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Zusatztext “Rollins is a forceful writer with an authoritative voice.”— Orlando Sentinel “Exciting . . . Readers will cheer.”— Publishers Weekly “Non-stop action . . . superb suspense.”—Nelson DeMille Informationen zum Autor David Rollins is the internationally bestselling author of three Vin Cooper thrillers: The Death Trust, A Knife Edge , and Hard Rain. An avid pilot and a journalist, Rollins has done meticulous research, giving his military scenes a stunning precision and his backroom politics a chilling truthfulness. He lives in Australia, where he is at work on his next thriller, Zero Option . Klappentext By the time Special Investigator Vin Cooper arrives at the murder scene-the shark-infested waters off the Japanese coast-there's little left of the victim to prove that his death wasn't an accident. That's what the military wants Cooper to believe! but he isn't buying it. What kind of top secret project could the military be engaged in that would require the services of a foremost marine biologist and a genetic researcher? The ominous answer lies at the end of a trail of "accidental” deaths and presumed terrorist acts that leads Cooper to the ultimate showdown-with a secret shadow government convinced that its patriotic duty is to kill anyone who opposes it. Leseprobe Chapter One I'd been sent on a mission. Apparently I was the only man for the job. The going was tough, but I made it through. The cab driver was from Senegal or Swaziland, or maybe from somewhere else entirely. Whatever, he had absolutely no idea where he was going in D.C. Eventually, he did find the place, the address of which was written on the slip of paper I'd given him, now clamped between his lips: a shop in the 'burbs called Sea Breeze Aquarium that specialized in tropical fish. I bought the ones the Navy captain, my current commanding officer, had ordered for his tank, and composed an elegant resignation in my head on the return trip to the Pentagon. "Your fish, Captain," I said, holding up the plastic bag with Nemo and an identical twin swimming round in crazed circles. "Ahh, you're back." Captain Chip Schaeffer lifted his head and pulled his nose out of a file. He got up from behind his desk like he was starving and I was a delivery guy from Pizza Hut, and raced over to take the little orange fish into custody. "Good man," he said, relieving me of the plastic water-filled bag. "I trust you got receipts for these, and the cab fares. You don't want to get the Government Accounting Office ticked off." "Sir, I quit," I said eloquently. He poured the live cartoon characters into the tank, where they immediately and wisely sought the darkest place they could find: beneath a sunken plastic sub being strangled by a giant plastic octopus. His back to me, Schaeffer said, "There you go, fellers, your new home. Your orders are in the folder on the table. You leave this afternoon." Who? Me, or the fish? I wasn't sure. Maybe the octopus was going somewhere. The captain couldn't have been speaking to me, could he? I'd done nothing for months except polish the vinyl of my chair with my butt. In between errands, that is. I was fed up with my "recovery." In darker moments I wondered whether it was just Uncle Sam paying me back for all the waves I caused during the investigation into the death of General Abraham Scott, my last case. Maybe they were making sure I played nice and predictable by keeping me on the sidelines indefinitely. Arlen Wayne, my ex-drinking partner, and Anna Masters, my current love interest and coinvestigator on the Scott case, both agreed that the relaxed pace of my new assignment was for my own good and there was nothing sinister about it. My country was just going easy on me. After all, they said, the Scott case had nearly killed me several times. And had indeed killed Anna...
