Last Breath
Cal Byers
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ISBN: 0-9743301-2-4 |
285 Pages 6x9
Gold Foil Stamped |
Summary
Dr. Nate Bowman and his family accidentally become involved in
a terrorist's plot to murder millions of Americans with biological
weapons. Because of a dishonest county sheriff aiding the terrorists,
Nate finds himself facing numerous bogus felony charges including
five murders he didn't commit. Having to flee the U.S. to save himself,
he finds himself hiding out in the Bahamas with the terrorist's
master plan in his possession.
Hunted by the FBI and a fanatical madman, who vowed to kill him
and retrieve his property, Nate is forced to change his name and live
in obscurity. His only hope for survival is a newspaper reporter,
Kenna Straton who has to weed her way through the legal red tape
in the U.S. judicial system to prove his innocence. While waiting, he
is seduced by a beautiful assassin sent to kill him. Nate struggles to
free himself from his own personal demons and break out of the web
of deceit that could cost him his life at any time.
You'll meet an array of characters and get inside the mind of a
determined terrorist who is obsessed with carrying out his attack on
America. The fast paced plot takes you from the mountains of North
Carolina to the Bahamas and onto Cuba in a steamy plot that will
keep you guessing until the shocking conclusion.
Read an Excerpt
Tunisia, Africa
January 2005
Sweat poured down the chauffeur’s forehead as his black
Mercedes limousine sped away from the busy port city of
Sousse in Tunisia. His passengers were two Arabs and an American,
all of whom had arrived earlier on a sleek, one hundred
twenty-foot yacht. The nervous chauffeur maneuvered his way
through the narrow, crowded streets as the impatient passenger
to his right barked out directions. Soon they arrived in the old
Arab quarters of Sousse. The car entered a maze of thick-walled
houses with small windows, painted white to offset the withering
heat of North Africa. Nothing was very appealing about this
run-down section of the city. Sousse is nestled perilously on the
blue Mediterranean Sea. The southern half of the small country
of Tunisia is a vast expanse of burning plains that abuts the
Sahara Desert. Each year dust storms and sirocco winds sporadically
blast the port city, creating temperatures of over one
hundred degrees. Though it is January, the already arid coastal
region is in the middle of a six-month drought. The searing heat
of the blazing sun filtered through the roof of the limo as the
air conditioner strained to keep the passengers cool.
The Tunisian chauffeur clamped both hands on the steering
wheel as he kept a nervous eye on the irritable passenger to
his right. He used his rearview mirror to observe his other passengers,
especially the American who stood out like a sore
thumb in this city of Arabs. At the same time, he scrutinized
the other backseat passenger, a well-dressed Iraqi. The limo
radio blared out chants of the Muslim Koran understood by
everyone in the vehicle except the American who wasn’t listening
anyway.
Sitting beside the chauffeur was Mustafa Jawad, the wellknown
Iraqi international terrorist. Jawad kept his cold eyes
trained straight ahead, appearing calm and calculating as he
gave directions to the chauffeur. Muhammad El Amman sat in
the back seat, the wealthy owner of the yacht, and a well-known
political activist in Baghdad. El Amman stared silently out of
the dark tinted windows barely noticing the starving eyes of the
veiled woman and her child who scurried out of the way of the
speeding limousine. He felt no sympathy for the woman or, for
that matter, any of the poor people of this section of the city.
He reached forward and calmly tapped on the limousine’s glass
divider, indicating for Jawad to turn up the air-conditioner.
The other backseat passenger was an American, Bernard
Kroslak. Kroslak seemed detached from his surroundings, even
as beads of sweat formed in the wrinkles of his middle-aged
brow. Absent-mindedly, he removed his aviator sunglasses and
wiped the sweat from his forehead while tugging at the buttons
on his damp shirt. He felt contempt for his fellow limousine
passengers and for this depressed area of the world, and fervently
wished he were some other place. Kroslak acknowledged
to himself that he was a racist, and also that essentially he hated
all foreigners, but most especially Arabs.
The memory of his beleaguered CIA career was still
painful and always on his mind. He had been dismissed from the CIA in 1996 during the scrub of the Washington headquarters
after the Aldridge Ames fiasco. Ames, the CIA’s top
agent, was found guilty of selling classified documents to the
Russians. During his tenure at the CIA, Ames had compromised
as many as ten agents, all of whom were assassinated in
various parts of the world. Kroslak himself came under scrutiny
and was suspected of selling sensitive material to Iraq, Iran, and
Pakistan. He was charged but never brought to trial, and after
legal maneuvering by his attorneys, was cleared of the government’s
accusations due to lack of evidence. Ultimately though,
Kroslak and a hundred other agents under suspicion were dismissed
from the CIA. It was the biggest shake-up of the CIA
since it’s inception and it left Kroslak bitter, not only with the
CIA, but also with the plodding bureaucracy of the American
government. At the time of his dismissal, he’d been with the
agency for twenty years. Kroslak considered his sudden dismissal
a slap in the face from an impersonal employer who did
not care about his accomplishments during his tenure as a foreign
agent.
While a CIA operative, Kroslak had worked in many
countries in the Middle East and Europe, and had become proficient
in the cutthroat world of espionage where he dealt with
spies, secrets, and lies daily. At first he was an outstanding, upright
agent until he discovered late in his career that operating
as a double agent was very lucrative. It was easy to sell the political,
military, scientific, or technological secrets of the western
world to foreign governments. And since 1996, he used his
connections to the CIA to cash in whenever the opportunity
presented itself. Consequently, Kroslak now had hefty bank accounts
in Switzerland, Panama, and South America and each
year added to his balances.
After his dismissal, Kroslak’s disgust with the U.S. government
grew with the taxes, regulations, and rules. Now he dreamed of the day when he could cut all ties with the United
States and hoped the operation he was about to begin with
Amman would give him the means of doing that. Unknown to
anyone in the limousine, Kroslak owned a thousand-acre cattle
ranch in Argentina where he planned to retire once this last assignment
was over. He wasn’t exactly sure why Amman had him
flown from Paris to his yacht in Athens, but if it involved
money, Kroslak was interested. On the yacht trip from Athens
to Sousse, Amman supplied him with beautiful women, fine
wine, and delicious food. Kroslak indulged in Amman’s generosity,
however he was aware that when dealing with terrorists
like Mustafa Jawad or El Amman, it was crucial to watch his
back at all times. He had a history with El Amman, having dealt
with him since 1992, and had been well compensated for the
information he shared about U.S. military spy satellites. His
lieutenant, Jawad, on the other hand, was an unknown. But as
Kroslak kept reminding himself, you can never trust an Arab
terrorist, known or unknown.
“Turn here,” Jawad barked in Arabic, and the chauffeur
swerved quickly onto a narrow street. Merchants with push
carts and morning shoppers hustled to get out of the way of the
speeding car. Moments later the Mercedes screeched to an
abrupt stop in front of a rusted red garage door that opened automatically.
Two hooded guards, armed with Uzi machine
guns, appeared out of the darkened garage. The limousine
slowly pulled inside and stopped. Immediately, the chauffeur
rushed to open the limo doors. The three passengers were escorted
through a four-inch thick steel door that had been activated
by one of the Uzi-toting guards. Before the door closed
Jawad cut his eyes at the other guard and motioned him towards
the driver. No words were exchanged but the meaning of the
signal was understood. The closing of the steel door muffled the
sound of the shot to the driver’s head.
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