JAMES PATTERSON is one of the best-known and biggest-selling writers of all time. His books have sold in excess of 300 million copies worldwide and he has been the most borrowed author in UK libraries for the past nine years in a row. He is the author of some of the most popular series of the past two decades – the Alex Cross, Women’s Murder Club, Detective Michael Bennett and Private novels – and he has written many other number one bestsellers including romance novels and stand-alone thrillers.
James is passionate about encouraging children to read. Inspired by his own son who was a reluctant reader, he also writes a range of books for young readers including the Middle School, I Funny, Treasure Hunters, House of Robots, Confessions and Maximum Ride series. James is the proud sponsor of the World Book Day Award and has donated millions in grants to independent bookshops. He lives in Florida with his wife and son.
A major terrorist cell sets a devastating plan in motion. Their target? One of the world’s busiest airports – London Churchill International Airport.
Retired SAS captain Matt Bates and ex-Delta Force officer Chaz Shoeman find themselves caught up in the attack. And they are London’s only hope at stopping an atrocity that could kill thousands.
What you are holding in your hands right now is no ordinary book, it’s a BookShot.
BookShots are page-turning stories by James Patterson and other writers that can be read in one sitting.
Each and every one is fast-paced, 100% story-driven; a shot of pure entertainment guaranteed to satisfy.
Available as new, compact paperbacks, ebooks and audio, everywhere books are sold.
Along Came a Spider
Kiss the Girls
Jack and Jill
Cat and Mouse
Pop Goes the Weasel
Roses are Red
Violets are Blue
Four Blind Mice
The Big Bad Wolf
London Bridges
Mary, Mary
Cross
Double Cross
Cross Country
Alex Cross’s Trial (with Richard DiLallo)
I, Alex Cross
Cross Fire
Kill Alex Cross
Merry Christmas, Alex Cross
Alex Cross, Run
Cross My Heart
Hope to Die
Cross Justice
1st to Die
2nd Chance (with Andrew Gross)
3rd Degree (with Andrew Gross)
4th of July (with Maxine Paetro)
The 5th Horseman (with Maxine Paetro)
The 6th Target (with Maxine Paetro)
7th Heaven (with Maxine Paetro)
8th Confession (with Maxine Paetro)
9th Judgement (with Maxine Paetro)
10th Anniversary (with Maxine Paetro)
11th Hour (with Maxine Paetro)
12th of Never (with Maxine Paetro)
Unlucky 13 (with Maxine Paetro)
14th Deadly Sin (with Maxine Paetro)
15th Affair (with Maxine Paetro)
Step on a Crack (with Michael Ledwidge)
Run for Your Life (with Michael Ledwidge)
Worst Case (with Michael Ledwidge)
Tick Tock (with Michael Ledwidge)
I, Michael Bennett (with Michael Ledwidge)
Gone (with Michael Ledwidge)
Burn (with Michael Ledwidge)
Alert (with Michael Ledwidge)
Private (with Maxine Paetro)
Private London (with Mark Pearson)
Private Games (with Mark Sullivan)
Private: No. 1 Suspect (with Maxine Paetro)
Private Berlin (with Mark Sullivan)
Private Down Under (with Michael White)
Private L.A. (with Mark Sullivan)
Private India (with Ashwin Sanghi)
Private Vegas (with Maxine Paetro)
Private Sydney (with Kathryn Fox)
Private Paris (with Mark Sullivan)
NYPD Red (with Marshall Karp)
NYPD Red 2 (with Marshall Karp)
NYPD Red 3 (with Marshall Karp)
NYPD Red 4 (with Marshall Karp)
Sail (with Howard Roughan)
Swimsuit (with Maxine Paetro)
Don’t Blink (with Howard Roughan)
Postcard Killers (with Liza Marklund)
Toys (with Neil McMahon)
Now You See Her (with Michael Ledwidge)
Kill Me If You Can (with Marshall Karp)
Guilty Wives (with David Ellis)
Zoo (with Michael Ledwidge)
Second Honeymoon (with Howard Roughan)
Mistress (with David Ellis)
Invisible (with David Ellis)
The Thomas Berryman Number
Truth or Die (with Howard Roughan)
Murder House (with David Ellis)
Torn Apart (with Hal and Cory Friedman)
The Murder of King Tut (with Martin Dugard)
Sundays at Tiffany’s (with Gabrielle Charbonnet)
The Christmas Wedding (with Richard DiLallo)
First Love (with Emily Raymond)
Miracle at Augusta (with Peter de Jonge)
‘Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!’ shouted Ilham Al-Yussuv. He was dressed in combat fatigues and strutted in front of a group of forty-one men. They screamed back: ‘ALLAHU AKBAR! ALLAHU AKBAR!’
