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.

In one bloody night, three of Washington’s most powerful politicians are executed with surgical precision. Their assassins then deliver a shocking ultimatum to the American government: set aside partisan politics and restore power to the people. No one, they warn, is out of their reach—not even the president. A joint FBI-CIA task force reveals the killers are elite military commandos, but no one knows exactly who they are or when they will strike next.

Court Gentry is known as The Gray Man—a legend in the covert realm, moving silently from job to job, accomplishing the impossible, and then fading away. And he always hits his target. But there are forces more lethal than Gentry in the world. And in their eyes, Gentry has just outlived his usefulness. Now, he is going to prove that for him, there's no gray area between killing for a living-and killing to stay alive.

On his last combat deployment, Lt. Cmdr. James Reece's entire team was killed in an ambush that also claimed the lives of the aircrew sent in to rescue them. But when those dearest to him are murdered on the day of his homecoming, Reece discovers that this was not an act of war by a foreign enemy but a conspiracy that runs to the highest levels of government. Now, with no family and free from the military's command structure, Reece applies the lessons that he's learned in over a decade of constant warfare toward revenge.

Terroristen dringen ins Weiße Haus ein und nehmen mehrere Dutzend Geiseln. Präsident Robert Hayes gelingt es zwar, sich in einen unterirdischen Bunker zu retten, doch jetzt steckt er in einer tödlichen Falle. Und um ihn zur Aufgabe zu zwingen, beginnen die Fanatiker mit einem Blutbad unter den Gefangenen ... Während die Beamten noch darüber streiten, wie sie mit dem Feind verhandeln sollen, bewegt sich Anti-Terror-Kämpfer Mitch Rapp schon unbemerkt durch die geheimen Gänge des Weißen Hauses, um die Geiseln zu retten.