Dead Zero: A Bob Lee Swagger Novel

Stephen Hunter

Dec 2010 · Bob Lee Swagger Book 7 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

From New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Hunter comes a thriller that pits former Marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger against the only man who might be able to outshoot him.

A marine sniper team on a mission in tribal territories on the Afghan-Pakistan border, Whiskey 2-2 is ambushed by professionals using the latest high-tech shooting gear. Badly wounded, the team’s sole survivor, Gunnery Sergeant Ray Cruz, aka “the Cruise Missile,” is determined to finish his job. He almost succeeds when a mystery blast terminates his enterprise, leaving a thirty-foot crater where a building used to be—and where Sergeant Cruz was meant to be hiding.

Months pass. Ray’s target, an Afghan warlord named Ibrahim Zarzi, sometimes called “The Beheader,” becomes an American asset in the region and beyond, beloved by State, the Administration, and the Agency. He arrives in Washington for consecration as Our Man in Kabul.

And that brings Ray Cruz out of hiding.

Swagger, the legendary hero of seven of Hunter’s novels from Point of Impact to last year’s bestselling I, Sniper, is recruited by the FBI to stop the Cruise Missile from reaching his target. The problem is that the more Swagger learns about what happened in Zabol, the more he questions the US government’s support of Zarzi and the more he identifies with Cruz as hunter instead of prey.

Ratings and reviews

Dope.

About the author

Stephen Hunter has written over twenty novels. The retired chief film critic for The Washington Post, where he won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism, he has also published two collections of film criticism and a nonfiction work, American Gunfight. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.