed his name over his director’s signature block and checked a box marked APPROVED. Read more

The Occult Madonna

The Valley

PRICE MANOR: the house that burns

The Adventures of Tintin, Vol. 1 (Tintin in America / Cigars of the Pharaoh / The Blue Lotus)

About the Author Hergé , one of the most famous Belgians in the world, was a comics writer and artist. The internationally successful Adventures of Tintin are his most well-known and beloved works. They have been translated into 38 different languages and have inspired such legends as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. He wrote and illustrated for The Adventures of Tintin until his death in 1983.

Scriptshadow Secrets (500 Screenwriting Secrets Hidden Inside 50 Great Movies)

The Sixth Gun, Book 1: Cold Dead Fingers

About the Author CULLEN BUNN is the writer of comic books such THE SIXTH GUN, SHADOW ROADS, THE DAMNED, HELHEIM, and THE TOOTH for Oni Press. He has also written titles including HARROW COUNTY (Dark Horse), UNCANNY X-MEN, and DEADPOOL AND THE MERCS FOR MONEY (Marvel). Cullen claims to have worked as an Alien Autopsy Specialist, Rodeo Clown, Pro Wrestling Manager, and Sasquatch Wrangler. He has fought for his life against mountain lions and performed on stage as the World’s Youngest Hypnotist. Buy him a drink sometime, and he'll tell you all about it. His website is www.cullenbunn.com. Twitter: @cullenbunnBrian Hurtt is an artist/writer who has spent most of his career working on collaborative creator-owned projects. His first such collaboration was in 2006 when Brian teamed with writer Cullen Bunn to create the Prohibition-era, monster-noir, cult classic, The Damned. A few years later the two teamed up again to create The Sixth Gun--a weird-west, epic supernatural fantasy. Spun out of that world, they're now collaborating on Shadow Roads. Brian also contributes to the popular webcomic Table Titans, in which he is the writer and artist of the stories "Whispers of Dragons" and "Road to Embers". Brian lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri. Brihurtt.com Twitter: @brihurtt

Kill Kitchener

About the Author Andrew Blasco was born to hardworking, middle-class parents in central Pennsylvania and is the youngest of three children, including his twin brother. His father arranged the first job Andrew and his brother would hold at the age of fourteen: janitors at the local school. Shortly after college, Andrew waded into politics serving on several campaigns ranging from local to federal offices. After serving as staff in the U.S. House of Representatives, he began lobbying for various industries in Harrisburg that included issues from gambling to medicine. He has also served as the head of industry nonprofits and has started several business ventures. An avid outdoors man, he enjoys hunting and camping with his family and friends. He still lives in rural Pennsylvania with his wife, Shawna, and their two children, Jude and Genevieve.

The House on Harlan

One Second After (A John Matherson Novel, 1)

