From Publishers Weekly
New York Times bestseller Mills (Burn Factor) returns with his fifth novel, featuring brilliant FBI tough guy Mark Beamon, who is investigating a terrorist threat linked to a global conspiracy. Killing time on a dead-end assignment while the Bureau plans his downfall, Beamon is thrown together with his former colleague Laura Vilechi when a videotape is delivered to the American media, indicating that Al Qaeda has smuggled a rocket launcher into the U.S. Their threat to use it against civilian targets has thrown the country into a panic, with people afraid to leave their homes. Meanwhile, Chet Michaels, one of Beamon's former trainees, now deep undercover in pursuit of a psychotic Mafioso, is nervously watching drug deals being made with shadowy Afghans. Looming behind all of this is a CIA deal with the devil (in the form of Christian Volkov, an international criminal mastermind), in which the U.S. government attempts to use organized crime figures as a proxy underworld army in the so-called war on terror. This thriller features real people and groups drawn from daily news headlines, playing on the anxieties of the American public-from the heroin trade to terrorism (and the connections between the two). But Mills avoids cynical exploitation, offering up human characters and a story that, despite some implausible subplots and heavy-handed editorializing, remains engrossing and affecting.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Reeled in from a dead-end job, outspoken FBI agent Mark Beamon is sent undercover to investigate a terrorist cell with access to modern missile technologyand promptly sees a fellow agent get murdered. From the author of The Burn Factor. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* FBI agent Mark Beamon was once considered the best investigator in the bureau. He also set new standards for ignoring protocol and embarrassing his superiors. That's why his career is stalled in middle-management hell as the head of the Bureau's Phoenix office. Then he gets a call from his former lover, Laura Vilechi, who is the lead FBI investigator in a new al-Qaeda crisis. The terrorists have cobbled together a rocket launcher inside the U.S and also have four operational rockets. She needs Mark's investigative skills to find the launcher before hundreds, maybe thousands, of Americans are killed in a September 11 redux. The lead she has Mark follow trails back through a botched drug deal and eventually places him undercover in the Russian crime organization run by Christian Volkov. It's there he learns that the CIA, employing its standard tortured logic, laid the groundwork for the latest al-Qaeda plot by disrupting the world heroin market. Beamon and Volkov form an uneasy alliance in which he will help Beamon discover the launcher location if Beamon will help him retain control of the heroin market. This is a brilliant modern crime thriller with a byzantine--yet believable--plot, a plucky hero, and villains who manipulate world events from their lofty positions in government. Mills does the large-scale thriller better than anyone else working the genre today. As a matter of fact, he may do it better than anyone who's ever sent a character out to save the world. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Mark Beamon, the hero of three previous Mills novels, has always been an unconventional FBI agent - and years of putting truth ahead of protocol have him languishing in a dead-end job in the Bureau's Phoenix office. But before he can officially be put out to pasture, our nation's war against terrorism pulls him back to the front lines." "Video tapes begin arriving at television stations across the country. On them is a terrifying message: A terrorist cell inside the United States possesses a rocket launcher and will begin attacking civilian targets within days. As panic takes hold and the economy begins to falter, the FBI calls on Beamon to accept one last assignment. Suspecting a connection between the Mob and these fanatics, Beamon goes undercover with another agent to meet with a Mafia don who might have critical information concerning the terrorists." "That simple meeting goes horribly wrong as Beamon's partner is executed after his cover is blown. Beamon, who barely escapes with his life, is determined to find the source of the leak and, more important, in one final act of self-destructive heroism, to exact revenge." As he spirals into a world of drug trafficking, government corruption, murder, and betrayal, Beamon comes to know the mysterious Christian Volkov - a master criminal and a man with seemingly limitless power. Soon it is clear that only through Volkov will Beamon be able to avenge his friend's death and unravel the conspiracy threatening his country.

FROM THE CRITICS

Washington Post

Mills keeps the surprises coming fast and because his characters persist in making pithy...remarks about the powers that be.

Publishers Weekly

New York Times bestseller Mills (Burn Factor) returns with his fifth novel, featuring brilliant FBI tough guy Mark Beamon, who is investigating a terrorist threat linked to a global conspiracy. Killing time on a dead-end assignment while the Bureau plans his downfall, Beamon is thrown together with his former colleague Laura Vilechi when a videotape is delivered to the American media, indicating that Al Qaeda has smuggled a rocket launcher into the U.S. Their threat to use it against civilian targets has thrown the country into a panic, with people afraid to leave their homes. Meanwhile, Chet Michaels, one of Beamon's former trainees, now deep undercover in pursuit of a psychotic Mafioso, is nervously watching drug deals being made with shadowy Afghans. Looming behind all of this is a CIA deal with the devil (in the form of Christian Volkov, an international criminal mastermind), in which the U.S. government attempts to use organized crime figures as a proxy underworld army in the so-called war on terror. This thriller features real people and groups drawn from daily news headlines, playing on the anxieties of the American public-from the heroin trade to terrorism (and the connections between the two). But Mills avoids cynical exploitation, offering up human characters and a story that, despite some implausible subplots and heavy-handed editorializing, remains engrossing and affecting. Author tour. (Oct.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Reeled in from a dead-end job, outspoken FBI agent Mark Beamon is sent undercover to investigate a terrorist cell with access to modern missile technologyand promptly sees a fellow agent get murdered. From the author of The Burn Factor. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews