Synopses & Reviews
With the immediacy and force of a sniper's
strike,
Cold Zero is a blistering first-person
account of life inside the FBI and its elite Hostage
Rescue Team.
Of the hundreds of thousands of U.S. law
enforcement officers, only 200 have ever been in
Christopher Whitcomb's highly trained and
specialized branch of the FBI. Equivalent to the
Navy's SEALs and the Army's Delta Force, the Hostage Rescue Team
is charged with terrorist capture, hostage release, and other large-scale
emergencies in the United States and around the world. Whitcomb is
the first HRT member ever to write about his extraordinary experience.
With breathtaking clarity, Whitcomb describes his journey from civilian
to FBI agent and from field agent into the highly competitive HRT-the
brutal training, the weapons and tactics, and the unbreakable
camaraderie of the HRT. In short order, after joining the HRT in 1991,
Whitcomb was sent on missions to:
- Ruby Ridge. Trained as a sniper, Whitcomb was in position in the first
team to surround the cabin and gives an unsparing account of the
communications and leadership issues there.
-
Waco. For several brutal months, Whitcomb took up his position in
the Branch Davidian standoff. Day after day he held David Koresh and
other gunmen in his crosshairs only to watch, stunned, the fiery
debacle that broke the stalemate.
-
Kosovo. As part of the evidence-gathering FBI mission, Whitcomb
saw the aftermath of genocide and the urgency of bearing witness.
Whitcomb's frank assessment of those missions is must-reading for
anyone interested in modern law enforcement and covert operations.
Cold Zero is not just a story of missions, weapons, and tactics, though.
It is the story of the human being behind the sniper's scope, the people
who put on badges and strap on guns to represent the law of the United
States. It is a book of rare action and emotion, and one that introduces
a remarkable new writer to the world.