In the Blood (terminal List, #5)

The fifth installment in Jack Carr's Terminal List series follows former Navy SEAL James Reece as he hunts the sniper who killed his teammate while uncovering a Russian conspiracy targeting his life.

The novel opens in Burkina Faso, where Aliya Galin, an assassin for the Mossad, Israel's intelligence service, boards an Air France flight under a French alias after completing a sanctioned killing. Nizar Kattan, a Syrian sniper and mercenary, orchestrates the shoot-down from a nearby position, directing local recruits to fire surface-to-air missiles at the aircraft. All 129 people on board die. Kattan holds a contract to kill James Reece and needs Reece dead because Reece has been hunting him. A mysterious handler in a wheelchair connected Kattan with his partner, Jean-Pierre Le Drian, a former French Foreign Legion mercenary, and facilitated the operation.

In Montana, Reece lives on the Hastings family ranch, training with his close friend and former SEAL teammate Raife Hastings. When a news report displays the victims' faces, Reece recognizes the face of "Mélanie Cotillard" as Aliya. A flashback to 2008 Baghdad reveals their bond: Aliya served as a Mossad liaison secretly embedded within the CIA. After a car bomb wounded her, Reece carried her to a military hospital. Believing she was dying, Aliya confessed her Mossad affiliation and asked Reece to tell her family she was doing her work "for us," meaning for Israel.

In Moscow, Mikhail Gromyko, director of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), reveals the deeper stakes. Gromyko, secretly battling cancer, fears a list compiled by Reece's father, Thomas Reece, a former CIA officer the Russians killed. The list is locked in a safe-deposit box whose location died with Thomas Reece, but Gromyko worries James may possess the key. He and Pavel Dashkov, director of Russia's domestic security service (FSB), have set a plan in motion to eliminate Reece.

Before departing Montana, Reece receives counsel from Caroline Hastings, Raife's mother, who urges him to complete his mission but to eventually forgive and return to Katie Buranek, his journalist girlfriend. Reece promises, though he privately fingers a safe-deposit box key and cryptic note left by his father.

At CIA headquarters, Victor Rodriguez, director of the Special Activities Center, the CIA's covert action arm, confirms that the National Security Agency (NSA) has linked Kattan to the shoot-down. The intelligence connects the killer of Reece's slain former teammate Freddy Strain to Aliya's death. President Alec Christensen authorizes lethal action and directs Reece to a classified facility at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. The president also harbors an undisclosed ulterior motive for the visit. Deep underground at Lackland, Reece encounters Alice, a quantum-based artificial intelligence capable of monitoring global electronic communications. Alice locates Kattan in Burkina Faso by tracking Le Drian's phone signal.

In Africa, Reece learns that a CIA-led strike force has captured Kattan. Aboard the transport helicopter, a local operator secretly recruited by Russia attempts to assassinate Reece. Reece kills the attacker, but the gunfire disables the aircraft. Kattan frees himself using a hidden razor blade, seizes a grenade, and escapes during the ensuing crash. Reece survives by throwing a body atop the grenade to absorb the blast.

The hunt shifts to Israel. At Mossad headquarters, Ronen Katz, director of Caesarea, the Mossad's assassination branch, assigns an escort to take Reece to the Golan Heights, along Israel's border with Syria, to meet Aliya's sister Shiri Galin. Shiri is raising four children, her own two and Aliya's two, and is furious over her sister's death. That evening, a Syrian-Hezbollah assault force attacks Shiri's house through a cross-border tunnel. Hezbollah is a militant group allied with Syria and Iran, but this force was secretly dispatched by the Russians through the Wagner Group, a mercenary proxy network. The attackers carry Reece's military photo, confirming he is the primary target. Shiri is shot in the back. Reece fights through the assault with Galil rifles while his escort, Tuvia Yatom, a one-eyed former counterterrorism operator, provides covering fire. Israeli Yamam counterterrorism teams arrive by helicopter and destroy the enemy position. The four children survive in a bomb shelter, but a teenage suicide bomber detonates his explosive vest inside the damaged house, killing Shiri and Tuvia.

A follow-up Mossad briefing links the attackers to companies tied to Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Wagner Group. Katz identifies the wheelchair handler as Saul Abelard, a former Mossad operative paralyzed by a sniper in Berlin in 1986, now operating as a freelance broker from a bookstore in Turin, Italy.

In Turin, Reece meets Abelard, who claims he connected Kattan with Le Drian but had no knowledge of the plane attack. A warning from Alice prompts Reece to arm himself moments before boys unknowingly deliver a bomb-laden backpack. Reece locks the device in Abelard's safe before it detonates, partially containing the blast. A seven-man assault team organized by Oleg Berzin, a retired operative of the GRU, Russia's military intelligence service, converges on the shop. Reece fights through the streets with a shotgun, killing six attackers. He pursues Oleg into a butcher shop for a brutal fight in a pitch-black meat locker before Abelard arrives and shoots the Russian from behind.

Under chemical interrogation, the dying Oleg reveals that Gromyko ordered Reece's assassination and identifies Gromyko as the former KGB, or Soviet intelligence, officer who paralyzed Abelard 35 years earlier. Before dying, Oleg asks Reece to ensure his savings reach his family.

Reece travels to Montenegro for his final confrontation with Kattan. Using intelligence from the Bratva, the Russian criminal network, and confirmed by Alice, he locates the sniper in the Durmitor mountains near Žabljak. Kattan has prepared an ambush with a decoy sniper position to lure Reece into his crosshairs while Le Drian tracks Reece on foot. Reece outmaneuvers them both: He ambushes and kills Le Drian, then creates his own counter-decoy by positioning Le Drian's corpse behind a rifle with his own Rolex on its wrist and rigging the weapon to fire remotely. The shot draws Kattan's fire from over a thousand meters. Convinced Reece is dead, Kattan withdraws to his vehicle. Wearing Le Drian's clothes and carrying the mercenary's severed head, Reece confronts Kattan. When a hidden accomplice emerges with a rifle, Abelard, positioned on a hillside days earlier, kills the man with a single shot. Reece whispers "I forgive you" and kills Kattan with his dead teammate Freddy's tomahawk.

Reece and Abelard travel to Moscow, where Alice manipulates Russian communications to lure Gromyko to Gorky Park under false pretenses. Reece garrotes the SVR director while Abelard confronts the man who crippled him. Gromyko reveals that Russia wants Reece dead because of "the list" his father compiled but insists the secret died with Thomas Reece. He bites down on a cyanide capsule rather than submit to further questioning. Abelard departs for Israel, and Alice scrubs their identities for safe passage out of Russia.

Back in Montana, Reece prepares to propose to Katie. As he kneels with a ring, her phone receives a text from "Alice" despite there being no cell service: "Turn on the radio." Over the ranch radio, Raife delivers a code word, followed by Jonathan Hastings, Raife's father, ordering Reece to stand down. Agents from the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) surround the cabin. On television, President Christensen has been assassinated during a Veterans Day parade, his motorcade destroyed by explosively formed penetrators. FBI agents arrest Reece for conspiracy to assassinate the president. Before surrendering, he presses the engagement ring and the safe-deposit box key into Katie's hand, his thoughts turning to his father's letter and the secrets it may hold.