Product Description

British Intelligence agent Nick Stone has just been given a chilling ultimatum: find a missing agent who appears to have defected or lose the guardianship of his nine-year-old goddaughter. In Stone’s mind, there is no choice. The “runner” is Sarah Greenwood, U.K. liaison with the Counterterrorism Centre. Steel-willed, beautiful, cunning, Sarah is also Nick’s former lover, the only woman who has ever been allowed under his rough, impenetrable guard.

But once Nick tracks down Sarah, his mission takes a decidedly dark turn. For suddenly they have become the hunted, racing deeper into a deadly conspiracy that will change the course of world events – and the lives of millions.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #378406 in Books
• Published on: 2001-08-28
• Released on: 2001-08-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Unbound
• 416 pages

From Amazon.com
Andy McNab's British intelligence agent, Nick Stone, is enough of a rebel to be denied a permanent place on the SAS roster, but he's dragooned into a freelance assignment with an ultimatum from his former employers. He's to find Sarah Greenwood, a missing agent who's thought to have defected from the service to aid Muslim militants intent on blowing up the world, or go to prison and also lose the only other female he's ever loved besides Sarah: a 9-year-old girl whose dead parents, Nick's closest friends, left her in his care.

Nick manages to locate Sarah without much difficulty, but when he's ordered to kill her, he has a change of heart. The hunter turns into the hunted, as Nick and Sarah flee her hiding place in the North Carolina woods and try to outwit the police, the intelligence services, and a team of assassins directed by Osama bin Laden. As they make their way to Washington to preempt a plan to kill Yasser Arafat and Benjamin Netanyahu, Nick tries to sort out his conflicted feelings about Sarah. Is she part of bin Laden's team, a so-called runner who's a threat to the CIA and the SAS, or is she a loyal operative trying to outwit a highly placed traitor in the White House? Crisis Four is strong on its depiction of agents in the field; McNab excels at describing every last detail of the hunt, the chase, the kill. One can almost see this former SAS agent replaying scenes from his own past and struggling to get them right:

I raised the arrow in the air again and rammed it down hard. It hit against the bone again, but this time it slid off and lodged deeper into his neck. I felt him stiffen, his muscle tensing up to resist the penetration. The gardening glove gave a good grip as I pushed harder, twisting the arrow shaft to maximize the damage. I was hoping to cut into his carotid artery or spinal cord, or even find a gap to penetrate his cranium, but instead I ended up severing his windpipe. Now I had to hold him as he asphyxiated, try to stop his body-jerking from getting out of hand and becoming noisy as I waited for him to die. His movements gradually subsided to no more than a spasmodic twitching in his legs. The last reserve of strength he'd found as he saw his life slowly get darker was now exhausted. I could see dark blood oozing out of the wound; it followed along the shaft of the arrow to my glove and dripped onto the floor. When I moved my arm away from his mouth he made no sound.

The explosive denouement in the White House bowling alley ultimately reveals Sarah's true colors. It comes as no surprise to anyone except Nick, but it caps a terrific suspense story written by an author who clearly knows what he's about. --Jane Adams

From Publishers Weekly
A little knowledge is a dangerous thingDand a little knowledge is all freelance operative Nick Stone gets when he's ordered to track down a missing colleague in McNab's gripping follow-up to the British bestseller Remote Control. It's the spring of 1998, and Stone is on the trail of Sarah Greenwood, who's disappeared from her counter-terrorism stint in Washington just before Arafat and Netanyahu are scheduled to meet with President Clinton in the capital. It doesn't help that Stone's affair with Sarah (which was all business on Sarah's part) was responsible for the end of his marriage, or that Sarah herself is a real piece of work. When Stone finds Sarah, he discovers that his superiors not only want the trigger-happy operative dead, they want her to disappear without a trace. But Sarah claims she has information that could stop an Osama Bin Laden-sponsored terrorist strike on the White House that would kill the American, Palestinian and Israeli leaders. As a result, Stone must choose whether to obey orders or to believe his ex-lover. The plot is simple and direct, and McNab's talent for setting up a scene becomes evident when Stone tracks Sarah to North Carolina. His stakeout of her house would occupy a few pages if described by a less-skilled writer, but McNab goes deep into detail, transforming the set piece into virtual reality. McNab, a former Special Air Service member, delivers authenticity in spades; this thriller is full of the kind of grit that gets under the fingernails. His nonfiction bestseller, Bravo Two Zero, which tells the story of what happened to his SAS patrol when it was stranded behind Iraqi lines during the Gulf War, reads like a prologue to this novel, which boasts the operational details of a Rogue Warrior escapade without the overdose of testosterone. Major ad/promo. (July)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
President Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, and Palestinian leader Arafat are getting ready to sign a cease-fire agreement in a ceremony on the lawn of the White House. Hundreds of school children have assembled to sing hymns of peace, and at a prescribed moment, hundreds of white doves will be released into the air, signifying a hopeful end to decades of conflict. As the leaders approach the ceremony, a terrorist activates a . Let's go back a few years to when British agent Nick Stone meets a mysterious woman known only as Sarah. On their first mission together, she nearly gets his team killed, but once the operation is over, they become lovers. Years go by and Stone loses track of her until one day he is summoned into the offices of his superiors and given a mission: kill Sarah because she apparently turned traitor. His mission leads him from the backwoods of South Carolina to the steps of the White House, where he learns of betrayal and deceit from the people he trusts. This white-knuckle thriller represents the finest in suspense fiction today and brings to mind the best of Alistair MacLean. British narrator Steven Crossley brings his theater training to the forefront, giving each character perfect inflection and a unique personality. Highly recommended for all public libraries.DJoseph L. Carlson, Lompoc P.L., CA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.