Review “Civilization slides into the abyss of a new dark age in this horrifying apocalyptic novel. Forstchen has put Bin Laden's wet dream on paper and, in the process, taken civilization straight to the rack.” ― Stephen Coonts, New York Times bestselling author of The Art of War “The only thing more terrifying than this masterfully crafted story is the possibility of it actually happening―and not a damn thing being done to protect us.” ― W.E.B. Griffin & William E. Butterworth IV “Forstchen's work has flair and power.” ― Joel Rosenberg, author of The Sleeping Dragon “Forstchen did such a damned fine job with One Second After that shortly after the first page, I had been reeled in hook, line, and sinker.” ― David Hagberg, New York Times bestselling author of Tower Down About the Author William R. Forstchen is the author of the New York Times bestseller One Second After and We Look Like Men of War , among numerous other books in diverse subjects ranging from history to science fiction. He has co-authored several books with Newt Gingrich, including Gettysburg: A Novel of the Civil War , Pearl Harbor , Days of Infamy , To Try Men’s Souls and Valley Forge . Forstchen holds a Ph.D. in History from Purdue University, with specializations in military history and the history of technology. He is currently a Faculty Fellow and Professor of History at Montreat College, near Asheville North Carolina. He is a pilot and flies an original WWII recon "warbird." He resides near Asheville with his daughter Meghan. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. One Second After By William R. Forstchen Tor Books Copyright © 2011 William R. ForstchenAll right reserved. ISBN: 9780765356864 Chapter One BLACK MOUNTAIN, NORTH CAROLINA, 2:30 EDT John Matherson lifted the plastic bag off the counter. "You sure I have the right ones?" he asked. Nancy, the owner of the shop, Ivy Corner, smiled. "Don't worry, John; she already had them picked out weeks ago. Give her a big hug and kiss for me. Hard to believe she's twelve today." John sighed and nodded, looking down at the bag, stuffed with a dozen Beanie Babies, one for each year of Jennifer's life, which started twelve years ago this day. "Hope she still wants these at thirteen," he said. "God save me when that first boy shows up at the door wanting to take her out." The two laughed, Nancy nodding in agreement. He was already enduring that with Elizabeth, his sixteen- year- old, and perhaps for that, and so many other reasons as well, he just wished that he could preserve, could drag out, just for a few more days, weeks, or months the precious time all fathers remember fondly, when they still had their "little girl." It was a beautiful spring day, the cherry trees lining the street in full bloom, a light shower of pink petals drifting on the wind as he walked up the street, past Doc Kellor's office, the antique stores, the new, rather Gothic- looking art gallery that had opened last month, the usual curio shops, and even an old- style ice- cream parlor . . . at a dollar fifty a scoop. Next up the street was Benson's Used and Rare Books. John hesitated, wanted to go in just for a few minutes, then pulled out his cell phone to check the time. Two thirty. Her bus would be rolling in at three, no time today to go in, have a cup of coffee, and talk about books and history. Walt Benson saw him, held up a cup, gesturing for John to join him. He shook his head, pointed to his wrist even though he never wore a watch, and continued to walk up to the corner to where his Talon SUV was parked in front of Taylor's Hardware and General Store. John paused and looked back down the street for a moment. I'm living in a damn Norman Rockwell painting, he thought yet again, for the thousandth time. Winding up here . . . he never imagined it, never planned for it, or even wanted it. Eight years back he was at the Army War College, Carlisle, PA, teaching military history and lecturing on asymmetrical warfare, and waiting to jump the hoop and finally get his first star. And then two things happened. His promotion came through, with assignment to Brussels as a liaison to NATO, a rather nice posting to most likely end out his career . . . and then Mary had returned from the doctor's several days after the promotion, her face pale, lips pressed tight, and said four words: "I have breast cancer." The commandant at Carlisle, Bob Scales, an old friend who had stood as godfather for John's Jennifer, understood the request he then laid before him. John would take the promotion, but could it be to the Pentagon? It'd place them nearby to Johns Hopkins, and not too far from Mary's family. It didn't work. Cutbacks were hitting as it was, oh, there was great sympathy from upstairs, but he had to take Brussels if he wanted the star and maybe a year later they'd find a slot for him stateside. After talking to Mary's doctor . . . John resigned. He would take her back home to Black Mountain, North Carolina, which was what she wanted and the cancer treatment center at Chapel Hill would be nearby. Bob's connections were good, remarkably good, when John first mentioned Black Mountain. A single phone call was made; the old- boy network, though disdained as politically incorrect, did exist and it did help at times when needed. The president of Montreat College, North Carolina, in Mary's hometown, did indeed "suddenly" need an assistant director of development. John hated development and admissions work but survived fit until finally a tenure- track professorship in history opened four years back and he was slotted in. The fact that the president of the college, Dan Hunt, owed his life to Bob Scales, who had dragged him out of a minefield back in 1970, was a definite mark in John's favor that could not be ignored between friends. Dan had lost his leg, Bob got another of his Bronze Stars for saving him, and the two had been buddies ever since, each looking out, as well, for those whom the other cared for. So Mary got to go home, after twenty years of following John from Benning, to Germany, to Okinawa, sweating out Desert Storm, from there to the Pentagon, then a year, a wonderful year, at West Point and then three more wonderful years teaching at Carlisle. At heart he was a history teacher, and maybe whichever bastard in the personnel office at the Pentagon had nixed John's request to stay stateside had done him a favor. So they came home to Black Mountain, North Carolina. He did not hesitate one second in granting her wish, resigning his commission and promotion and moving to this corner of the Carolina mountains. He looked back down Main Street, frozen for a moment in time and memories. Mary would be gone four years next week, her last time out a slow, exhausting walk down