First Horseman

Zusatztext "Gripping . . . [A] tense thriller." --Publishers Weekly "HIGHLY RECOMMENDED . . . [A] PAGE-TURNING SCIENTIFIC THRILLER . . . UNNERVING AND COMPELLING." --Library Journal "EERIE SUSPENSE . . . Thrusts readers into the thick of a rapid-fire plot . . . Keep[s] you turning the pages and praying that this is only fiction." --www.amazon.com "[A] SUPERCHILLING TALE . . . MIND-BLOWING . . . DESTROY[S] THE READER'S SLEEP." --Kirkus Reviews Informationen zum Autor John Case is the pseudonym of an award-winning investigative reporter and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Genesis Code, as well as two nonfiction books about the U.S. intelligence community. A resident of Washington, D.C., he is the proprietor of a company that specializes in international investigations for law firms and labor unions. Klappentext On the Norwegian sea! an icebreaker forges its way through frozen waters to a remote island in the Arctic! carrying a scientific team that hopes to unearth the bodies of long-dead miners. Washington Post reporter Frank Daly has the story of a lifetime. But his plan to join the scientists on their historic mission is ruined by a ferocious storm. When he meets up with the ship upon its return to port in Norway! it is clear that something has gone terribly wrong. Fear haunts the faces of the crew. No one will talk. And someone wants Daly to stop asking questions. But the more he uncovers! the more dangerous the stakes become. Until at last he comes face-to-face with a shocking secret! a secret that pitches him into a harrowing race to prevent nothing less than . . . apocalypse. Prologue The Hudson Valley: November 11, 1997 Tommy was nervous. Susannah could tell, because she knew he liked to talk, and yet, he hadn't said a word for fifty miles. Not that she could blame him. She was nervous, too. And excited. And scared. It was dusk when they got off the Taconic Parkway, switching on the headlights as they traveled through rolling farmland, a Ralph Lauren landscape where the houses were so perfect, you just knew they were owned by doctors and lawyers. They were "mini-estates," or enclaves with names like "Foxfield Meadows," and they didn't really grow anything except, maybe, sun-dried tomatoes and arugula. As they passed the Omega Institute, Susannah wondered aloud--what's that? And the driver, Tommy, made a sound like a duck--kwak-kwak-kwak! So both of them laughed (a little too loud), and Susannah thought, Some kind of New Age thingie. The thing was--what made her nervous was: the whole deal about the teeth, about pulling out the teeth. No matter how you looked at it, pulling out the teeth was creepy. It was like Nuremberg or something. So if they got caught, it wouldn't just be murder, it would be...what? Charles Manson, or something. Not that she'd be the one to do it--she couldn't hurt a fly. That was Vaughn's job, the teeth and the fingers. And giving the injections. He had to do that, too, because he was the doctor. (And a good one, Tommy said. "Vaughn's an 'Old Blue,' aren't ya, Vaughn?" Whatever that was.) Still, you had to wonder why it was necessary to do the teeth. And the fingers. Why not just...dump them? Or, better yet, leave 'em where they lay. Susannah thought about it for a while, then shrugged to herself. Solange moves in strange ways, she thought, smiling at the in-joke. Sometimes he did things just to be theatrical. Make a splash. Shake 'em up. Not that it made any difference. They weren't going to get caught. Everything had been rehearsed, from the knock on the door to the handcuffs, and there wasn't anything they hadn't thought through. Like the U-Haul. The U-Haul was Solange's idea, and it was brilliant because, once they'd fixed it up, it gave Vaughn a sort of operating room in the ...

Product details

• Authors: John Case, John F. Case
• Publisher: Ballantine
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 29.05.1999
• EAN: 9780345435798
• ISBN: 978-0-345-43579-8
• No. of pages: 384
• Dimensions: 107 mm x 175 mm x 27 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Suspense > Crime fiction, thrillers, espionage