Takedown: A Thriller (5) (The Scot Harvath Series)

Product Description
From #1 New York Times, #1 Wall Street Journal, and #1 Publishers Weekly bestselling author, Brad Thor, comes Takedown.
July 4th weekend, New York City: As thousands of holiday travelers make their way out of Manhattan, a flawlessly executed terrorist attack plunges the city into a maelstrom of panic and death. Amid the chaos, an elite team of foreign operatives is systematically searching for one of their own, a man so powerful that the US government refuses to admit he even exists and will do anything to keep him hidden. Now, with the world’s deadliest enemy upon America’s doorstep, counterterrorism operative Scot Harvath must fight his way through the burning city streets to take down an invisible terrorist mastermind with the means to unleash hell on a global scale.
Review
"A smart, explosive work that details events about to happen outside your front door." --Bookreporter.com
"Crisp and cinematic, with the focus on gun-blazing, gut-busting action." --The Tennessean
About the Author
Brad Thor is the #1
New York Times bestselling author of twenty-two thrillers, including
Black Ice,
Near Dark (one of
Suspense Magazine’s Best Books of the Year),
Backlash (nominated for the Barry Award for Best Thriller of the Year),
Spymaster (“One of the all-time best thriller novels” —
The Washington Times),
The Last Patriot (nominated Best Thriller of the Year by the International Thriller Writers association), and
Blowback (one of the “Top 100 Killer Thrillers of All Time” —NPR). Visit his website at BradThor.com and follow him on Facebook at Facebook.com/BradThorOfficial and on Twitter @BradThor.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Takedown
ONE
D
JEMMA EL–F
NA M
ARKET
M
ARRAKECH, M
OROCCO
M
AY 11
The problem with being in the wrong place at the wrong time is that you never know it until it’s too late. That’s how it was for Steven Cooke, and the bitter irony was that right up to the very last moment of his life, he thought he had stumbled upon an intelligence jackpot.
The blond-haired, blue-eyed twenty-six-year-old had happened across the meeting completely by accident. In fact, Cooke wasn’t even supposed to be in that part of town except that his sister had asked him to bring her a special caftan when he flew home for a long-overdue visit at the end of the week.
Although he had way too much work to do before leaving, Steven had always found it hard to say no to Allison. The two were more than brother and sister. They had been best friends since childhood. In fact, Allison was the only person who really knew what he did for a living. Even their parents had no idea that their son was a CIA field officer.
Steven had been in Morocco just under a year and had gotten to know Marrakech fairly well. The souk at the heart of the small city was a labyrinth of passages and narrow alleyways. Donkey carts laden with merchandise lumbered up and down the hot, dusty thoroughfares, while the ever-present haze hung so thick that neither the city’s mud-brick walls nor the high Atlas Mountains off in the distance could be seen from the main square. The heat was absolutely insufferable and as he combed the various covered markets for the perfect caftan for Allison, Cooke was grateful for the shade.
It was when Steven took a shortcut through one of the alleys that he noticed an unremarkable café with a rather remarkable patron—a man who had disappeared two days before the September 11th attacks and for whom the United States had been searching ever since.
If he was correct, his discovery would represent not only a major coup for American intelligence, but it might also place a very distinct feather in his cap and set him apart as one of the more distinguished young field operatives. That would be nice, though Cooke reminded himself that he had joined the CIA to help defend his country, not to rack up attaboy’s.
Removing his cell phone, Steven contacted hi