Pike stood again, and once more faced the crowd. I qualified as a scout/sniper and served in Force Recon, mostly on long-range reconnaissance teams, hunter/killer teams, and priority target missions....
Pike said, What were they saying? Couldn’t hear, but it’s an easy guess. The nephew here just lost two hundred thousand and a boatload of workers. They probably weren’t talking about a promotion. Thei...
Pike said, This is dim mak. That’s Chinese. It means death touch. Dim mak was the dark side of acupuncture; in one, pressure points were used to heal, in the other, to damage.
Pike said, The hat? Still there, in front of the taco stand like you said. Mm. I’m thinking I’ll go in alone, while you keep an eye on the hat. What about the brothers? I’ll feel them out. They may no...
Pike pulled the hose from the side of the house, filled the bucket with sudsy water, then rinsed the car. He began at the nose, rubbing the car with his hand to slough away the dirt. The cat came out...
Pike hung up. He knew he couldn’t convince Darko with more talk. Darko would have to convince himself, and now he would either show or he wouldn’t.
Pike hung up, and I stood in the center of the kitchen and listened to the silence. Someone had been in my home, and it made me feel creepy and violated and angry. I pulled out the Dan Wesson, sat it...
Pike got out of the car, took off the long-sleeved shirt, then went to the trunk. He looked through the things Ronnie had left. He drank half a bottle of Arrowhead water, then collected his SOG fighti...
Pike got into the Lexus, but Larkin stepped inside the door so he couldn’t close it. Her face seemed as brittle as a ceramic mask, and Pike suddenly remembered how she had looked up in the desert when...
Pike glanced at Cole and Cole shrugged. I have everything I need from here to go forward. I can take her back. Larkin squinted at Cole, still tense with irritation. Was there something here I missed?...
Pike dug his thumb into the side of the man’s neck where the C3 nerve root emerged from the third vertebra, crushing the root into the bone. This caused the man’s shoulder and chest to go numb with a...
Pike closed his eyes, and filled his lungs, then pushed with his diaphragm. He breathed deep again. Pranayamic breathing from the hatha yoga. Pike lost himself in a cool forest glade, dappled by sunli...
Patrol dogs and Military Working Dogs were trained to protect their handlers. If the handler was attacked, and unconscious, or fighting for his or her life, the dog had to know what to do without bein...
Panel vans were working vans. There were no windows behind the front seats, and the rear bay was a dirty metal box smelling of pesticide and grease. Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi had used an identi...
POLLARD CALLED IT the blood tingle. She blasted up the Hollywood Freeway, high-fiving the dashboard and pumping her fist, feeling the electric buzz in her fingers and legs that had always come with ma...
Okay, listen. The ATF analyzed the bomb from my car. You know what taggants are? Detection markers. Taggants had been required in plastic explosives since the nineties. The
Officer Pike took off his dark glasses, and looked at her. She felt her breath catch. His eyes were the most liquid blue, the blue of the sky over the high deserts of Sonora, the blue of the ocean whe...
Nope. I hung up, bought an iced tea from a sausage grill, then stared at the bay. The water was clean and blue, and Catalina was in sharp relief twenty-six miles away. A young woman in short-shorts an...
Mrs. Bartello opened the screen wider, her eyes bunching with sorrow. I’m sorry. You don’t know. I’m sorry. Donna passed away. Holman felt himself slow as if he had been drugged; as if his heart and b...
Moths swarmed around the parking lot lamps, banging into the glass with a steady tap-tap-tap, and I wondered if they welcomed the dawn. At dawn, they could stop slamming their heads into the thing tha...