by John Weisman
Kirkus Reviews
“A knowledgeable, fast-paced, near-future thriller … Weisman draws on his own and many others’ covert intelligence and special operations experience to craft a convincing scenario and a great many gripping scenes and believable characters. A definite treat for thriller fans.”
Booklist
“As readable as Clancy at his best … Mr. Weisman is perhaps wired more tightly into the reclusive special operations community than any other writer, and his knowledge of weaponry and field techniques is staggering.”
Washington Times
Also by John Weisman
FICTION
The Rogue Warrior series
(with Richard Marcinko)
DETACHMENT BRAVO • ECHO PLATOON
SEAL FORCE ALPHA • OPTION DELTA
DESIGNATION GOLD • TASK FORCE BLUE
GREEN TEAM • RED CELL
BLOOD CRIES
WATCHDOGS
EVIDENCE
NONFICTION
ROGUE WARRIOR (with Richard Marcinko)
SHADOW WARRIOR (with Felix Rodriguez)
ANTHOLOGIES
THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES OF 1997
(edited by Robert B. Parker)
UNUSUAL SUSPECTS
(edited by James Grady)
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
AVON BOOKS
An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
10 East 53rd Street
New York, New York 10022-5299
Copyright © 2003 by John Weisman
Excerpt from Jack in the Box copyright © 2004 by John Weisman The first two chapters of Jack in the Box appeared in the August 2002 Playboy magazine in a slightly different form, under the title “A Day in the Country.”
Map by David Lindroth
ISBN: 978-0-062-03977-4
www.avonbooks.com
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Epub Edition © JUNE 2011 9784-0-062-03977-4
First Avon Books paperback printing: June 2004
First William Morrow hardcover printing: August 2003
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Footnotes
1. Military acronym for temporary duty.
2. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. A pilotless drone surveillance aircraft.
3. Non-Official Cover intelligence officers.
4. Directorate of Operations, the CIA’s clandestine spy service.
5. All China runs officially on Beijing time. But most of the provinces operate on their own local schedules, which reflect their geographic position vis-à-vis Universal (Greenwich Mean) Time. Xinjiang’s “unofficial” clocks run two hours behind Beijing’s.
6. Standard Operating Procedure.
7. RUMor INTelligence is military slang for “urinal gossip.”
8. Commander CENTral Command.
9. Security level above top secret known as SCI, or Sensitive Compartmented Information, which requires code-word clearance.
10. Ram Air Parachute Systems.
11. Assault boots specially designed by Adidas for Grenzchutzgruppe 9, Germany’s primary counterterrorist unit.
12. Handheld multiband inter/intra team radios.
13. Fast Onboard Recognition of Transient Atomic Experiments.
14. Night-Vision.
15. Net-Centric warfare makes real-time data and information available on demand across the entire battlefield spectrum, both horizontally and vertically.
16. Aurora is the stealth-technology successor to the SR-71 “Blackbird” spy plane. It was first flown tactically over Afghanistan. Its existence has not yet been disclosed.
17. Office of the Secretary of Defense.
18. Military Free Fall High Altitude Low Opening-High Altitude High Opening.
19. The Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, an umbrella organization for El Salvador’s Marxist-Leninist terrorist groups.
20. Lay Up Position.
21. Keep-It-Simple-Stupid.
22. High Explosive.
23. Explosives Ordnance Disposal.
24. Improvised Explosive Devices.
25. Milli Istihbarat Teskilati, Turkey’s intelligence service.
26. Congressional Delegation.
1Federal’nay a Sluzhba Bezopasnosti
2CIA in-house pseudonyms are invariably three-part names: first name, middle initial, and last name. The last name is always spelled entirely in capital letters.
3Personal Meeting Plan.
4Counterintelligence
5Dosht’.