Stop at Nothing Read online

  #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of James Patterson’s Michael Bennett series Michael Ledwidge launches an adrenaline-fueled globe-trotting thriller series for fans of James Patterson, Lee Child and David Baldacci.

  When a Gulfstream jet goes down in the Bahamas carrying a fortune in cash and ill-gotten diamonds, expat diving instructor Michael Gannon is the only person on the scene. Assuming himself the beneficiary of a drug deal gone bad, Gannon thinks he’s home free with the sudden windfall until he realizes he forgot to ask one simple question.

  Who were the six dead men on the plane?

  Gannon soon learns the answer to that fateful question as he is thrust into an increasingly complex and deadly game of cat and mouse with a group of the world’s most powerful and dangerous men who will stop at nothing to catch him.

  But as the walls close in, Gannon reveals a few secrets of his own. Before he retired to the islands, Gannon had another life, one with a lethal set of skills that he must now call back to the surface if he wants to make it out alive.

  As a decade-long James Patterson writing partner, Michael Ledwidge is a pro at writing fast-paced, in-the-moment prose, tightly choreographed action set pieces and plot twists that drop at exactly the right moment. With this novel, he kicks off an unstoppable, gripping new thriller series.

  Praise for Stop at Nothing

  “I’m not sure how he did it—it seems to defy science—but Michael Ledwidge figured out a way to write a book using PURE, DISTILLED ADRENALINE.

  Michael Gannon is a fantastic protagonist, destined for the pantheon of characters we love to follow through countless adventures. Here’s hoping for many more.”

  —ROB HART, author of The Warehouse

  “In Stop at Nothing, Michael Ledwidge gives us sharply drawn characters in a tense, FAST-PACED ADVENTURE that keeps the reader entertained from the intriguing start to the wild finish.”

  —THOMAS PERRY, author of The Burglar

  “Stop at Nothing is a smart, brawny thriller that moves fast and surprises often. The action is tense, the characters are surely drawn, and a wonderful sense of authenticity drives the story. Best of all, the writing is assured and stylish. Stop at Nothing is A HIGH-SPEED ROLLER COASTER that will carry you away.”

  —T. Jefferson Parker, author of The Last Good Guy

  “I literally could not put down this book. I loved it.

  Stop at Nothing is a timely, perfectly-paced, CHARACTER-DRIVEN THRILLER with fun twists and intense action. Michael Gannon is the next great hero in popular fiction.”

  —ALLISON BRENNAN, author of The Third to Die

  “Stop at Nothing is my kind of book. Shades of John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee. Great characters, lots of action, and a razor-sharp plot. Good stuff. Really good.”

  —MARC CAMERON, author of Tom Clancy: Oath of Office

  Also by Michael Ledwidge

  The Narrowback

  Bad Connection

  Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

  Cowritten with James Patterson

  The Quickie

  Now You See Her

  Zoo

  Step on a Crack

  Run for Your Life

  Worst Case

  Tick Tock

  I, Michael Bennett

  Gone

  Burn

  Alert

  Bullseye

  Chase

  The Dangerous Days of Daniel X

  STOP AT NOTHING

  Michael Ledwidge

  A Novel

  About the Author

  Michael Ledwidge is the writer of seventeen novels, the last dozen being New York Times bestsellers cowritten with one of the world’s bestselling authors, James Patterson. With twenty million copies in print, their Michael Bennett series is the highest-selling New York City detective series of all time. One of their novels, Zoo, became a three-season CBS television series. He lives in Connecticut.

  The author would like to thank the following for their professionalism, advice and belief in this book:

  Josh Getzler and everyone at the Hannigan Getzler Agency

  And especially Peter Joseph and his excellent team at Hanover Square Press

  Contents

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Part Two

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Part Three

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Part Four

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Epilogue

  PART ONE

  Catch of the Day

  1

  When the sun started to go down, Gannon was out alone on his boat in the Atlantic thirty miles northwest of Little Abaco.

  His boat was called the Donegal Rambler, and it was a forty-foot Delta diving boat with covered seating at the back and tank racks that could hold twenty cylinders. But he’d removed most of the tanks when he’d headed out that morning, and in their p
lace he had seven sea rods set up on outrigger mounts.

  Up in the slowly chugging boat’s open flying bridge, Gannon stood with his back to the wheel, carefully watching where the rods’ green-tinged monofilament lines trailed back into the boat’s bubbling wake like the strings of a submerged puppet.

  The lines were baited with mackerel and squid and jig lures, and he was trolling them along at a steady nine knots to make them appear to be a swimming school of juicy fish.

  Or at least that was the game plan, anyway.

  Gannon folded his big forearms as the Rambler’s two inboards purred steadily under his Converse low tops.

  He’d been out since early morning, stalking the deep Atlantic falloff, and so far hadn’t gotten even a bounce on any of the rods.

  A dwindling plastic sleeve of sunflower seeds sat in a drink holder at his left elbow, and he lifted it out and shook a few into his mouth. He was half-turned, spitting the shells into a waste bucket he kept beside the captain’s seat, when he saw that the falling sun was about to depart behind a bank of dark clouds.

  Gannon squinted down at the Simrad depth finder.

  The best shot for a sword to hit was at the tide changes, especially high to low like it was now.

  He looked back up at the sky and frowned.

  Time and light were running out on him.

  He was pondering this and just about to spit another shell into the bucket in frustration when the closest of the starboard rods whipped down and bounced back, and the air suddenly filled with the sweet zipping sound of eighty-pound test paying out.

  Sunflower seeds went flying as Gannon slipped the boat into Neutral and flashed down the ladder without touching the rungs. As he grabbed the big, frantically unreeling rod up out of the mount, he smiled at the heavy tug on it. Swords usually liked to nibble first, but this one apparently had just gone for it.

  He gripped hard on the rod and began reeling, rapidly taking up slack, racing the now-quickly-ascending fish to make sure it didn’t get a chance to unhook.

  The fish jumped for the first time thirty feet from the boat twenty minutes later. It was a gigantic white marlin, long and shining, with a dark blue bill and a beautiful Mohawk-like blue comb.

  Even for an experienced fisherman, it was no small feat to hook a billfish during the day, and Gannon watched in boyish wide-eyed awe as it arced through the gold-tinged air, its body and tail trembling like a sprung diving board.

  Then the hundred-pound-plus sport fish slapped back down into a swell with a loud explosion of water, and Gannon got giddily spinning again, sweat pouring off his face, the big rod bowing almost in half as he cranked and yanked.

  He was tight on the fish and had it about twenty feet away and closing when it got stupid with panic and ran under the plunging bow. Gannon, pretty hyped up on adrenaline himself, immediately ran forward with the rod so the line wouldn’t get tangled.

  “Dammit!” he yelled as the bow of the boat bobbed up, and he felt the line immediately snag on something. A split second later, there was a loud crack, and all Gannon could do was watch as his snapped-free UHF radio antenna hit off the bow rail before it disappeared into the water.

  Before he could even begin to deal with that, the fish spurted again and came back around to starboard and resurfaced ten feet from the boat. Gannon blinked sweat out of his stinging eyes and then whistled as he got a good look at it. He’d caught bigger sailfish before, but this was no contest the biggest white marlin he had ever hooked.

  He was piecing together how to bring the monster around to the boat’s port-side diving door when it suddenly twisted and went back under. That was when Gannon dropped the rod altogether. The reel clattered against the deck as he grabbed up the thick monofilament line with his gloved hands and began tugging the huge fish in hand over hand.

  He had it just off the hull, holding the banjo-tight line firmly with his left hand, and was kneeling down on the deck lifting the gaff with his right when he felt it give one more mighty thrashing spasm.

  “No!” Gannon screamed out as the frenzying line gave a funny jerk and the weight suddenly and completely disappeared on him.

  He groaned as he stood and lunged over the gunwale with the gaff. But the huge fish was already gone. Gannon watched brokenhearted as its immense beautiful tail, already ten feet deep and counting, waved bye-bye down in the clear water as it dived.

  Spit the hook a foot away! Gannon thought in agony as he slammed the gaff down loudly against the deck.

  He glanced forward at the jagged, now-useless piece of metal clamped to the bow rail that used to be his radio antenna.

  After busting up his boat!

  He lifted the sea rod and reeled in nothing and shook his head in furious disgust as he stared at the empty hooks.

  “Fish one. Gannon less than zippo,” he said and after a moment began laughing as he looked for a towel.

  He’d been a fisherman all his life, and it was either that or weep, he knew.

  2

  The sunset sky was glowing like a sheet of gold leaf by the time Gannon reeled in everything and got all the gear and tackle packed up and stowed tight.