this street, which as a girl she had run along. It was indeed a Norman Rockwell town. That final walk down this street with her, everyone knew her, everyone knew what was happening, and everyone came out to say hi, to give her a hug, a kiss, all knowing it was farewell but not saying it. It was a gesture of love John would never forget. He pushed the thought aside. It was still too close and Jennifer's bus would be pulling up in twenty minutes. He got into his Talon, started it up, turned onto State Street, and headed east. He did love the view as State Street curved through town, past yet more shops, nearly all the buildings redbrick, dating back to the turn of the century. The village had once been a thriving community, part of the tuberculosis sanitarium business. When the railroad had finally pierced the mountains of western North Carolina in the early 1880s some of the first to flood in were tuberculosis victims. They came by the thousands, to the sanitariums that sprang up on every sunlit mountain slope. By the early twenties there were a dozen such institutions surrounding Asheville, the big city situated a dozen miles to the west of Black Mountain. And then came the Depression. Black Mountain remained frozen in time, and then came antibiotics right after the war and the sanitariums emptied out. And all those wonderful buildings, which in other towns would have given way to shopping plazas and strip malls, had remained intact, progress passing Black Mountain by. Now there were conference centers for various churches and summer camps for kids where the sanitariums had been. His own college had been founded at such a site up in what everyone called the Cove. A small college, six hundred kids, most of them from small towns across the Carolinas and a few from Atlanta or Florida. Some of the kids were freaked out by the relative isolation, but most of them grudgingly admitted they loved it, a beautiful campus, a safe place, an old logging trail across the edge of the campus leading straight on up to Mount Mitchell, good white water nearby for kayaking, and plenty of woods to disappear into for partying for some of them, to get around the fairly strict campus rules. The town itself finally revived, starting in the 1980s, but wonderfully, the charming turn- of- the- century look was maintained, and in the summer and fall the streets would be crammed with tourists and day- trippers coming up from Charlotte or Winston- Salem to escape the boiling heat of the lowlands, joined by hundreds of summer "cottagers" who lived in the Cove, many of the cottages darn near mansions for some of the older wealth of the South. That had been Mary's family, Old South and wealth. Me-ma Jennie, Mary's mother and Jennifer's namesake, still hung on doggedly to their home up in the Cove, refusing to consider moving, even though "Papa" Tyler was now in a nearby nursing home, in the final stages of cancer. John continued to drive east, the traffic on Interstate 40, coming up through the Swannanoa Gap, roaring by on his left. The old- timers in the town still expressed their hatred of that "darn road." Before it came in, Black Mountain was a sleepy southern mountain hamlet. With the road had come development, traffic, and the foods of tourists on weekends that the chamber of commerce loved and everyone else tried to tolerate. Staying on the old highway that paralleled the interstate, John drove for less than a mile out of town, then turned right onto a dirt road that twisted up the side of a hill overlooking the town. The old mountain joke used to be "you know you're getting directions to a mountain home when they say, 'Turn onto the dirt road.' " For a kid from New Jersey, John still got a bit of a kick out of the fact that he did indeed live in the South, on the side of a mountain, halfway up a dirt road, with a view worth a million bucks. The home he and Mary had purchased was in one of the first new developments in the area. In a county where there was no zoning, the lower part of the hill had several trailers, an old shack where Connie Yarborough, a wonderful down- the- hill neighbor, still did not have electricity or town water, and next to her was an eccentric Volkswagen repair shop . . . the owner, Jim Bartlett, a true sixties throwback, his lot littered with dozens of rusting Beetles, vans, and even a few precious VW Buses and Karmann Ghias. The house (Mary and John actually named Rivendell, because of their mutual love of Tolkien) offered a broad sweeping view of the valley below; the skyline of Asheville was in the distance, framed by the Great Smoky Mountains beyond, facing due west so Mary could have her sunsets. When trying to describe the view he'd just tell friends, "Check out Last of the Mohicans ; it was filmed a half hour from where we live." It was a fairly contemporary-looking type of home, high ceiling, the west wall, from bedroom across the living room to the dining area, all glass. The bed was still positioned to face the glass wall, as Mary wanted it so she could watch the outside world as her life drifted away. He pulled up the drive. The two "idiots" Ginger and Zach, both golden retrievers, both beautiful- looking dogs—and both thicker than bricks when it came to brains—had been out sunning on the bedroom deck. They stood up and barked madly, as if he were an invader. Though if he were a real invader they'd have cowered in terror and stained the carpet as they .ed into Jennifer's room to hide. The two idiots charged through the bedroom, then out through the entryway screen door . . . the lower half of the door a charade, as the screen was gone. Put a new one in, it'd last a few days and the idiots would charge right through it again. John had given up on that fight years ago. As for actually closing the door . . . it never even crossed his mind anymore. This was Black Mountain. Strange as it seemed, folks rarely locked up, keys would be left in cars, kids did indeed play in the streets in the evening, there were parades for the Fourth of July, Christmas, and the ridiculous Pine cone Festival, complete to the crowning of a Miss Pinecone. Papa Tyler had absolutely humiliated his daughter, Mary, in front of John early on in their courtship when he proudly pulled out a photo of her, Miss Pine cone 1977. In Black Mountain there was still an ice- cream truck that made the rounds on summer nights. . . . It was all one helluva difference from his boyhood just outside of Newark, New Jersey. There was a car parked at the top of the driveway. Mary's mother, Me-ma Jennie. Me-ma Jennie was behind the wheel of her wonderful and highly eccentric 1959 Ford Edsel. Ford . . . that's where the family money had come from, ownership of a string of car dealerships across the Carolinas