I reversed the rifle, backed up and fired. I grabbed it, and swung it hard, hitting him in the left shoulder. I threw myself at him again, and he dropped the rifle. When he was half a meter away, I yelled and launched myself at him with the ski poles thrust forward, but he deflected them with the rifle. A man in black wearing a black face mask, his rifle held lightly in his right hand, slipped carefully forward, scanning to the left and to the right. I heard steps crunching toward me in the snow and ducked behind a tree. On the other hand, I hadn’t expected to have to channel the Fourth Mountain Brigade that morning. I wish my gear wasn’t burgundy, I thought. Stepping carefully into the woods, bent almost double, I advanced with a ski pole in each hand. I ripped off my goggles and kicked out of the bindings. Somebody was shooting at me? I bent as far down as I could and snowplowed to the side of the run, stopping just before I got to the trees. Halfway down the piste, something buzzed past my face. As I gathered speed I laughed aloud at the awesome feel of the wind in my face, the best antidote to my time in the Algerian desert I could think of.

The view was spectacular! Snowy hills covered with pine trees stretched away and away. I was among the few early birds on the slopes we were hoping to avoid the rush of celebrities modeling their designer ski togs. She can be reached at Her website is 'About this title' may belong to another edition of this title.Is there life after the CIA? I wondered as I stamped my foot into the bindings of first one ski and then the other. She’s busy on Lee Carruthers #3, Hong Kong Central. She belongs to Sisters in Crime, the Guppies, and the Chinese Military History Society.

She lives with her husband in a 200-year-old farmhouse in southern Pennsylvania. She also likes to read Vietnamese history and Asian history in general, as well as military history. She writes thrillers and likes to read them. When she’s not traveling, she is writing or reading. When she’s climbing the first hill in Istanbul to Topkapi Palace, strolling around Hoan Kiem Lake in Hanoi, or exploring the back streets of Kowloon, she is not just having fun, she’s looking for locations for her next novel. It’s no surprise that she likes to travel. Before settling on the Mason-Dixon line in southern Pennsylvania, she lived in Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Georgia, Wisconsin, Ohio, South Carolina, Maryland, in Manila, and on Okinawa. MARILYNN LAREW is a historian who has published in such disparate fields as American colonial and architectural history, Vietnamese military history, and terrorism, and has taught courses in each of them in the University of Maryland System.

Dead in Dubai by Marilynn Larew