The Inheritor

Tom Wither

Description

America’s Most Deadly Enemy is still loose. . . and he’s ready to move.

On the eve of the takedown of the world’s leading terrorist, his protégé eluded U.S. forces. . . and now he’s racing across four countries in a scenario that could happen tomorrow.

Following his dead mentor’s desire to reestablish the Islamic Caliphate, Aziz Abdul Muhammad, hand-picked by bin Laden himself, masterminds a series of attacks on the U.S. energy infrastructure that will reignite the war against the West. As his initial series of attacks creates mass panic, leaving the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states in terrified darkness, the manhunt is on.

In a unique special operations force, veteran intelligence officer David Cain, along with Air Force Sergeant Emily Thompson and rookie FBI Agent Dave Johnson, leads the U.S. effort to find Aziz and his operations expert. From Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay to Chicago and the outskirts of Tehran, the force must halt Al Qaeda’s attempt to rise from the ashes of its former self—and stop the Inheritor before the rest of his terrifying plan unfolds.

Sujets

• Thrillers
• FBI
• Al Qaeda
• Inheritor
• Caliphate
• Military
• Tehran
• United States Armed Forces
• Al-Qaida
• Air Force
• Téhéran
• Fiction
• Federal Bureau of Investigation

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 19 mai 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781620454978
• Langue: English

Extrait

PRAISE FOR
THE INHERITOR

"Vivid, terrifying, and all too possible,
Tom Wither's novel sets a high bar in the
darkest speculative corner of the political thriller niche."
-Larry Brooks, USA Today bestselling author of Darkness Bound
" The Inheritor is a spectacularly good thriller-banging with action, filled with absolutely fascinating and authentic details from the world of military intelligence-fans of Tom Clancy will love it!"
-Max Byrd, author of The Paris Deadline
THE INHERITOR
THE INHERITOR

Tom Wither

T U R N E R
Turner Publishing Company 424 Church Street Suite 2240 Nashville, Tennessee 37219 445 Park Avenue 9th Floor New York, New York 10022 www.turnerpublishing.com
THE INHERITOR
Copyright 2014 Tom Wither
All rights reserved. This book or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
Cover design: Maxwell Roth Book design: Kym Whitley
Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publishing Data
Wither, Tom. The inheritor / Tom Wither. pages cm ISBN 978-1-62045-495-4 (paperback) 1. Special forces (Military science)--Fiction. 2. Terrorism--United States--Fiction. I. Title. PS3623.I8647I55 2014 811'.6--dc23
2014008606
Printed in the United States of America 14 15 16 17 18 19 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Mom Dad-Words just can't say enough.
To the men and women of the armed forces, intelligence community, federal and local law enforcement, and first responders throughout the United States and all their families-your service and sacrifices reflect the best of our nation's ideals and principles.
Thank you.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Charlie, Ed, Elizabeth, Renee, Steve, and Warren for making sure I didn't step over the line, Ellen for the eagle eyes, and Roger, my agent, for appreciating my storytelling.
PROLOGUE
May 2, 2011 - Abbottabad, Pakistan