dating back to Henry Ford himself. There was even a photo framed in the house up in the Cove of Mary's great-granddad and Henry Ford at the opening of a dealership in Charlotte back before World War I. Though it wasn't polite to be overtly "business" in their strata and Jennie preferred the role of genteel southern lady, in her day, John knew, she was one shrewd business person, as was her husband. John pulled up alongside the Edsel. Jennie put down the book she was reading and got out. "Hi, Jen." She absolutely hated "Ma," "Mother," "Mom," or, mortal sin of all mortal sins, "Me-ma" or "Grandma" from her Yankee son- in- law, who was definitely not her first choice for her only daughter. But that had softened with time, especially towards the end, especially when he had brought the girls back home to Jen. The two got out of their cars and she held up a cheek to be kissed, her height, at little more than five foot two, overshadowed by his six- foot- four bulk, and there was a light touch of her hand on his arm and an affectionate squeeze. "Thought you'd never get here in time. She'll be home any minute." Jen had yet to slip into the higher pitch or gravelly tone of an "old lady's" voice. He wondered if she practiced every night reciting before a mirror to keep that wonderful young woman-sounding southern lilt. It was an accent that still haunted him. The same as Mary's when they had first met at Duke, twenty- eight years ago. At times, if Jen was in the next room and called to the girls, it would still bring tears to his eyes. "We got time. Why didn't you go inside to wait?" "With those two mongrels? The way they jump, they'd ruin my nylons." Ginger and Zach were all over John, jumping, barking, leaping about . . . and studiously avoiding Jen. Though dumb, goldens knew when someone didn't like them no matter how charming they might be. John reached in, pulled out the bag of Beanies, and, walking over to the stone wall that bordered the path to the house, began to line them up, one at a time, setting them side by side. "Now John, really, isn't she getting a bit old for that?" "Not yet, not my little girl." Jen laughed softly. "You can't keep time back forever." "I can try, can't I?" he said with a grin. She smiled sadly. "How do you think Tyler and I felt about you, the day you came through our door?" He reached out and gave her an affectionate touch on the cheek. "You guys loved me." "You a Yankee? Like hell. Tyler actually thought about driving you off with a shotgun. And that first night you stayed over . . ." Even after all these years he found he still blushed a bit at that. Jen had caught Mary and him in a less than "proper" situation on the family room sofa at two in the morning. Though not fully improper, it was embarrassing nevertheless, and Jen had never let him live it down. He set the Beanies out, stepped back, eyeballed them, like a sergeant examining a row of new recruits. The red, white, and blue "patriot" bear on the right should be in the middle of the ranks where a flag bearer might be. He could hear the growl of the school bus as it shifted gears, turning off of old Route 70, coming up the hill. "Here she comes," Jen announced excitedly. Going back to the Edsel, she leaned in the open window and brought out a .at, elegantly wrapped box, tied off with a neat bow. "Jewelry?" John asked. "Of course; she's twelve now. A proper young lady should have a gold necklace at twelve. Her mother did." "Yeah, I remember that necklace," he said with a grin. "She was wearing it that night you just mentioned. And she was twenty then." "You cad," Jen said softly, and slapped him lightly on the shoulder, and he pretended that it was a painful blow. Ginger and Zach had stopped jumping around John, both of them cocking their heads, taking in the sound of the approaching school bus, the squeal of the brakes as it stopped at the bottom of the driveway, its yellow barely visible now through the spring- blooming trees. They were both off like lightning bolts, running full tilt down the driveway, barking up a storm, and seconds later he could hear the laughter of Jennifer; of Patricia, a year older and their neighbor; and of Seth, Pat's eleventh-grade brother. The girls came running up the driveway, Seth threw a stick, the two dogs diverted by it for a moment but then turned together and charged up the hill behind the girls. Seth waved then crossed the street to his house. John felt a hand slip into his . . . Jen's. "Just like her mother," Jen whispered, voice choked. Yes, he could see Mary in Jennifer, slender, actually skinny as a rail, shoulder-length blond hair tied back, still a lanky little girl. She slowed a bit, reaching out to put a hand on a tree as if to brace herself, Patricia turned and waited for her. John felt a momentary concern, wanted to go down to her, but knew better, Jen actually held him back. "You are too protective," Jen whispered. "She must handle it on her own." Young Jennifer caught her breath, looked up, a bit pale, saw them waiting, and a radiant smile lit her face. "Me-ma! And you drove the Edsel today. Can we go for a ride?" Jen let her hand slip, bent over slightly as Jennifer ran up to her grandmother, the two embracing. "How's my birthday girl?" They hugged and Grandma Jen showered Jennifer with kisses, twelve of them, counting each off. Pat looked over at the Beanies lined up, smiled, and looked up at John. "Afternoon, Mr. Matherson." "How are you, Pat?" "I think she needs to be checked," Pat whispered. "It can wait." "Daddy!" Jennifer was now in his arms. He lifted her up, hugged her with fierce intensity so that she laughed, then groaned, "You'll break my back!" He let go of her, watching her eyes as she looked past him to the Beanie Babies lining the wall . . . and yes, there was still that childlike glow in them. "Patriot Bear! And Ollie Ostrich!" As she started to sweep them up, he looked over at Jen with a bit of a triumphant smile, as if to say, "See, she's still my little girl." Jen, rising to the challenge, came up to Jennifer's side and held out the .at box. "Happy Birthday, darling." Jennifer tore the paper off. Ginger, thinking the paper was now a gift to her, half- swallowed it and ran off as Zach chased her. When Jennifer opened the box her eyes widened. "Oh, Me-ma." "It's time my girl had a real gold necklace. Maybe your friend can help you put it on." John looked down at the gift. My God, it must of cost a fortune, heavy, almost pencil thick. Jen looked at him out of the corner of her eye as if to meet any challenge. "You're a young lady now," Jen announced as Pat helped to clasp the necklace on, and then Jen produced a small mirror from her purse and held it up. "Oh, Grandma . . . it's lovely." "A lovely gift for a