Angel of Death
About this audiobook
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Threatcon Delta, Google War, Habu Patch and Snake Handlers comes David Alexander’s newest global thriller. Set at the tension-filled height of the Cold War, Angel of Death relates a deadly race between Deacon and Ferret, two master covert operatives to retrieve a hidden artifact whose potential for destruction is enormous.
The rivalry between the two agents has roots in the pasts of both; Deacon trained Ferret to serve the cause of justice but Ferret betrayed his teacher. Should Ferret kill Deacon and retrieve the artifact the world will suffer almost unimaginable consequences.
The man whom Ferret claimed would be his next target would not have been Deacon's first choice. Axis Van Kull was a man living a quiet life in a sedate Amsterdam neighborhood.
According to the intel Mannix had provided him, Van Kull had retired from the Game. Van Kull had been a go-between selling arms and military materiel to whoever had the right price for the goods.
Shadow had acquired his help in setting up an arm of the organization on his turf by means of blackmail. Only after he'd been turned had Van Kull placed his skills in the service of Shadow.
Deacon would not have given Van Kull high credibility as a target for Ferret but for what he knew about the man he had been sent to hunt down and destroy.
Ferret had an enormous ego. Boasting about what he planned to do was in perfect keeping with his character makeup. Leaving the Death Cards behind at the termination scenes had been Ferret's way of "signing" his bloody work. Now Ferret was upping the stakes, daring Shadow's hunter to catch and kill him by bragging about his forthcoming target.
Deacon remembered how, during their training time together, Ferret had first demonstrated this trait.
They were on a SERE training course. The object of the grueling Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape run was to survive in the wilderness against Aggressor Teams sent in to neutralize them. This was no mere training exercise, however. Hunters and hunted alike were fully armed and carried live ammo and grenades.
If captured, they would face interrogation as brutal as anything a real enemy would subject them to in an actual combat situation. The course was designed to test a man's ability to withstand physical and mental hardships to the maximum.
The course was run in a remote wilderness area of the Okanogan mountain range in northern Washington, a region of dense deciduous forestland and steep mountainous terrain. Deacon and Ferret had been dropped in the center of the course by chopper and given the coordinates of the LZ which they were to reach in forty-eight hours time.
Before long, they had spotted the four-man Aggressor Team in a thickly wooded area. A broad grin had cracked Ferret's lean, angular face. A strange light glowed in his pale green eyes as he sized up the opposition.
"The big guy, the one on point," Deacon remembered Ferret having told him. "He belongs to me."
From then on, Deacon and Ferret had worked to set up a series of mantraps concealed in the underbrush. The traps had neutralized every member of the Aggressor Team except for the man who Ferret had singled out. Deacon and Ferret had split up to ambush the last man separately. Unfortunately for the lone commando, it had been Ferret's ambush he'd stumbled into.
Stripping him naked, and tying him spreadeagled to a tree, Ferret had produced a surgeon's hemostat and began skinning the captured man alive. When Deacon had found them, the bound man's face had been obliterated beyond recognition. Deacon had been forced to threaten Ferret with a bullet in the head if he continued.
"I'll remember this," Ferret had told Deacon.
Now, Deacon knew, Ferret had indeed remembered.
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About the author
David Alexander is a USA Today and New York Times bestselling author whose books have sold over five million copies. He is a graduate of Columbia University and Paris Sorbonne. David Alexander's novels and nonfiction titles have won critical acclaim from USA Today, The New York Times, The London Times, The Los Angeles Times, Publishers Weekly, The Wall Street Journal and many other venues in the US, UK, Canada and Australia.
His prizewinning thriller, Threatcon Delta: Assault on the Pentagon, reached first place on numerous bestseller lists including those of The New York Times and USA Today. The Times called Threatcon Delta, "... surely one of the best technothrillers to come along in a great while." USA Today also praised the thriller, declaring, "Alexander once again turns newspaper headlines into riveting high-tech military action fiction with that special combination of cinematic thrills and chills and fly-on-the-wall accounts of back room crisis management in the making ..."
Dubbed "an Ian Fleming for the 21st Century" by one reviewer, David Alexander has written and published in virtually every literary category, including novels, novelettes, short fiction, poetry, essays and film scripts. Investigative journalism, technical writing on defense-related subjects and short fiction over Alexander's byline have appeared in US and international periodicals that have ranged from the glossy pages of Penthouse Magazine to the more sober leaves of the global defense journal Military Technology.
His books and shorter writings have been translated into seven languages, including Italian, German and Japanese. Alexander is an inveterate traveler and among the alumni of literary passengers to have boarded the Orient-Express; he has often used it as a basis for plot and reportage. Unlike the authors who have sold out, who are as interchangeable as cogs in a wheel, author David Alexander prefers to throw away the rule book whenever possible. Each new novel he pens must challenge him and must present a story told powerfully, yet freshly and originally. Each effort must compel him to deliver the best he has to offer.