DAWN WAS HOURS AWAY A few nights before the new moon, the last sliver of the waning crescent almost gone, stars predominately hidden by thickening cloud cover. A pervasive silence hung over the farmland district of Abbottabad, broken briefly by the sounds of a stray dog foraging in the grass for rodents and other small animals for his midnight snack.
The houses in the northeastern section of Abbottabad belonged to lower-middle- or middle-class Pakistanis. Overall, they were clean and well-kept but modest structures usually separated by swaths of tilled and untilled land for the more well-to-do citizens, and houses backed up to one another on smaller plots for those less well-to-do.
Most of the houses in the farmlands were dark, save one. It sat in the center of the base portion of a large, triangular-shaped property, much larger than those nearby. The property's northern base leg was more than one hundred meters long, while its angled borders were more than seventy meters long each.
All along the compound perimeter stood a privacy wall whose western portion was ten feet tall, growing taller and then shorter as it stretched toward the eastern portion of the compound. As the wall flowed around the compound's southern border, it rose to eighteen feet to prevent a direct view of the main house, and then returned to ten feet in the northeast corner. The interior of the compound was designed to make any assault difficult. A short driveway running roughly north to south between two ten-foot-high inner walls with gates at either end divided the compound down the center into two major segments, eastern and western. The main three-story house stood in the eastern segment, abutting the northern base leg, its west wall a few meters from the inner wall protecting it from the driveway.
The compound had been built not quite six years ago, when it became apparent that a comfortable and safe hideaway was needed for the holy warrior sheik, his youngest wife, his two most trusted couriers, their families, and a few trusted fighters. The main house's roof was just beginning to weather from the strong winter storms that lashed northern Pakistan, its whitewashed concrete walls showing the first signs of minor cracking. The holy warrior sheik Osama Bin Laden and his youngest wife and some of his young children lived on the third floor, his two most trusted couriers and their families split between the first and second floors.
There was also a smaller, narrow one-story house running east-west along the southern portion of the inner wall protecting the main house. Immediately to the south was the apex of the compound's triangular perimeter. A few meters to the west were the inner vehicle gate and a pedestrian door in the inner wall that led to the inner courtyard and main house. A few single male jihadis occupied the smaller house and acted as a very rudimentary guard force, hardly worth the title. The compound was intended to be as unobtrusive as possible, but little things betrayed it if one looked closely enough: the barbed wire that topped the protective walls, the expensive satellite dishes for receiving European and Middle Eastern news broadcasts, and the fact that the small number of women who lived in the compound did not socialize with the other women in the small Abbottabad suburb of Bilal Town.
The thin, nineteen-year-old man with the broad shoulders and dark hair moved slowly up the steps in the main house to the third floor. The holy warrior sheik, the man he thought of as his surrogate father, had sent word to the small house for the young man to come see him. After passing through the small door in the inner wall surrounding the main house, he had crossed the short expanse of bare ground to the main house and been allowed to enter by the guards at the door. Another guard, who stood at the top of the steps before the door to the holy warrior and his young wife's quarters, lowered his AK-74 and tapped on the door behind him.
The door opened, and Bin Laden's wife beckoned him inside. The interior was illuminated by three small freestanding lights scattered around the rooms, the smell of cooked lamb and curried rice in the air from the evening meal. Electricity, television, and running water were the only modern conveniences. Internet and telephone lines would never enter this house or the smaller one.
The small set of rooms Bin Laden shared with his wife were functional, cluttered, and sparsely furnished in a largely open floor plan. A queen-sized mattress sat on a roughly hewn, darkly stained wooden frame next to a smaller twin bed with only a thin foam mattress. As was proper, Bin Laden slept on the larger bed, his wife in the smaller, less comfortable one, when she did not remain in the area reserved for the women in the rear of the first floor.
Some clothes, a few cushions, a cabinet for clothes, and old shopping bags were strewn about the common area. One small alcove held a desktop computer untouched by the Internet, a few laptops, several CDROMs, and USB memory sticks. Two prayer rugs lay on the floor before the beds, facing a little south of west toward Mecca. A cardboard barrel for trash dominated the common room, its contents taken outside and burned periodically to avoid the local trash collectors from compromising Bin Laden's location. A lone, inexpensive television sat on a wooden table against the eastern wall near the windows.
The house and the living conditions would never be considered opulent by Western eyes, but for the small middle-class suburb of Bilal, it was very comfortable.
Aziz spied his surrogate father kneeling on the prayer rug near his bed.
"Come in," called Bin Laden in Arabic.
Obediently, the young man moved to the older man and sat on the bare floor before him. It would not be proper to have knelt on the other prayer rug beside him unless bidden.
"Yes, Father," he replied, waiting patiently.
Aziz carefully watched the older man shift his weight on the prayer rug to a more comfortable position before he began to speak. He was in his late fifties; his long beard had turned nearly solid silver from the combination of age and the added stress from the infidel's hunt for him. His brown eyes held life, but not very well. The thick lips beneath the angular nose marked a tanned face and thin brows, his face instantly recognizable by nearly anyone in Southwest Asia, or the world for that matter. When he left the compound, he often dressed as a woman, both to hide his features and conceal the AK-47 he always carried. When his men drove him to meeting places, he sat in the back of the car as was proper for a woman, and therefore was paid no heed by others.
"Aziz, my son, you are strong. In time, you will grow stronger still. I have watched you carefully these past few years and you are mindful of the needs of our jihad. When Alem became ill and could no longer serve us here, you did what needed to be done, and now Alem is in Paradise."
As always, the older man referring to him as his son warmed Aziz. There was no bond of blood between them, but Aziz had always thought of him as his father. His own father had abandoned him and his mother when he was six for an infidel female. Fortunately, as he grew into a man, he came to hear the words of the holy warrior sheik and know the truth in them. After spending time as a child courier in Afghanistan's mountains for the holy cause, he had fought in his first battle when he was fifteen. Then, with Allah's guidance, he had come to join the holy warrior himself during his movement into the tribal lands to this protected location.
Aziz began to reply but the older man silenced him with a touch upon his knee and a warm smile. His hand felt cool to Aziz, betraying his medical condition.
"For now, listen, my son. I want you to hold