Showing results by author "Barry Eisler" in All Categories

NSA director Theodore Anders has a simple goal: collect every phone call, email, and keystroke tapped on the Internet. He knows unlimited surveillance is the only way to keep America safe. Evelyn Gallagher doesn't care much about any of that. She just wants to keep her head down and manage the NSA's camera network and facial recognition program so she can afford private school for her deaf son, Dash.

1991. A restless young man called Dox is back home in Texas. His friends have missed him, and his mother and sisters need him. But after four years as a Marine and another two as a CIA contractor fighting the Soviet Union alongside the Afghan mujahideen, small-town life in Abilene is a suffocating dead end. Another secret war, this one in Southeast Asia, offers a big payday and the solution to his family’s troubles. But secret wars are never what they’re billed to be, and Dox is about to get the education of his young life.

All John Rain wants is to get out of the killing business. But with his discretion, his reliability, and his unique talent for death by "natural causes," no one is willing to let him just retire. So when an old nemesis from the Japanese national police force comes to him with a new job - eliminate Murakami, a killer even more fearsome than Rain himself - Rain knows he can't refuse. Aided by an achingly desirable half Brazilian, half Japanese exotic dancer he knows he shouldn't trust, Rain pursues his quarry into the heart of a shadow war between the CIA and the yakuza.

In Silicon Valley, the eccentric inventor of a new encryption application is murdered in an apparent drug deal. In Istanbul, a cynical undercover operator receives a frantic call from his estranged brother, a patent lawyer who believes he is the next victim. And on the sun-drenched slopes of Sand Hill Road, Silicon Valley's nerve center of money and technology, old family hurts sting anew as two brothers who share nothing but blood and bitterness wage a desperate battle against a faceless enemy.

After nearly dying while taking out a target in Hong Kong, Rain has a new employer, the Mossad, which wants him to fix a "problem" in Manila. He also has a new partner, Dox, whose good-ol'-boy persona masks a sniper as deadly as Rain himself. And he has a new hope: that by using his talents for something good, he might atone for all the lives he has taken. But when Rain's conscience causes him to botch the Manila hit, he finds out the next problem the Mossad wants fixed is himself. Is Delilah, his Mossad lover, coming to help him? Or was she sent to finish him off?

Torture. Ghost Detainees. And a massive cover-up that continues even today. Marooned in a Manila jail after a bar fight fatality, black ops soldier Ben Treven gets a visit from his former commander, Colonel Scott Horton, who explains the price of Ben's release: find and eliminate Daniel Larison, a rogue operator from Ben's unit who has stolen 92 torture tapes from the CIA and is using them to blackmail the U.S. government. But other players are after the tapes, too.

John Rain is back. And “the most charismatic assassin since James Bond” ( San Francisco Chronicle) is up against his most formidable enemy yet: the nexus of political, military, media, and corporate factions known only as the Oligarchy. When legendary black ops veteran Colonel Scott “Hort” Horton tracks Rain down in Tokyo, Rain can’t resist the offer: a multi-million dollar payday for the “natural causes” demise of three ultra-high-profile targets who are dangerously close to launching a coup in America. But the opposition on this job is going to be too much for even Rain to pull it off alone.

Returning to Tokyo in 1982 after a decade of mercenary work in the Philippines, a young John Rain learns that the killing business is now controlled by Victor, a half-Russian, half-Japanese sociopath who has ruthlessly eliminated all potential challengers. Victor gives Rain a choice: kill a government minister or die a grisly death. But the best route to the minister is through his gorgeous Italian wife, Maria.

Seattle PD sex-crimes detective Livia Lone knows the monsters she hunts. Sold by her Thai parents along with her little sister, Nason; abused by the men who trafficked them; marooned in America...the only thing that kept Livia alive as a teenager was her determination to find Nason. Livia has never stopped looking. And she copes with her failure to protect her sister by doing everything she can to put predators in prison.

Hunted and finally cornered, John Rain faces his deadliest enemy ever: himself. For Rain, "the most charismatic assassin since James Bond" (San Francisco Chronicle), getting out of the life was never going to be easy. But with a new identity in Paris, and the help of his lover, Mossad agent Delilah, he was beginning to leave the killing business behind. And then he receives a message from rogue CIA operative Jim Hilger: we have your friend Dox. Do as we tell you, or he dies.

