Force of Nature by C.J. Box (English) Mass Market Paperback Book

Description: Force of Nature by C.J. Box Having hidden the truth about a past colleagues violation, former Special Forces agent Nate Romanowski is targeted by a determined killer who threatens Joe Picketts life as part of a violent plot. Available in a tall Premium Edition. FORMAT Mass Market Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description Joe Picketts friends past comes back to haunt everyone he cares about in this "violent, bloody, and quite satisfying thriller"* from #1 New York Times bestselling author C. J. Box. In 1995, Nate Romanowski was in a Special Forces unit abroad when his commander, John Nemecek, did something terrible. Now the high-ranking government official and cold-blooded sociopath is determined to eliminate anyone who knows about it--like Nate, whos hidden himself away in Wyomings Bighorn Mountains. And he knows exactly how Nemecek will do it--by targeting Nates friends to draw him out. That includes his friend, game warden Joe Pickett, and Picketts entire family. The only way to fight back is outside the law. Nate knows he can do it, but he isnt sure about his straight-arrow friend. And all their lives could depend on it. ONE OF LIBRARY JOURNAL S BEST MYSTERIES OF THE YEAR Author Biography C. J. Boxs stunning debut, Open Season, was a New York Times Notable Book and won the prestigious Anthony Award, as well as nominations for the Edgar Award and the L.A. Times Book Award. His second novel, Savage Run, scored high praise from the New York Times Book Review, People, and USA Today. He is also the president and CEO of Rocky Mountain International Corporation. Review Praise for Force of Nature"A rush...an excellent wilderness adventure."—*The New York Times Book Review "Proceeds at warp speed."—The Denver Post "Moves like greased lightning."—Kirkus Reviews "Perhaps the best in the series."—San Jose Mercury News "Violent...Those who love Boxs stunning set pieces will be in heaven."—Booklist (starred review) "Absolutely riveting...This is the best Box Ive ever read, and Ive read them all."—Library Journal (starred review) More Praise for the C. J. Box and the Joe Pickett novels "One of todays solid-gold, A-list, must-read writers."—Lee Child "Picking up a new C. J. Box thriller is like spending quality time with family you love and have missed...Its a rare thriller series that has characters grow and change. An exciting reading experience for both loyal fans as well as newcomers."—Associated Press "Box is a master."—The Denver Post "Box knows what readers expect and delivers it with a flourish."—Cleveland Plain Dealer "Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett strides in big boots over the ruggedly gorgeous landscape of C.J. Boxs outdoor mysteries."—The New York Times Book Review "Riveting...[A] skillfully crafted page-turner."—People "Will keep you on the edge of your seat."—The Philadelphia Enquirer Review Quote Praise for Force of Nature "A rush...an excellent wilderness adventure."--* The New York Times Book Review "Proceeds at warp speed."-- The Denver Post "Moves like greased lightning."-- Kirkus Reviews "Perhaps the best in the series."-- San Jose Mercury News "Violent...Those who love Boxs stunning set pieces will be in heaven."-- Booklist (starred review) "Absolutely riveting...This is the best Box Ive ever read, and Ive read them all."-- Library Journal (starred review) More Praise for the C. J. Box and the Joe Pickett novels "One of todays solid-gold, A-list, must-read writers."--Lee Child "Picking up a new C. J. Box thriller is like spending quality time with family you love and have missed...Its a rare thriller series that has characters grow and change. An exciting reading experience for both loyal fans as well as newcomers."--Associated Press "Box is a master."-- The Denver Post "Box knows what readers expect and delivers it with a flourish."-- Cleveland Plain Dealer "Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett strides in big boots over the ruggedly gorgeous landscape of C.J. Boxs outdoor mysteries."-- The New York Times Book Review "Riveting...[A] skillfully crafted page-turner."-- People "Will keep you on the edge of your seat."-- The Philadelphia Enquirer Excerpt from Book FORCE OF NATURE ALSO BY C. J. BOX THE JOE PICKETT NOVELS Cold Wind Nowhere to Run Below Zero Blood Trail Free Fire In Plain Sight Out of Range Trophy Hunt Winterkill Savage Run Open Season THE STAND-ALONE NOVELS Back of Beyond Three Weeks to Say Goodbye Blue Heaven FORCE OF NATURE For Gordon Crawford, falconer And Laurie, always ... Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall a∂ the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. --William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming" Table of Contents Part One 1 2 3 4 5 Part Two 7 8 9 10 11 12 Part Three 13 14 15 16 17 18 Part Four 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Part Five 26 27 28 29 30 Part Six 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 Afterword Acknowledgments THE MORNING AFTER HIS NAME WAS Dave Farkus, and hed recently taken up fly-fishing as a way to meet girls. So far, it hadnt worked out very well. It was late October, one of those wild fall days containing a fifty-five-degree swing from dawn to dusk, and Farkus stood mid-thigh in waders in the Twelve Sleep River that coursed through the town of Saddlestring, Wyoming. River cottonwoods were so drunk with color the leaves hurt his eyes. Farkus was short and wiry, with muttonchop sideburns and a slack expression on his face. Hed parked his pickup under the bridge and waded out into the river at mid-morning just as a late-fall Trico hatch created clouds of insects that billowed like terrestrial clouds along the surface of the water. A few trout were rising for them, slurping them down, but he hadnt hooked one yet. Trico flies were not only tiny and hard to tie on his line, they were difficult to see on the water. He was at wits end since hed relocated to the Twelve Sleep Valley from southern Wyoming. Hed landed in Saddlestring with no job, and he didnt intend to look for one, except the damned natural-gas pipeline company was challenging his disability payments, claiming hed never really been injured. And his ex-wife, Ardith, had contacted a lawyer about several missed alimony payments and was threatening to take him back to court. FARKUS WAS intently aware of each car that sizzled by on the bridge over his shoulder. When he heard a car slow down to look at him, he made a long useless cast that, he hoped, looked practiced and elegant, as though he was Brad Pitts double in the movie A River Runs Through It . He wondered how long it would be before a pretty doe-eyed twentysomething tourist would come down to the river and ask for a lesson. But he was starting to believe it would never happen. He tied on a new fly--something puffy and white that he could see on the water--and felt the power of the current push against his legs. Thats when he heard, upriver, the distinctive hollow pock sound of a drift boat striking a rock. He barely looked up, so intent was he on tying the nearly invisible thin tippet through the loop of his fly. Drift boats filled with fishermen were common on the river. There were several commercial guide operations in town, and it seemed like every other home in Saddle-string had a drift boat on a trailer parked in front of it. The river was shallow because it was late fall and water was at a premium, and it wasnt unusual for guides to miscalculate and hit a rock. But when he heard a series of mishaps-- pock-pock-pock , rock-rock-rock--he glanced up from his knot. The white fiberglass drift boat was coming right at him, sidewise, bumping along the river rocks in a shallow current. No one was at the oars. In fact, no one seemed to be in the boat at all. Farkus squinted and cursed. If the boat continued on its path it would hit him, maybe knock him right off his feet. Farkus couldnt swim, and if his waders filled with water and he was sucked into that deep pool under the bridge ... He uneasily shuffled a few steps back. The river rocks were slick and the current pushed steadily at his legs. The boat kept coming and seemed to pick up speed. He looked around at the bank, then at the bridge, hoping someone would be there to help. But no one was there. At the last second, before the boat hit him from the side, Farkus cursed again and managed to turn toward it and brace himself with both feet. His fly rod dropped into the water at his side as he reached out with both hands-- "Goddammit!" he cried out--to grasp the gunwales of the oncoming boat and stop its momentum. The boat thumped heavily against his palms and he felt the soles of his boots slip and he was pushed a few feet backward. Somehow, though, his right boot wedged between two heavy rocks and stopped fast. So did the boat, although he could feel the pressure of it building, wanting to knock him down. He was sick about his lost fly rod, and thought that if nothing else he could wrestle the boat to shore and sell it for three