Al-Yussuv turned to his right. His wife, Hubab Essa, a woman almost as tall as him, who was wearing a black robe and black headscarf, nodded, her expression blank. Kneeling at her feet was a young man. He was blindfolded; sweat ran down his cheeks and into the open collar of his shirt. The couple pulled on masks and Al-Yussuv nodded to a man videoing them.
‘This is James Dalton,’ Al-Yussuv said to the camera, pointing to the shaking prisoner. ‘A student from Nottingham University. He has been found guilty of mocking the Holy Book and shall be punished.’ He nodded to his wife. Hubab Essa stepped forward, pulling a Walther PPK from a pocket in her robe. She placed it against the back of Dalton’s head and pulled the trigger. The prisoner fell forward and the crowd of men cheered and shouted in jubilation. A few were waving guns and knives over their heads. The man with the video camera kept recording the two masked leaders.
Essa stepped beside James Dalton’s dead body and spat on it. Then she raised her head, wiped her mouth and put up her hands. ‘Silence. Silence, my brothers. This is but the start,’ she said with quiet menace, then looked round at the gathering. ‘I am not a woman. I am a Muslim. I am a jihadist. A holy warrior. I am the Infidel’s worst nightmare.’
THE TERRORIST CELL had been in Numbers 54 and 56 Glimmer Street, Bradford, for ten days. Combined, the two derelict properties served as a perfect safe house. They were the last buildings still standing on a street two miles from the centre of Bradford, and were set for demolition in two weeks. The houses were off the grid, listed in some city council office computer file but ignored by everyone. Everyone, that is, except the forty-two men and one woman who had suffered squalid conditions for ten days and were waiting to spring into action. There was no running water, electricity came from a small generator in the backyard of each house and there were more rats than there were humans. Apart from the cell’s leaders, Al-Yussuv and Essa, the jihadists had no sanitation or privacy whatsoever. If any members of the cell needed to leave the street, they wore disguises and travelled by public transport. They never hung out in groups and they always left and returned via different routes.
Morale was ebbing. That was part of the reason for Tuesday evening’s entertainment with the captured Nottingham University student, the eighteen-year-old son of a baker, originally from London, who had been visiting friends in Bradford. During his short lifetime, James Dalton had barely seen a copy of the Quran, let alone insulted it.
Al-Yussuv and Essa had a small room to themselves at the rear of Number 54. Their men were spread out over a dozen other rooms in the two decrepit houses. It was late, quiet.
‘The show was a success, husband,’ Essa said as they sat on the edge of the mattress on the floor. ‘It served a double purpose. Saabiq has uploaded the film already and it’s been passed through half a dozen servers and IP addresses. It’s completely untraceable. It’ll be big news by tomorrow.’ Essa grimaced: ‘But we cannot do it again, and I’m worried the men are becoming restless.’
‘Wife, do not fear. Allah is watching over us. It will not be long now.’ Al-Yussuv kissed the woman on her bared forehead and ran a hand through her cropped black hair. ‘I loved your hair, dearest one.’
She smiled. ‘I did not want to risk tripping on it when the action starts, Ilham.’
He kissed her again and then their lips met. Al-Yussuv’s mobile rang. He pulled back, stood and walked over to where he had left the phone next to his commando jacket. He heard a click and then a series of bleeps. He counted them. Four. He pushed the red button and then punched in a number he had memorised. He said nothing.
