It's a gorgeous autumn day in Georgetown. The Democratic candidates for president and vice-president of the United States are dutifully glad-handing voters and the media outside a grand estate where a national-security conference has just been held, bringing together the world's greatest minds to discuss the issues that are threatening the country. It's American politicking at its best. That's when all hell breaks loose.

It's just seven days before Memorial Day, and a spike in CIA intelligence has pointed to a major terrorist attack on the United States. Now it's up to counterterrorism operative Mitch Rapp to pull out all the stops. Rapp immediately leaves for Afghanistan, where he leads a special forces unit on a daring commando raid across the border into a remote Pakistani village. Their target: an al-Qaeda stronghold. Rapp and his team soon discover plans for a catastrophic nuclear attack on Washington, DC.

The action begins in the heart of Iran, where billions of dollars are being spent on the development of a nuclear program. No longer willing to wait for the international community to stop its neighboring enemy, Israel launches a creative and daring operation that leaves a radioactive tomb in the middle of Iran's second largest city. An outraged Iranian government publicly blames both Israel and the United States and demands retribution.

Mitch Rapp and his protege, Mike Nash, may have met their match. The CIA has detected and intercepted two terrorist cells, but a third is feared to be on the loose. Led by a dangerous mastermind obsessed with becoming the leader of al-Qaeda, this determined and terrifying group is about to descend on America.

The action begins six days after a series of explosions devastated Washington, D.C., targeting the National Counterterrorism Center and killing 185 people, including public officials and CIA employees. It was a bizarre act of extreme violence that called for extreme measures on the part of elite counterterrorism operative Mitch Rapp and his trusted team member, Mike Nash.

Newly appointed CIA director Dr. Irene Kennedy is the target of an inside plot to destroy her and prematurely end the American President's term. To make matters worse, Saddam Hussein is close to entering the nuclear arms race - something Israel has vowed to stop. With the haunting specter of World War III looming, the president calls on his secret weapon: top counter-terrorism operative Mitch Rapp. But with only two weeks to take out the nukes, Rapp is up against a ticking clock - and impossible odds.

The four dead guards didn’t concern Mitch Rapp as much as the absence of the man they’d been paid to protect. Joe Rickman wasn’t just another foot soldier. For the last eight years Rickman had ran the CIA’s clandestine operations in Afghanistan. It was a murky job that involved working with virtually every disreputable figure in the Islamic Republic. More than a quarter billion dollars in cash had passed through Rickman’s hands during his tenure as the master of black ops and no one with a shred of sense wanted to know the details of how that money had been spent.

Mitch Rapp is used to winning. But in this follow-up to number-one New York Times best-selling The Survivor, the CIA operative finds himself chasing false leads from continent to continent in an effort to keep Pakistani nukes from falling into the hands of terrorists. Together with friend and colleague Scott Coleman, Rapp struggles to prevent the loss of these lethal weapons, particularly because Russia is also interested in the nukes, though not for the same reason as Rapp and Coleman.

CIA counterterrorism operative Mitch Rapp falls prey to government forces with an agenda of their own after Dr. Irene Kennedy is named the successor to dying CIA Director Thomas Stansfield—a choice that enrages many inside the world’s most powerful intelligence agency. Her detractors will resort to extreme measures to prevent her from taking the reins—which makes Rapp an expendable asset. But Mitch Rapp is no one’s pawn, and he will stop at nothing to find out who has set him up.

After 9/11, the United States made one of the most secretive and dangerous deals in its history. The evidence against the powerful Saudis who coordinated the attack would be buried. In return, King Faisal would promise to keep the oil flowing and deal with the conspirators in his midst. When the king's own nephew is discovered funding ISIS, the president suspects that the Saudis never intended to live up to their agreement.

For months, Mitch Rapp has been steadily working his way through a list of men, bullet by bullet. With each kill, the tangled network of monsters responsible for the slaughter of 270 civilians becomes increasingly clear. He is given his next target: a plump Libyan diplomat who is prone to drink and is currently in Paris without a single bodyguard. Rapp finds him completely unprotected and asleep in his bed. With confidence in his well-honed skills and conviction of the man’s guilt, he easily sends a bullet into the man’s skull. But in the split second it takes the bullet to leave the silenced pistol, everything changes.

When Max Krupin - Russia's leader - discovers that his kidney cancer has spread to his brain, he's determined to hide his diagnosis. He begins by getting rid of anyone threatening to him - as well as creating chaos in the region to keep the world's attention diverted. Soon, Krupin's illness becomes serious enough that he needs a more dramatic diversion, prompting him to invade the Baltics. Desperate to understand what's causing Krupin's unusually erratic behavior and Russia's aggressive moves in the region, America begins working with Russia's disgraced prime minister to stage a coup.

A toxic presidential election is underway in an America already badly weakened by internal divisions. While politicians focus entirely on maintaining their own power, ISIS kidnaps a brilliant French microbiologist and forces him to begin manufacturing anthrax. Slickly produced videos chronicling his progress and threatening an imminent attack are posted to the internet, intensifying the hysteria gripping the United States.

Before he was considered a CIA superagent, before he was thought of as a terrorist's worst nightmare, and before he was both loathed and admired by the politicians on Capitol Hill, Mitch Rapp was a gifted college athlete without a care in the world...and then tragedy struck.

Top-secret data has been stolen from the CIA, and the only man who knows its hiding place is dead. CIA operative Mitch Rapp must race to find the classified information in this blistering novel that picks up where The Last Man left off in Vince Flynn's New York Times best-selling series.