lovely lady." John stood silent for a moment, not sure what to say as his little girl gazed into the mirror, raising her head slightly, the way a woman would, to admire the gold. "Sweetie, I think you better check your blood sugar; you seemed a bit winded coming up the hill," John finally said, and his words came out heavily, breaking the moment. "Yes, Daddy." Jennifer leaned against the wall, took off her backpack and pulled out the blood-sugar test monitor. It was one of the new digital readout models. No more finger pricking, just a quick jab to the arm. She absently fingered the necklace with her free hand while waiting for the readout. One forty- two . . . a bit high. "I think you better get some insulin into you," John said. She nodded. Jennifer had lived with it for ten years now. He knew that was a major part of his protectiveness of her. When she was in her terrible twos and threes, it tore his heart out every time he had to prick her finger, the sight of his or Mary's approach with the test kit set off howls of protest. The doctors had all said that, as quickly as possible, Jennifer had to learn to monitor herself, that John and Mary needed to step back even when she was only seven and eight to let her know her own signs, test, and medicate. Mary had handled it far better than John had, perhaps because of her own illness towards the end. Jen with her strength had the same attitude. Strange. Here I am, a soldier of twenty years. Saw some action, but the only casualties were the Iraqis, never my own men. I was trained to handle things, but when it came to my daugher's diabetes, a damn aggressive type 1, I was always on edge. Tough, damn good at what I did, well respected by my men, and yet complete jelly when it comes to my girls. "There's a few more gifts inside," John said. "Why don't you girls go on in? Once your sister gets home and your friends show up we can have our party." "Oh, Dad, didn't you get Elizabeth's message?" "What message?" "Here, silly." She reached up and .shed the cell phone out of his breast pocket, tucked in behind a pack of cigarettes. She started to pull the cigarettes out, to stomp on them or tear them up, but a look from him warned her off. "Someday, Daddy," she sighed, then taking the phone she punched a few keys and handed it back. "Home late. Out with Ben," the screen read. "She texted you and me during lunch." "Texted?" "Yes, Daddy, text message, all the kids are doing it now." "What's wrong with a phone call?" She looked at him as if he were from the antediluvian period and then headed inside. "Texted?" Jen asked. John held the phone so she could read the message. Jen smiled. "Better start keeping a sharper watch on Elizabeth," she said. "If that Ben Johnson has any of his grandfather's blood in him." She chuckled as if remembering something from long ago. "I don't need to hear this." "No, you don't, Colonel." "Actually, I kind of prefer 'Doctor,' or 'Professor.' " "A doctor is someone who sticks things in you. A professor, well, they always struck me as a bit strange. Either rakes chasing the girls or boring, dusty types. Down here in the South, 'Colonel' sounds best. More masculine." "Well, I am no longer in active ser vice. I am a professor, so let's just settle for 'John.' " Jen gazed up at him for a moment, then came up to his side, stood on tiptoes, and kissed his cheek lightly. "I can see why my own little girl once fell for you, John. You'll lose both of them soon enough to some pimply- faced boys, so do hang on to her as long as you can." "Well, you sure as hell didn't help, draping that gold necklace on her. What did it cost, a thousand, fifteen hundred?" "Roughly, but then again, no lady tells the truth when it comes to her buying jewelry." "Until the bill comes in and the husband has to pay." There was a pause. He knew he had misspoken. If he had said such a thing around Mary, she'd have lit into him about a woman being independent and the hell with a husband handling the bills . . . and in fact she did handle all the family finances right up till the last weeks of her life. As for Tyler, though, he no longer even knew what a bill was, and that hurt, no matter how self-reliant Jen tried to appear to be. "I best be going," Jen said. "Sorry, I didn't mean it that way." "It's all right, John. Let me go up to the nursing home to spend some time with Tyler and I'll be back for the party." "Jennifer was expecting a ride in that monstrous car of yours." "The Edsel, my dear young man, was a generation ahead of its time." "And the biggest .op in the history of Ford Motors. My God, look at that grille; it's ugly as sin." She lightened up a bit with the banter. There were half a dozen cars in her huge garage, several newer ones but also an actual Model A, up on blocks, and, beauty of beauties, a powder blue 1965 Mustang convertible. A lot of bad memories, though, were tied to that Mustang. When John and Mary were dating, they had conned her parents into letting them borrow the car for a cruise up the Blue Ridge Parkway to Mount Mitchell and John, driving it, had rear- ended an elderly couple's Winnebago. No one was hurt, but the car was totaled and Tyler had poured thousands into getting it restored . . . and swore that no one other than him or Jen would ever drive it again. And Jen still lived by that ruling. "This Edsel will run forever, my dear, and just check on eBay to see how much it's worth. I bet a heck of a lot more than that SUV thing you've got." He settled back against the stone wall as Jen maneuvered "the monster" around and cruised down the driveway at breakneck speed. The wall was warm from the afternoon sun. The Beanies were still there, and oh, that did hurt a bit; at least she could have carried Patriot Bear or the ostrich in. Inside he could hear Jennifer and Pat chatting away about the necklace until the stereo kicked on. Some strange female wailing sounds. Britney Spears? No, she was old stuff now, thank God. What it was he couldn't tell, other than the fact that he didn't like it. Pink Floyd, some of the old stuff his parents listened to like Sinatra or Glenn Miller, or, better yet, the Chieftains were more his speed. He picked up one of the Beanies, Patriot Bear. "Well, my friend, guess we'll soon be left behind," he said. Leaning against the wall, he soaked in the view, the tranquility of the moment, broken only by the distant rumble of traffic on I-40 and the noise inside the house. Ginger and Zach came back from their romp in the field behind the house and flopped down at his feet, panting hard. The scent of lilacs was heavy on the air; if anyone wanted to truly see spring, they should live in these mountains. Down in the valley below, the cherry trees were in full bloom, just several hundred feet