James Patterson - Thriller - Stories to Keep You Up All Night

The great beast propelled him forward and he had the eerie sensation of breaking the surface. Immediately, he was jolted by a heavy impact followed by a searing pain in the same spot in his upper arm where he had felt a similar pain moments ago. A popping sound that reminded him of gunfire, but which he knew were actually teeth snapping bone came next and Harvath told himself it would all be over soon. Finally, there was quiet. Deep, cold, the end is finally here quiet.

It was at that moment that Harvath's eyes shot open and he began sucking in hot, greedy gasps of air. Thrashing in the shallow water, he looked to his left and swung to his right, trying to find the shark.

"Easy," said a voice from above as a pair of weathered hands began unwinding the chain from around his wrists and ankles.

Harvath looked up and saw the face of Ben Metaxas. "Ben, what the-"

"Careful, my friend, don't move," he said.

"Why? What's going on?"

"I'm not as good a shot as Yannis, I'm afraid."

Harvath didn't understand. "What are you talking about?"

"Your arm," said Ben.

Looking down at his arm, Harvath saw a long metal shaft and realized what had pierced the throat of his killer-a speargun. Harvath's own wound was almost as serious. The spear had gone straight through his left bicep and almost punctured his rib cage.

"It was very difficult pulling you out of the water."

"But how did you get here?"

Ben held up his mask and swim fins. "There was another boat offshore. We saw a man bringing out supplies from inside this cave. When we couldn't reach you on the radio, we decided to take a look."

Harvath remembered the ambassador. "The other man. What happened to the other man?" "The man on the beach?"

"Yes."

"He's dead," said Yannis as he made he way back toward them. "I shot him with this." Yannis held up Point Guard's weapon.

"What about the canister?" asked Harvath, fighting back the shock beginning to take over his body.

"He dropped it in the tunnel. Don't worry."

But Harvath was worried. They had to secure the canister and get the hell out of there. "We need that canister. Go get it."

Harvath collapsed onto the beach and waited for Yannis to come back with the Achilles device. While he lay in the sand,

Ben did his best to work the spear free of Harvath's arm and dress his wounds. It was an incredibly painful procedure.

The longer Yannis was gone, the more Harvath began to worry. When he did finally return, it wasn't with good news. "I can't find it."

"What do you mean?" said Harvath as Ben helped him to his feet. "The canister is gone."

"That's impossible. We're the only ones here."

"I don't think so. There's a trail of blood leading down the corridor and up the stairs into the kitchen."

Upon hearing that piece of information, the bottom dropped out of Harvath's stomach. "We've got to get upstairs."

Harvath led the way as quickly as he could through the low tunnel, down the corridor and up the stone steps into the house. The trail of blood couldn't be missed. He used the beam of his SureFire to trace it back through the house, out into the courtyard, and right up to the spot where Constantine Nomikos's blue Land Rover had been sitting less than half an hour before. There was no sign of the Land Rover, the device or Nomikos.

Harvath reached for his radio only to realize that Ambassador Avery had pitched it into the water, along with the rest of his gear.

Defeated, Harvath leaned back against the outer wall of the courtyard. He tried to tell himself that it would be impossible for a man as high profile as Constantine Nomikos to hide forever, but Harvath had been around long enough to know that with enough money, anything in life was possible.

He had also been around long enough to know that the good guys didn't always win.

Raelynn Hillhouse's spy fiction draws upon her extraordinary life experiences. As a former smuggler, Hillhouse has slipped through some of the world's tightest security. From the Uzbek-Afghan border region to Central Europe, she's been followed, held at gunpoint and interrogated. Six months before the Libyan Intelligence Service's East Berlin office orchestrated the bombing of Pan Am 103, one of their operatives attempted to recruit her as a spy. Another foreign government later tried, too, but failed.

Hillhouse loves cold war intrigue, but has recently been fascinated by how the war on terror has transformed modern espionage, adding new players, while decreasing the role of traditional ones. Her debut, Rift Zone, a cold war thriller, received widespread critical acclaim. Her next thriller, Outsourced, deals with a Pentagon operative who infiltrates a for-profit, private military corporation suspected of selling seized arms to terrorists. He becomes a target in the multi-billion-dollar war on terror, and the only one he can trust is his ex-fiancee. Unfortunately, she's been hired to kill him.

While researching Outsourced, Hillhouse came across a little-known event that kept nagging at her. She knew her main character, Stella, had somehow been involved in an incident that marked the first time the United States was targeted by fundamental Islamic terrorists. Two weeks after American hostages were seized in Iran in 1979, the U.S. embassy in Pakistan was overrun by Islamic extremists, razed, and two Americans and two foreign nationals lost their lives. This all-but-forgotten incident was actually a key event in the origins of modern terrorism, and was pivotal for Stella, whose life would become entangled in the complex struggle.

Islamabad, Islamic Republic of Pakistan November 21, 1979

Khan heard the muezzin wail from the loudspeakers, calling the faithful to midday prayers, and he pedaled faster. Students streamed into the mosques. He counted a dozen men wearing the same dark green sweater vests, and smiled. The wardens had received their uniforms; after prayers, the weapons would be distributed. He wished he could personally give them their final instructions, but knew he was taking a risk being seen on the campus. But he couldn't deny himself prayers with his brothers. Not today. Not on the biggest day of his life. Khan jumped from the bicycle running and shoved his way into the packed courtyard. As he washed himself at the fountain, he overheard fragments of conversations, "Death to the American dogs, death to Carter, death to the Zionists." He saw eyebrows knit, jaws clenched, eyes glaring. Their anger was contagious. Khan was overjoyed.

Inside the American embassy compound, a waiting room afforded Stella not only a panorama of cows grazing on dry scrub, but also a view of the main gate. Several dozen young men loitered in the tree-lined street, apparently oblivious to the news of the siege in Mecca and the rumors that the U.S. and Israel were behind the capture of Islam's holiest site. She hoped that the pastoral scene didn't change after midday prayers.

The windowpane appeared too thin to be bulletproof and would shatter with the first brick. Either embassy architects hadn't given much thought to security or their local contractor had cheaper ideas. The antishatter laminate had small bubbles under the film. She couldn't get the hostages in Tehran out of her mind as her fingernail scraped at one corner of the laminate; it easily separated from the glass.

A man strolled over to her. He was taller than she had first guessed, someone used to concealing his height. Clean-cut, athletic build and a burn scar on his left forearm-a soldier or spy. He, too, was waiting on the CIA's deputy chief of station, so she guessed spook.

"Strange-looking critters, aren't they?" He pointed to the red, humpbacked cows and water buffalo. "You don't see Sahiwals back home. I knew an old boy in the Panhandle who tried to beat the drought with them. They're lean. Made some of the toughest steaks you ever ate."