or four grand, because he sure as hell wasnt going to return it to the idiot who let it get away from him in the first place. As he stood there in the river, straining against the pressure, he realized it was harder work than it should have been. There was real weight inside the boat, but he was at an angle, bent forward with his head down and his arms straining and outstretched, so he couldnt rise up and look inside without losing his balance and his footing. Over the next ten minutes, muscles trembling, he worked the boat downstream and closer to the bank. Finally, he stepped into a back eddy of calmer water with a sandy bottom and pulled the boat into it as well. Sweat coursed down his neck, and his thigh muscles twitched with pain. Then he looked over the gunwale into the bottom of the boat and said, "Jesus Christ!" Hed never seen so much blood. 1 THE EVENING BEFORE NATE ROMANOWSKI approached the stand of willows from the north with a grim set to his face and a falcon on his fist. Something was going to die. It was an hour until dusk in the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains, near the North Fork of the Twelve Sleep River. Storm clouds that had scudded across the big sky all day now bunched to the southeast as if theyd been herded, and they squeezed out intermittent waves of snow pellets that rattled across the dry grass and shivered the dead leaves. A slight breeze hung low to the ground and ferried both the scent of sage and the watery smell of the river through the lowland brush. The peregrine falcon was blinded with a leather hood topped by a stiff white bristle of pronghorn antelope hair. The bird sat still and upright, secured to the falconers hand by thin leather jesses tied to its talons and looped through his gloved fingers. The falcon, Nate thought, was still and regal and hungry--tightly packed natural explosives encased by feathers, just waiting for a fuse to be lit. Although slightly less than twenty-four inches tall, the female he held, once released, was the fastest species on the planet, capable of speeds during its hunting dive of more than two hundred miles an hour. When it balled its talons and struck a bird in flight with that velocity, the result was a concussive explosion of blood, bones, and feathers that still took Nates breath away. The falcon, like all his raptors over the years, had no name. And every time he released one to hunt there was a chance she would fly away and simply never return. He slowed his pace and listened as he approached the wall of willows. Through the brush was a shallow, spring-fed pond not more than three acres across. It was hard to see from the ground but was obvious from the air, and it was the only substantial body of water for miles around except for the river itself. Therefore, it attracted passing waterfowl. And when the breeze shifted he could hear them: the rhythmic, almost subsonic clucking of paddling ducks. The peregrine heard them, too, and responded with an instinctive tightening of her talons on his hand. Nate raised the bird so he could whisper directly into her hood, "Theyre here." NATE WAS TALL and ropy, with long limbs and icy blue eyes set in a hawklike wind-burned face. The hair hed cut and dyed months before was growing back long and blond but hadnt reached its customary ponytail length. He wore stained camo cargo pants, laced outfitter boots, a faded U.S. Air Force Academy hooded sweatshirt, and a thick canvas Carhartt vest. Strapped to his rib cage on his left side, between the sweatshirt and the vest, was a scoped five-shot .500 Wyoming Express revolver. A three-inch braid of jet-black human hair was attached to the thick muzzle by a leather string. He reached across his body with his right hand and gently untied the falcons hood and slipped it off. The peregrine cocked her head at him for a moment, then returned to profile. The single eye he could see was black, piercing, and Details ISBN0425250652 Author C.J. Box Short Title FORCE OF NATURE Language English ISBN-10 0425250652 ISBN-13 9780425250655 Media Book Format Mass Market Paperback DEWEY FIC Residence Cheyenne, WY, US Year 2013 Publication Date 2013-03-05 Pages 464 Series Joe Pickett Novels (Paperback) Series Number 12 Publisher G.P. Putnams Sons Country of Publication United States AU Release Date 2013-03-05 NZ Release Date 2013-03-05 US Release Date 2013-03-05 UK Release Date 2013-03-05 Imprint G P Putnams Sons Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:50939920;

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