Cold Zero: About the Memoir

With the immediacy and force of a sniper's strike, Cold Zero: Inside the FBI Hostage Rescue Team 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 large-scale emergencies in the United States and around the world. Whitcomb is the first HRT member ever to write about his extraordinary 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.

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.

Publication
Originally published by Little, Brown in 2001 in hard cover and as a Time Warner audiobook and eBook. Currently available in paperback.

Commentary
Review critical praise for the novel on the Little, Brown Web site

Excerpt
Read the first chapter of Cold Zero on the Little, Brown Web site