  After he washed up in the head, he went back up into the flying bridge and set the GPS for Cooperstown on Little Abaco to the south. Cooperstown was actually a little out of his way as he lived farther south and east out on Eleuthera Island. But with the radio antenna MIA, he wanted to be near shore by the time it got too dark.

  He slipped his face shield up and his Costa polarized shades on and opened the boat wide to about thirty knots. Through the breeze, the sky began to lose its glow, and the endless plain of water took on the dark metallic tone of tarnished silver. Even for a Monday, the fishing lanes northwest of the Bahamas were deader than normal, the horizon empty in every direction. In fact, the only other vessel he got a glimpse of all day was a faint outline of a container heading west to Florida that morning when he started out.

  His thoughts drifted to dinner. There was leftover lasagna in his fridge that he could nuke. Instead of fresh-grilled swordfish, he thought, shaking his defeated head in the rush of the wind. Oh, well. At least the beers would be cold.

  It was about fifteen miles due east of Cooperstown when he saw something low in the sky off in front of the boat. He thought it was just a shine of light off a cloud. But then he saw that the light was moving, and he jacked up his shades onto his forehead, cupping his hands above his eyes.

  Out from the postcard-Caribbean gold of the sky to the left came a plane, a small corporate jet plane, sleek and shiny and pale white. He watched it coming steadily due west at a right angle to the bow. He gauged it to be about four miles to the south. It seemed to be flying quite low. He waited for it to pull up, but it didn’t. It kept zipping westward going fast, low and straight as a line drive.

  He eased off on the throttle and grabbed his binoculars, putting his elbows up on the console to steady the view. Then he thumbed in the focus and something in the pit of his stomach went cold.

  The plane was too low, flying maybe a hundred feet off the deck. It was also going way too fast like a stunt jet plane at an air show. It almost looked like a guided cruise missile rocketing just above the surface of the water.

  Where had it come from? Gannon wondered, turning at the waist to keep it in the glass. There weren’t any airports to the east. Hell, there wasn’t anything east of the Bahamas. Maybe it had just left out of Marsh Harbour Airport?

  It was directly off the front of his bow when he realized he couldn’t hear its engines. Instead of a rumble, there was only a kind of whistling, a low whisper very faint in the distance of metal scratching air.

  Gannon watched as the plane descended even lower. It had to be twenty feet off the water now. Maybe the pilot was being a hot dog, and in a moment, it would pull up, he thought hopefully.

  Then the eerily whispering plane f
inally ran out of sky.

  Its left wingtip touched down first, sending up a huge fountaining spray of water. In another moment, he watched as its belly struck down. Through the white water it threw up, you could see the fuselage vibrating violently. As it skidded along, a rough crunching, grinding sound started in the distance, like denim tearing. Fragments of metal began to shed off into the air behind it.

  Even as Gannon watched this, he hoped dumbly that maybe it would be okay.

  Like the Sully guy in NYC, he thought, as the back of the plane suddenly began to fishtail.

  It swung all the way around backward and kept going. It was about to complete a full three-sixty when there was a rise in the tearing sound’s pitch, and the plane went airborne again.

  In the frozen silence, Gannon winced as he watched the spinning hundred-foot-long aircraft wobble up through the air sideways like a boomerang flung by a drunk.

  Then there was a sound like a bomb going off, and all he could see in the binoculars was a hanging column of pure blinding white.

  3

  “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!” Gannon called into his radio as he immediately throttled up, wheeling toward the crash site. “This is Donegal Rambler, Donegal Rambler, Donegal Rambler. VA number three eight seven five. I am at GPS heading twenty-seven point one-four-nine by seventy-seven point three-one-five. A plane is down! I repeat. A small commercial jet plane has crashed. How many people involved is unknown. Send help. Donegal Rambler is a forty-foot diving boat. Over.”

  He let off the handset’s thumb key. There was nothing but choppy static. He checked to make sure that he was on the Channel 16 distress band then spun the volume dial as high up as it would go. The static only came in louder.

  “Mayday! Mayday!” he was saying again when he remembered the snapped antenna.

  He cursed as he roughly clipped the useless handset back into its holder. When he glanced forward over the dip and rise of the console, he made out the plane’s tail fin on the horizon. Seeing that it was upright, a brief flutter of hope rose in his chest.

  Then he looked with the binoculars.

  No!

  The plane had snapped in half. You could see its pale white tail section with its huge high fin and about twenty feet of it. Other than that, there was nothing. He panned over the water left and right. There was no nose, no wings. The whole front part of the aircraft was completely gone.