A distorted voice at the other end of the line delivered one short, crisp sentence: ‘Friday, nine thirty a.m. T3.’ Al-Yussuv heard another click and the line went dead. Essa looked at him expectantly. ‘Friday morning,’ he said, feeling his hand shaking as he held the phone at his side.
Ilham Al-Yussuv gazed through the window at the green summer fields dotted with sheep. He was alone in the train carriage, but he knew five of his men were scattered throughout the other fifteen carriages of the 5.55 a.m. express from Bradford to London’s King’s Cross.
Everything had been planned down to the tiniest detail. The cell had split into seven groups. The teams had all travelled, or were now travelling, to London via entirely separate routes: three by car taking different roads south, one by coach, two by train and a final team in three trucks hidden with their equipment behind crates. Al-Yussuv looked down at his tailored suit, neatly ironed shirt and Windsor-knotted tie. As Dr Omar Shalim, an orthopaedic surgeon returning from a medical conference at the Norcroft Centre, Bradford, he had drawn the cushy straw: a first-class carriage and a Louis Vuitton briefcase. He also had a large suitcase filled with weapons, gas masks, explosives and sophisticated computer equipment.
The first sign of trouble came with a slowing of the train. A shiver of anxiety shuddered through him, but he pushed it away. Trains slow down and speed up all the time, even the expresses. But then it slowed some more, jolted and went into an emergency brake. Al-Yussuv was thrown from his seat and flew across the narrow space between the rows. Cursing loudly, he landed, twisted, on the padded seat in front of him.
The train ground to a stop; the screech of metal on metal.
Al-Yussuv pulled himself upright, reached for his briefcase, unclasped the twin locks and took out his Glock. He lifted the suitcase from the rack and lowered it to the floor. Then he swung round to see his friend Haadii Fahmy coming through the doors connecting a second-class carriage with the first-class. The door opened with a hiss and Fahmy was through, an MP5K in his right hand, the barrel pointing to the floor. Al-Yussuv pulled back as Fahmy reached him.
Shouts, commands.
‘Allah! This is it,’ Fahmy whispered, his voice full of fear. ‘How? How could they know?’
A quick burst of gunfire and the glass upper half of the door connecting the carriages shattered. Al-Yussuv glimpsed a black figure, a helmet. There was a second burst of automatic fire from the other end of the carriage, and then a terrifying silence.
Smack! The two terrorists had barely registered the canister of tear gas flying through the door to their right when a flash grenade exploded less than two metres away towards the north-facing door. As 170 decibels and a blinding light filled the carriage, Al-Yussuv’s training kicked in. He threw himself to the floor, peeling off three rounds towards the nearest entrance. He glimpsed Fahmy as he stumbled forward, spinning on his heel, his 9mm sub-machine gun spraying shells. Fahmy buckled like a collapsing beach chair as his spine was shattered by a shell from a semi-automatic.
Al-Yussuv, flat on his stomach, tossed his gun forward, watching it spin along the polished floor, and raised both hands as the gas-masked firearms team charged into the carriage.
It was all over the TV and the Internet, of course. A terrorist cell busted. But the details were sketchy. Hubab Essa stared at the screen of her laptop, trying to get any scrap of information she could. One of her mobile phones trilled. It was the Nokia fitted with the highest security protocols. She snatched it up.
She had not heard the computer voice before. They had always called Ilham. But he was not here. She had no idea where he was. Was he in heaven with his well-deserved virgins? she mused as the voice spoke.
‘The package is on schedule. No change, but you must be home to sign for it.’ She understood what that meant and went to ask a question. Did they have any news on Ilham? But the line was dead. She stared at the blank screen and could see her reflection, a black scarf framing her narrow face, her steely eyes and tight jaw. She could not remember the last time she had laughed. ‘So, I am now in command,’ she said to the empty room. ‘I shall not fail.’ The muscles in her cheeks tightened. ‘I am the Infidel’s worst nightmare.’