Patriot by M.A. Rothman (macos ebook reader txt) 📕

“A bandaged arm will heal. That bomb was the equivalent of sixty Hiroshimas. If it had gone nuclear… I don’t know if we’d be able to come back from something like that.”

“That’s what we’re here for, right?” Brice said. “Saving the world on Tuesday, having coffee and pancakes on Wednesday.”

“I don’t see any pancakes,” Richards said, looking under his mug of coffee.

“What about radar information on the plane?” Connor asked, his mind still firmly engaged.

“What?” Brice said. “Oh! Yeah. Knowing when that plane left and from where, I managed to associate it to a bogus flight plan. They dropped off the radar as soon as they hit the Atlantic. Transponder went dark as well.”

“So we don’t have any idea where they went?”

“Well, given that it could have in-air refueling, it could be anywhere.”

“Finding Müller,” Connor said, turning to Thompson and Richards. “What’s our ops plan for that?”

“Facial recognition at every port of entry, airports, harbors, crossings along both Canadian and Mexican borders. We generally have good luck tracking people that way.”

“You didn’t when he came into the country,” Connor said.

“If he came in,” Thompson corrected.

“I don’t know. The guy’s meticulous. I think he was here,” Connor said, knowing it in his bones. “He’s playing it safe, but a guy like that doesn’t sit on the sidelines very long. He wants to be involved. Wants his people to see his face in action. If he can show them that he’s passionate about what they’re doing, his men will reciprocate that passion.”

“You make him sound like a boss I’d like to work for,” Richards said.

“In his line of work, you need your people to like you.”

“That’s right,” Annie said. “Otherwise they’ll just kill you and move on.”

Connor snapped his fingers and pointed at her. “Exactly. Especially with the amount of money we’re talking about here. There’s going to be a lot of people searching for that money—and for Müller.”

“We need to catch him before anyone else does,” Thompson said. “Recovering the money is secondary. We need to stop his next action. People like that don’t just quit being bad guys, cold turkey.”

“I agree,” Connor said.

“I’ve got searches running in every major airport in Europe and Africa,” Brice said. “If they land anywhere over there, we’ll know it before the air traffic guys do.”

“We need to get our hands on a couple of his men,” Annie said, fingers prodding at her bandages.

Connor knew what she was thinking, and to his surprise, he found himself agreeing wholeheartedly. “Give us some time in a room with them, we’ll get them to talk.”

Thompson nodded. “I’ll make it happen.”

Connor moved closer to Annie, holding out a fist. “You want to play good cop this time?”

Annie grinned and pounded Connor’s fist with her own. “Screw that. I don’t know how to play good cop.”

Author’s Note

Well, that’s the end of Patriot, and I sincerely hope you enjoyed it.

If this is the first book of mine you’ve read, I owe you a bit of an introduction. For the rest of you who have seen this before, skip to the new stuff.

I’m a lifelong science researcher who has been in the high-tech industry longer than I’d like to admit. There’s nothing particularly unusual about my beginnings, but I suppose it should be noted I grew up with English as my third language, although nowadays, it is by far my strongest. As an Army brat, I traveled a lot and did what many people do: I went to school, got a job, got married, and had kids.

I grew up reading science magazines, which led me into reading science fiction, mostly the classics by Asimov, Niven, Pournelle, etc. And then I found epic fantasy, which introduced me to a whole new world, in fact many new worlds, and it was Eddings, Tolkien, and the like who set me on the path of appreciating that genre. And as I grew older, and stuffier, I grew to appreciate thrillers from Cussler, Crichton, Grisham, and others.

When I had young kids, I began to make up stories for them, which kept them entertained. After all, who wouldn’t be entertained when you’re hearing about dwarves, elves, dragons, and whatnot? These were the bedtime stories of their youth. And to help me keep things straight, I ended up writing these stories down, so I wouldn’t have it all jumbled in my head.

Well, the kids grew up, and after writing all that stuff down to keep them entertained, it turns out I caught the bug—the writing bug. I got an itch to start writing… but not the traditional things I’d written for the kids.

Over the years I’d made friends with some rather well-known authors, and when I talked to them about maybe getting more serious about this writing thing, several of them gave me the same advice: “Write what you know.”

Write what I know? I began to think about Michael Crichton. He was a non-practicing MD, who started off with a medical thriller. John Grisham was an attorney for a decade before writing a series of legal thrillers. Maybe there was something to that advice.

I began to ponder, “What do I know?” And then it hit me.

I know science. It’s what I do for a living and what I enjoy. In fact, one of my hobbies is reading formal papers spanning many scientific disciplines. My interests range from particle physics, computers, the military sciences (you know, the science behind what makes stuff go boom), and medicine. I’m admittedly a bit of a nerd in that way. I’ve also traveled extensively during my life, and am an informal student of foreign languages and cultures.

With the advice of some New York Times-bestselling authors, I started my foray into writing novels.

My first book, Primordial Threat, became a USA Today bestseller, and since then I’ve hit that list a handful of times. With 20-20 hindsight, I’m pleased that I took the plunge and started writing.

That’s enough of an intro, and I’m not a fan of talking about