Glancing briefly up at the cup, he slipped a piece of change in and heard it jingle among the rest. Then he shooed the man away with his hand.
The blind beggar shook his cup again.
The Commander looked up from his paper to search for the café manager when he caught the blind man’s face.
“Grendel …”
Ross Dogan winked once. Then he fired two bullets from the silenced Heckler and Koch held beneath his bulky brown rags. They entered the Commander’s stomach, the impact pitching the older man backward and toppling him over. Waiters rushed over followed by the manager. When they saw the blood and the Commander’s sightless eyes, they screamed for help. The Commander’s men converged on the area, searching for the assassins, but they found only startled tourists, distracted shoppers …
And a blind beggar tapping his cane down the avenue.
A Biography of Jon Land
Since his first book was published in 1983, Jon Land has written twenty-nine novels, seventeen of which have appeared on national bestseller lists. He began writing technothrillers before Tom Clancy put them in vogue, and his strong prose, easy characterization, and commitment to technical accuracy have made him a pillar of the genre.
Land spent his college years at Brown University, where he convinced the faculty to let him attempt writing a thriller as his senior honors thesis. Four years later, his first novel, The Doomsday Spiral, appeared in print. In the last years of the Cold War, he found a place writing chilling portrayals of threats to the United States, and of the men and women who operated undercover and outside the law to maintain US security. His most successful of those novels were the nine starring Blaine McCracken, a rogue CIA agent and former Green Beret with the skills of James Bond but none of the Englishman’s tact.
In 1998 Land published the first novel in his Ben and Danielle series, comprised of fast-paced thrillers whose heroes, a Detroit cop and an Israeli detective, work together to protect the Holy Land, falling in love in the process. He has written seven of these so far. The most recent, The Last Prophecy, was released in 2004.
RT Book Reviews honored Land with a special prize for pioneering genre fiction, and his short story “Killing Time” was shortlisted for the 2010 Dagger Award for best short fiction and included in 2010’s The Best American Mystery Stories. He is also the author of the Caitlin Strong series, starring the eponymous Texas Ranger, a female character in a genre that Land has said has too few. The second book in the Caitlin Strong series, Strong Justice (2010), was named a Top Thriller of the Year by Library Journal and runner-up for Best Novel of the Year by the New England Book Festival. His first nonfiction book, Betrayal, written with Robert Fitzpatrick, tells the behind-the-scenes story of a deputy FBI chief attempting to bring down Boston crime lord Whitey Bulger, and was published to acclaim in 2011. The Blaine McCracken novel Pandora’s Temple won the 2013 International Book Award for Best Thriller/Adventure, and was nominated for a 2013 Thriller Award for Best E-Book Original Novel.
Land currently lives in Providence, not far from his alma mater.
Acknowledgments
ALL MY BOOKS ARE, in a sense, collaborative efforts, for the knowledge, expertise, and patience of many others are duly tried and given. Listing all is not possible. The names that follow are the most select who deserve far more than this simple mention. Any mistakes that appear in Labyrinth are wholly mine.
For assistance in the scientific realm, thanks once again to John Signore and especially to Emery Pineo, who never fails to solve even the most impossible problems.
For help with the economic end, thanks to Robin Dumar.
Thanks to the real Colin Burgess for his help with England’s landscape and geography.
For technical assistance on the names and capabilities of World War II fighter planes, I am especially indebted to Martin Caidin for his excellent book, Ragwings and Heavy Iron (Houghton Mifflin, 1984).
For advice on things medical and for providing moral and editorial support, I owe a special debt to Dr. Morty Korn, the only reader to have suffered through all my works.
I am also ever so grateful to a superb editor, Daniel Zitin, and to Ann Maurer for her creative genius along the way.
As usual, my deepest appreciation to a miraculous agent, Toni Mendez, who puts everything together.
And last, an extra special thanks to Elmer Blistein, a man who believed I could do it when no one else did even after weeding through a dismal first novel for my senior thesis at Brown. Enjoy your retirement, Professor, you’ve earned it!