With the immediacy and force of a sniper's strike, Cold Zero is a blistering first-person account of life inside the FBI and its elite Hostage Rescue Team. Of the hundreds of thousands of U.S. law enforcement officers, only 200 have ever been in Christopher Whitcomb's highly trained and specialized branch of the FBI. Equivalent to the Navy's SEALs and the Army's Delta Force, the Hostage Rescue Team is charged with terrorist capture, hostage release, and other emergencies in the United States and around the world. Whitcomb is the first HRT member ever to write about his experience. With breathtaking clarity, Whitcomb describes his journey from civilian to FBI agent and from field agent into the highly competitive HRT--the brutal training, the weapons and tactics, and the unbreakable camaraderie of the HRT. In short order, after joining the HRT in 1991, Whitcomb was sent on missions to: Ruby Ridge. Trained as a sniper, Whitcomb was in position in the first team to surround the cabin and gives an unsparing account of the communications and leadership issues there. Waco. For several excruciating months, Whitcomb took up his position in the Branch Davidian standoff. Day after day he held David Koresh and other gunmen in his crosshairs--only to watch, stunned, the fiery debacle that broke the stalemate. Kosovo. As part of the evidence-gathering FBI mission, Whitcomb saw the aftermath of genocide and the urgency of bearing witness. Whitcomb's frank assessment of these and many other missions is must reading for anyone interested in modern law enforcement and covert operations. Cold Zero is not just a story of missions, weapons, and tactics, though. It is the story of the human being behind the sniper's scope, the people who put on badges and strap on guns to represent the law of the United States. It is a book of rare action and emotion, and one that introduces a remarkable new writer to the world.