Author(s): Richard North Patterson

Fiction

August 2011. Terrorist operative Amer Al Zaroor masterminds and executes the theft of a Pakistani military weapon: a two-hundred-pound nuclear warhead, capable of causing destruction on an unprecedented scale. A chilling transmission is then broadcast to the world, in which Osama Bin Laden pledges to attack a major US city on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. Intelligence indicates that the bomb has been smuggled out of Pakistan and is en route to the US, with Washington or New York the suspected target. However, this is a clever decoy set by Al Zaroor. While the CIA is focussed on thwarting a domestic attack, the weapon moves nearer to its true target, Tel Aviv, which Bin Laden plans to wipe off the map. Back in Washington, agent Brooke Chandler, a once-prodigious field operative, senses this deception. Chandler, who has his own score to settle with Al Qaeda, thinks he knows just how the bomb is being moved, and has an idea how to find it. Chandler must convince his superiors of his conviction, and then find and disable the bomb before it is too late. If he fails, Al Zaroor's plan will succeed, and the Middle East as we know it will be relegated to the annals of history.