higher here at his home they were just beginning to blossom, but the lilacs were already blooming. To his right, ten miles away, the top of Mount Mitchell was actually crowned with a touch of snow, winter was still up there. "When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed . . ." The scent always triggered in his mind Whitman's lament for Lincoln. It reminded John that to night, the second Tuesday of the month, was Civil War Roundtable night in the basement of the Methodist church. It'd be another fun round of the usual raucous debate, the other members all needling him as their one and only Yankee, whom they could pick on. And then the phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket, expecting it to be Elizabeth. There was going to be hell to pay if it was. How she could stand up her kid sister on her birthday to sneak off with that pimple- faced, horny, fast- handed Johnson kid . . . But the area code was 703 . . . and John recognized the next three numbers . . . the Pentagon. He opened the phone and clicked it on. "Hey, Bob." "John, how you doing? Where's my goddaughter?" He said it doing a halfway decent imitation of Marlon Brando as Don Corleone. Bob Scales, now three stars, John's former boss at Carlisle and a damn good friend, had stood as Jennifer's godfather, and though Irish Catholic rather than Italian, he took the job seriously. He and his wife, Barbara, usually came down three or four times a year. When Mary died they had taken a couple of weeks off and stayed to help. They never had children and thus they considered Jennifer and Elizabeth to be their surrogates. "Growing up," John said sadly. "Her grandmother gave her a gold necklace that must of cost a grand or more, which counted a helluva lot more than the Beanies, and the stack of Pokemon cards still waiting inside. I even got tickets to Disney World for once school lets out that I'll give her at dinner, but I wonder now if it will be the same." "You mean when you took her there when she was six and Elizabeth ten? Hell, yeah, it will be different, but you'll still see the little girl come out down there, even with Elizabeth. How's Elizabeth doing, by the way?" "I'm thinking of shooting her boyfriend later today." Bob roared with laughter. "Maybe it's best I didn't have daughters," Bob finally replied. "Sons, yeah . . ." His voice trailed off for a moment. "Hey, let me speak to Jennifer, OK?" "Sure." John walked into the house, shouting for Jennifer, who came dashing out of her bedroom, still wearing that damn necklace, and grabbed the phone. "Hi, Uncle Bob!" John tapped her on the shoulder. "You take your insulin?" he asked. She nodded her head; then chattering away, she walked around the house. John looked out the window across the valley to the mountains beyond. It was a beautiful, pristine spring day. And his mood began to lighten. Several of Jennifer's friends would be over soon for a small party. He'd cook up some burgers on the grill out on the side deck; the kids would then retreat to Jennifer's room. He had just opened the pool in the backyard over the weekend, and though the water was a chilly sixty-eight, a couple of the kids might jump in. He'd flush them out around dark, go to his Roundtable meeting, and maybe later this eve ning he'd dig back into that article he was committed to for the Civil War Journal about Lee versus Grant as a strategic commander . . . a no- brainer but still an extra five hundred bucks when done and another vita builder for tenure review next year. He could stay up late; his first lecture wasn't until eleven in the morning tomorrow. "Dad, Uncle Bob wants you!" Jennifer came out of her bedroom, holding up the phone. John took it, gave her a quick peck on the top of her head and a playful swat as she ran back off. Seconds later the damn stereo in her room doubled in sound. "Yeah, Bob?" "John, I gotta run." He could sense some tension in Bob's voice. He could hear some voices in the background . . . shouting. It was hard to tell, though; Jennifer's stereo was blaring. "Sure, Bob. Will you be down next month?" "Look, John, something's up. Got a problem here. I gotta—" The phone went dead. At that same instant, the ceiling fan began to slowly wind down, the stereo in Jennifer's room shut down, and looking over to his side alcove office he saw the computer screen saver disappear, the green light of the on button on the nineteen- inch monitor disappearing. There was a chirping beep, the signal that the home security and .re alarm system was off- line; then that went silent as well. "Bob?" Silence on the other end. John snapped the phone shut. Damn, power failure. "Dad?" It was Jennifer. "My CD player died." "Yeah, honey." Thank God, he thought silently. "Power failure." She looked at him, a bit crestfallen, as if he were somehow responsible or could snap his finger to make the CD player come back on. Actually, if he could permanently arrange for that damn player to die, he would be tempted to do it. "What about my party? Pat just gave me a CD and I wanted to play it." "No worry, sweetie. Let me call the power company. Most likely a blown transformer." He picked up the landline phone . . . silence, no dial tone. Last time that happened some drunk had rammed into a telephone pole down at the bottom of the hill and wiped everything out. The drunk of course had walked away from it. Cell phone. John opened it back up, started to punch numbers . . . nothing. Damn. Cell phone was dead. He put it down on the kitchen table. Puzzling. The battery in his phone must have gone out just as Bob clicked off. Hell, without electricity John couldn't charge it back up to call the power company. He looked over at Jennifer, who stared at him expectantly, as if he would now resolve things. "No problem at all, kid. They'll be on it, and besides, it's a beautiful day; you don't need to be listening to that garbage anyhow. Why can't you like Mozart or Debussy the way Pat here does?" Pat looked at him uncomfortably and he realized he had committed one of the mortal sins of parenting; never compare your daughter to one of her buddies. "Go on outside; give the dogs a run. They'll have the power back by dinnertime." Excerpted from ONE SECOND AFTER by William R. Forstchen Copyright © 2009 by William R. Forstchen Published in March 2009 by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC All rights reserved. This work is protected under copyright laws and reproduction is strictly prohibited. Permission to reproduce the material in any manner or medium must be secured from the Publisher. Continues... Excerpted from One Second After by William R. Forstchen Copyright © 2011 by William R. Forstchen. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site. Read more

