War Lord

A $15 million ransom. A plane down in the swamps of Darwin. A stolen nuclear warhead. And a new partner who actually plays by the rules.

Returning from an enforced sabbatical after the death of his partner Anna, Special Agent Vin Cooper is in no state to be doing favors. But when Anna's old friend-Vegas showgirl Alabama Thornton-comes to him desperate, he can't turn her away. Her boyfriend, Randy, was aboard a light plane that vanished into the crocodile-infested wetlands of Australia's Top End. Now Alabama has a ransom demand, and it arrived with something no one should ever find in their mailbox.

What begins as a personal favor detonates into a full-blown, multi-agency catastrophe. Randy wasn't who he claimed to be. He was sitting on secrets powerful people will kill to keep buried-and he's the loose thread tying them to a missing nuclear weapon.

Teamed with straight-laced agent Kim Petinski, Cooper chases the trail from the swamps of Darwin to the lawless favelas of Rio de Janeiro and deep into the furnace of Tanzania. Every lead runs into a dead end, or a dead body. And every road bends toward one name: Benicio von Weiss.

Arms dealer. Collector. Predator. Von Weiss sits atop every watch list that matters-a man whose tastes run to Nazi relics and venomous snakes, who treats human life as one more commodity to be traded, or hunted for sport. Whatever he intends for the warhead, it will make a $15 million ransom look like loose change. To keep it out of the worst possible hands, Cooper will have to walk straight into the monster's lair and find a way back out alive - before the clock, and his luck, finally run out.

Razor-sharp, relentlessly paced, and shot through with Cooper's trademark gallows humor, WAR LORD is the fifth explosive installment in David Rollins' internationally bestselling Vin Cooper series-and proof that the most dangerous men in the world rarely look like soldiers.