Even for an average citizen, a love triangle is dangerous business. For assassin John Rainn - "one of the most compelling lead characters in the genre" ( USA Today) it's going to be downright deadly. When Rain learns that his former lover, Midori, has been raising their child in New York, Rain senses a chance for reconciliation, perhaps even for redemption. But Midori and the child are being watched by Rain's enemies, and Rain's sudden appearance puts them in terrible danger. To save them, Rain is forced to use the same deadly talents he had been hoping to leave behind.

When a joint FBI-Seattle Police investigation of an international child pornography ring gets too close to certain powerful people, sex-crimes detective Livia Lone becomes the target of a hit that barely goes awry - a hit that had been offered to John Rain, a retired specialist in "natural causes." Suspecting the FBI itself was behind the attack, Livia reaches out to former Marine sniper Dox. Together, they assemble an ad hoc group to identify and neutralize the threat. There’s Rain. Rain’s estranged lover, Mossad agent and honeytrap specialist Delilah.

John Rain has disappeared to Brazil to escape the killing business and the enemies encircling him in Japan. But the CIA isn't willing to lose its premier "natural causes" contract killer, and they force Rain to take on a high-risk assignment: eliminate a ruthless arms dealer operating in Southeast Asia. The upside? Financial, of course, along with the ongoing chimera of moral redemption. But first, Rain will have to survive the downside: a second assassin zeroing in on the target; the target's consort, an alluring and dangerous woman with an agenda of her own.

Half American, half Japanese, expert in both worlds but at home in neither, John Rain is the best killer money can buy. You tell him who. You tell him where. He doesn’t care about why... Until he gets involved with Midori Kawamura, a beautiful jazz pianist - and the daughter of his latest kill.

Rory Miller's Facing Violence: Preparing for the Unexpected includes seven elements that must be addressed to bring self-defense training to something approaching complete. These elements are: legal and ethical implications, violence dynamics, avoidance, counter-ambush, breaking the freeze, the fight itself, and the aftermath. Training that dismisses any of these areas leaves you vulnerable.

For sex-crimes detective Livia Lone, a position with a government anti-trafficking task force is a chance to return to Thailand to ferret out Rithisak Sorm, the kingpin behind her own childhood ordeal. But after a planned takedown in a nightclub goes violently awry, Livia discovers that she's not the only one hunting Sorm. Former marine sniper Dox has a score to settle, too, and working together is the only way to take Sorm out.

What makes a legendary assassin? For John Rain, it was the lessons of love, war, and betrayal he learned in Tokyo in 1972. Fresh from the killing fields of Southeast Asia, Rain works as a bagman under the watchful eye of his CIA handler, delivering cash to corrupt elements of the Japanese government. But when a delivery goes violently wrong, Rain finds himself in the crosshairs of Japan’s most powerful yakuza clan.

Assistant US Attorney Alondra Diaz hates traffickers. And she’s determined to put one of America’s most powerful financiers, Andrew Schrader, in prison forever for his crimes against children. But Schrader has videos implicating some of the most powerful members of the US national security state. To eliminate Diaz, the powers that be bring in a contractor: Marvin Manus, an implacable assassin whose skills have been forged in intelligence, the military, and the hardest prisons.

For Delilah, the Mossad's top seductress, the parameters of the assignment were routine. The contractor: MI6. The objective: infiltrate a terror network, this one operating out of London. The stakes: a series of poison gas attacks on civilian population centers.There's just one wrinkle. The target is a woman - as smart, beautiful, and committed as Delilah herself. And for a cynical operative thrust suddenly out of her element, the twists and turns of the spy game are nowhere near as dangerous as the secrets and desires of the human heart.

For former Marine sniper Dox, a long-range hit in Cambodia was supposed to be just business as usual. But when you find yourself mixed up with rogue intelligence operations, gorgeous bar girls, and the world's worst human-trafficking heart of darkness, business is anything but usual. And making it personal is the most dangerous business of all.