Gone, Baby, Gone: A Novel (Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro Book 4)

Amazon.com Review Cheese Olamon, "a six-foot-two, four-hundred-and-thirty-pound yellow-haired Scandinavian who'd somehow arrived at the misconception he was black," is telling his old grammar school friends Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro why they have to convince another mutual chum, the gun dealer Bubba Rugowski, that Cheese didn't try to have him killed. "You let Bubba know I'm clean when it comes to what happened to him. You want me alive. Okay? Without me, that girl will be gone. Gone-gone. You understand? Gone, baby, gone." Of all the chilling, completely credible scenes of sadness, destruction, and betrayal in Dennis Lehane's fourth and very possibly best book about Kenzie and Gennaro, this moment stands out because it captures in a few pages the essence of Lehane's success. Private detectives Kenzie and Gennaro, who live in the same working-class Dorchester neighborhood of Boston where they grew up, have gone to visit drug dealer Cheese in prison because they think he's involved in the kidnapping of 4-year-old Amanda McCready. Without sentimentalizing the grotesque figure of Cheese, Lehane tells us enough about his past to make us understand why he and the two detectives might share enough trust to possibly save a child's life when all the best efforts of traditional law enforcement have failed. By putting Kenzie and Gennaro just to one side of the law (but not totally outside; they have several cop friends, a very important part of the story), Lehane adds depth and edge to traditional genre relationships. The lifelong love affair between Kenzie and Gennaro--interrupted by her marriage to his best friend--is another perfectly controlled element that grows and changes as we watch. Surrounded by dead, abused, and missing children, Kenzie mourns and rages while Gennaro longs for one of her own. So the choices made by both of them in the final pages of this absolutely gripping story have the inevitability of life and the dazzling beauty of art. Other Kenzie/Gennaro books available in paperback: Darkness, Take My Hand , A Drink Before the War , Sacred . --Dick Adler From Library Journal This fourth entry in Lehane's series featuring Boston PIs Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro has all the makings of a successful mystery: suspenseful plotting, effective dialog, strong characterization, realistic setting, and themes that are bound to hold the reader's attention, e.g., child neglect, abuse, and kidnapping. Moreover, it asks the sort of moral question that moves it beyond the boundaries of its purported genre into the realm of serious fiction. Unfortunately, narrator Robert Lawrence provides a reading that greatly mars the story's impact. His narration is generally uninvolved and poorly paced, as if he'd been set on automatic pilot. And while he adopts different voices for the various characters, they are often mismatched and sound more like caricatures. Occasionally he is right on target but not often enough to redeem this audio version of an otherwise fine novel. Not recommended.?Sister M. Anna Falbo CSSF, Villa Maria Coll. Lib., Buffalo, NYCopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review " Gone, Baby, Gone is a tough, true, powerful story written by a stunningly good novelist, one of our very best." -- James Patterson "Compelling. . .just the way we like it. . .When it comes to describing the action, Mr. Lehane delivers big time." -- The Wall street Journal "Gone, Baby Gone is a tough, true powerful story written by a stunningly good novelist, one of our very best." -- James Patterson "Lehane tackles corruption in many forms as he brings his complicated plot to its satisfying resolution..." -- Publishers Weekly "To the list that includes such names as Robert B. Parker and Linda Barnes, add that of Dennis Lehane." -- Chicago Tribune About the Author Dennis Lehane was born and raised in Dorchester, Massachusetts. He is the author of A Drink Before the War, which won the Shamus Award for Best First Novel, Darkness Take My Hand, Sacred, Gone Baby Gone, Prayers for Rain, and Mystic River. He currently lives in Boston with his wife, Sheila. From the Inside Flap The Bookcassette® format is a special recording technique developed as a means of condensing the full, unabridged audio text of a book to record it on fewer tapes. In order to listen to these tapes, you will need a cassette player with balance control to adjust left/right speaker output. Special adaptors to allow these tapes to be played on any cassette player are available through the publisher or some US retail electronics stores. From Booklist Lehane's fourth Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro mystery will further enhance the author's growing reputation. Kenzie and Gennaro reluctantly agree to search for Amanda McCready, who has been missing for more than a year, thus dramatically reducing the chances of finding her alive. The maverick PI duo immediately smells trouble, both from the child's druggie mother and from the uncooperative Boston police, who aren't eager to be shown up. The case quickly proves every bit as horrifying as Kenzie and Gennaro expected: parental neglect, police corruption, and a drug deal gone bad have combined to make one innocent five-year-old the pawn in a high-stakes power struggle. Lehane combines the intensity of Andrew Vachss, who also writes unflinchingly about child-abuse and abandonment cases, with the charismatic appeal of his protagonists, a working-class Nick and Nora who walk the meanest of streets. The wrenching portrait of a bent cop whose instincts are admirable but whose actions are appalling only adds to the emotional impact of this grim, utterly unsentimental blue-collar tragedy. Bill Ott From AudioFile This dark story of child abduction set in the Boston area would have been better served by a reading less broad than the one provided here by Robert Lawrence. Too many simple, one-note interpretations undercut the subtlety of the well-drawn, complex characters and make those that are broad to begin with almost intolerable to be heard. Fortunately, the result is not completely ruinous, as Lawrence's one well-conceived performance is of the first-person narrator, private investigator Patrick Kenzie, whose engaging combination of thoughtful intelligence and streetwise savvy is communicated well to the listener. This only makes me curious about why so many of the other characters in this complex tale involving hoodlums, murderers, violence and pedophilia sound like refugees from a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. J.P.M. