The Nine-Eleven planners were inventive—and ruthless. But the world’s lone superpower has learned al-Qaeda’s tricks and hit back hard. The terrorists are on the run. Until they up their game. The Sheikh is a new breed of terrorist, infinitely more dangerous than his predecessors because he understands America’s tremendous strengths—and her hidden weaknesses. And nothing will stop the Sheikh from showing that the United States is a Paper Eagle. Only one American, a CIA analyst named Bridget Thorne, has the insight and courage to stop this brutal genius. But she’ll have to move fast. Because the Sheikh’s plan begins with a horrific massacre at a cold and lonely border crossing, and it only gets worse from there. And if Bridget isn’t clever and very careful, the Sheikh will more completely damage the United States than any other terrorist in history. Henry Martin is a former naval officer who served on both submarines and surface ships and a writer whose work has appeared in markets as diverse as Interzone, Polyphony, On Spec, and several original DAW anthologies under the name Steven Mohan, Jr. His work has won honorable mention in the Year's Best Science Fiction and the Year's Best Fantasy and Fiction.