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter One Each day in this country, twenty-three hundred children are reported missing. Of those, a large portion are abducted by one parent estranged from the other, and over fifty percent of the time the child's whereabouts are never in question. The majority of these children are returned within a week. Another portion of those twenty-three hundred children are runaways. Again, the majority of them are not gone long, and usually their whereabouts are either known immediately or easily ascertained--a friend's house is the most common destination. Another category of missing children is the throwaway-those who are cast out of their homes or who run away, and the parents decide not to give chase. These are often the children who fill shelters and bus terminals, street corners in the red-light districts, and, ultimately, prisons. Of the more than eight hundred thousand children reported missing nationally every year, only thirty-five hundred to four thousand fall into what the Department of Justice categorizes as Non-Family Abductions, or cases in which the police soon rule out family abductions, running away, parental ejection, or the child becoming lost or injured. Of these cases, three hundred children disappear every year and never return. No one-not parents, friends, law enforcement, child-care organizations, or centers for missing people-knows where these children go. Into graves, possibly; into cellars or the homes of pedophiles; into voids, perhaps, holes in the fabric of the universe where they will never be heard from again. Wherever these three hundred go, they stay gone. For a moment or two they haunt strangers who've heard of their cases, haunt their loved ones for far longer. Without a body to leave behind, proof of their passing, they don't die. They keep us aware of the void. And they stay gone. "My sister," Lionel McCready said, as he paced our belfry office, "has had a very difficult life." Lionel was a big man with a slightly houndish sag to his face and wide shoulders that slanted down hard from his collarbone, as if something we couldn't see sat atop them. He had a shaggy, shy smile and a firm grip in a callused hand. He wore a brown UPS deliveryman's uniform and kneaded the brim of the matching brown baseball cap in his beefy hands. "Our mom was a-well, a boozer, frankly. And our dad left when we were both little kids. When you grow up that way, you--I guess you-maybe you got a lot of anger. It takes some time to get your head straight, figure out your way in life. It's not just Helene. I mean, I had some serious problems, took a hard bust in my twenties. I was no angel." "Lionel," his wife said. He held up a hand to her, as if he had to spit it out now or he'd never spit it out at all. "I was lucky. I met Beatrice, straightened my life out. What I'm saying, Mr. Kenzie, Miss Gennaro, is that if you're given time, a few breaks, you grow up. You shake that crap. My sister, she's still growing up, what I'm saying. Maybe. Because her life was hard and-" "Lionel," his wife said, "stop making excuses for Helene." Beatrice McCready ran a hand through her short strawberry hair and said, "Honey, sit down. Please." Lionel said, "I'm just trying to explain that Helene hasn't had an easy life." "Neither have you," Beatrice said, "and you're a good father." "How many kids do you have?" Angie asked. Beatrice smiled. "One. Matt. He's five. He's staying with my brother and his wife until we find Amanda." Lionel seemed to perk up a bit at the mention of his son. "He's a great kid," he said, and seemed almost embarrassed by his pride. "And Amanda?" I said. "She's a terrific kid, too," Beatrice said. "And she's way too young to be out there on her own." Amanda McCready had disappeared from this neighborhood three days ago. Since then, the entire city of Boston, it seemed, had become obsessed with her whereabouts. The police had put more men on the search than they had on the manhunt for John Salvi after the abortion clinic bombings four years ago. The mayor held a press conference in which he pledged no city business would take precedence over her disappearance until she was found. The press coverage was saturating: front page of both papers each morning, lead story in all three major telecasts at night, hourly updates inserted between the soaps and talk shows. And in three days-nothing. Not a hint of her. Amanda McCready had been on this earth four years and seven months when she vanished. Her mother had put her to bed on Sunday night, checked in on her once around eight-thirty, and the next morning, shortly after nine, had looked in at Amanda's bed and seen nothing but sheets dented with the wrinkled impression of her daughter's body. The clothes Helene McCready had laid out for her daughter--a pink T-shirt, denim shorts, pink socks, and white sneakers-were gone, as was Amanda's favorite doll, a blond-haired replica of a threeyear-old that bore an eerie resemblance to its owner, and whom Amanda had named Pea. The room showed no signs of struggle. Helene and Amanda lived on the second floor of a three-decker, and while it was possible Amanda had been abducted by someone who'd placed a ladder under her bedroom window and pushed the screen open to gain entry, it was also unlikely. The screen and windowsills had shown no signs of disturbance, and the ground at the foundation of the house bore no ladder marks. What was far more likely, if one assumed a four-year-old didn't suddenly decide to leave home on her own in the middle of the night, was that the abductor entered the apartment through the front door, without picking the lock or prying the hinges loose from the jamb, because such actions were unnecessary on a door that had been left unlocked. From Publishers Weekly Vanished, in this complex and unsettling fourth case for PIs Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro (after Sacred, 1997) is four-year-old Amanda McCready, taken one night from her apartment in Dorchester, a working-class section of Boston, where her mother had left her alone. Kenzie and Gennaro, hired by the child's aunt and uncle, join in an unlikely alliance with Remy Broussard and Nick Raftopoulos, known as Poole, the two cops with the department's Crimes Against Children squad who are assigned to the case. In tracing the history of Amanda's neglectful mother, whose past involved her with a drug lord and his minions, the foursome quickly find themselves tangling with Boston's crime underworld and involved in what appears to be a coup among criminals. Lehane develops plenty of tension between various pairs of parties: the good guys looking for Amanda and the bad guys who may know where she is; the two PIs and the two cops; various police and federal agencies; opposing camps in the underworld; and Patrick and Angie, who are lovers as well as business partners. All is delivered with abundant violence?e.g., bloated and mutilated corpses; gangland executions; shoot-outs with weapons of prodigious firepower; descriptions of sexual abuse of small children; threats of rape and murder?that serves to make Amanda's likely fate all the more chilling. Lehane tackles corruption in many forms as he brings his complicated plot to its satisfying resolution, at the same time leaving readers to ponder moral questions about social and individual responsibility long after the last page is turned. Author tour. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. From the Back Cover Boston private detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are hired to find four-year-old Amanda McCready, abducted from her bed on a warm, summer night. They meet her stoned-out, strangely apathetic mother, her loving aunt and uncle, the mother's dangerous, drug-addled friends, and two cops who've found so many abused or dead children they may be too far over the edge to come back. Despite enormous public attention, rabid news coverage, and dogged police work, the investigation repeatedly hits a brick wall. Led into a world of drug dealers, child molesters, and merciless executioners, Patrick and Angie are soon forced to face not only the horrors adults can perpetrate on innocents but also their own conflicted feelings about what is best, and worst, when it comes to raising children. And as the Indian summer fades and the autumn chill deepens, Amanda McCready stays gone, banished so completely that she seems never to have existed. Then another child disappears. . . . Dennis Lehane takes you into a world of triple crosses, elaborate lies, and shrouded motives, where the villains may be more moral than the victims, the missing should possibly stay missing, and those who go looking for them may not come back alive. Settle in and turn off the phone. From its haunting opening to its shocking climax, Gone, Baby, Gone is certain to be one of the most thrilling, talked-about suspense novels you read this year. Read more

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