Eagle Strike
Eagle Strike is the fourth book in the Alex Rider series written by the British author Anthony Horowitz. The book was published in the United Kingdom on September 4, 2003, and in the United States on April 12, 2004. It is set mostly in Southern France, Paris, Amsterdam and London. Eagle Strike follows Alex Rider as he goes rogue from MI6 to stop a madman celebrity from launching the United States' arsenal of nuclear missile at drug-producing countries across the world in an attempt to stop the drug trade.
Plot
In a prelude chapter that takes place fifteen years before the main series, two unnamed assassins travel through the Amazon jungle in search of their target, a major drug lord known only as 'the Commander'. Locating him, they prepare to take him out from his secret hideout before he boards a helicopter. However, a black widow spider lands on the neck of Cossack, compromising the mission. Changing his position, Hunter manages to hit the black widow and take out the target with a single shot from his sniper rifle, leaving Cossack with a scar on his neck. Once escaping, Cossack thanks his partner for saving him before heading back to civilization.After the events of Skeleton Key, Alex Rider is on holiday in the south of France with his friend Sabina Pleasure and her parents, where he spots Yassen Gregovich at the beach and follows him, but stops after a close encounter that endangers him. Later, the house that Sabina and her family are staying in explodes, injuring Sabina's father, Edward, in the process. Convinced it was Yassen, Alex locates him on a yacht but is captured by Yassen's associate, Franco, and Yassen sends him to fight a bull in a bullring. Alex manages to escape from the bullfight and discovers that the man Yassen was recently in contact with was a billionaire pop star-turned environmentalist, named Damian Cray.
Failing to convince MI6, Alex starts his own investigations on Cray and attends Cray's launch of a new gaming system called "Gameslayer", and its flagship game, Feathered Serpent, in which he participates in a demonstration. His suspicions about Cray grow as the next day Alex hears about the death of a journalist who questioned Cray, at the launch, over the violence of the game, which is set in Aztec times and involves science fiction themes, implying that their gods were aliens. He then locates a journalist named Marc Antonio, a friend of Edward Pleasure's, in Paris. Antonio reveals that he has been investigating Cray and a deal he made with a man called Charlie Roper, an American NSA agent. Antonio is killed by Cray's men, while Alex manages to escape. Alex sneaks into Cray Software Technologies' headquarters in Amsterdam, where he hears Roper and Cray talking about a flash drive, before they start arguing about the deal. Roper is then trapped in a room, and two million dollars worth of nickels is poured on top of him, both paying and killing him.
Cray catches Alex as he tries to sneak away and puts him in a real-life version of Feathered Serpent. Alex manages to escape and steals Cray's flash drive. A pursuit breaks out between Alex and Cray's men across the streets of Amsterdam, which Alex narrowly survives, thanks to a bicycle laden with gadgets, courtesy of MI6 gadget-master Smithers. In response to Alex stealing the flash drive, Cray captures Sabina at a hospital when she goes to visit her father, and holds her for ransom. He explains to Alex, via a new flatscreen TV and webcam installed at Alex's house in Chelsea, that if he does not surrender himself and the flash drive, Yassen will kill Sabina, and then hunt down everybody Alex knows, before finally killing Alex. With no alternative, Alex goes to Cray's convent home and attempts to force Cray to release Sabina, but Cray refuses and forces Alex to hand over the flash drive. Over afternoon tea in the garden, Cray then explains his reasons for attempting to have Sabina's father killed and having Antonio killed.
Cray reveals his plan, code-named "Eagle Strike": he will board Air Force One and use its missile room to launch a total of twenty-five nuclear missiles at major drug-running countries around the globe to eradicate the drug trade, at the cost of millions of innocent lives. Leaving Sabina and Alex locked in a cellar together, Sabina and Alex apologize to each other and reconcile. Yassen comes in and forces the two to put on hazard suits. After creating a diversion using an exploding plane full of fake nerve gas, Cray, Yassen, Alex, and Sabina board Air Force One at Heathrow International Airport. Cray drags Alex into the missile room, plugs in the flash drive and activates the missiles, before asking the pilot, Henryk, to fly them to Russia, where Yassen will be honoured as a hero. After Sabina insults Cray, Cray demands Yassen to kill Sabina and Alex, which he refuses, saying that he does not kill children. Yassen is then killed by Cray before Cray shoots at Alex.
Sabina goes berserk and attacks Cray. Before Cray can kill her, Alex, saved by a bulletproof cycling jersey, gets up and fights Cray. After an intense fight that progresses across the entire plane, Sabina and Alex manage to push Cray out and into the jet engine, vaporising him instantly. The engine is destroyed after a drinks trolley is also sucked in, causing the plane to lose control and crash before takeoff. Alex and Sabina survive the crash, but Alex is wounded and Sabina is forced to use the self-destruct button in the missile room to destroy the missiles. As Yassen lays dying, he reveals to Alex that he knew his father, John Rider, and he had worked with him as an assassin. He even shows a scar on his neck, which shows that Alex's father had saved him once. Yassen then tells Alex he must go to Venice, and find "Scorpia", before he dies.
At the end of the novel, Alex is visited by Mrs. Jones, who apologises for not believing him, and questions him about the final interaction between him and Yassen. She asks whether Yassen told him anything. Lying to her that Yassen shared nothing important, Alex vows to discover the truth of Yassen's story and prepares to find Scorpia. Later, he meets with Sabina, who tells him that she and her family are moving to San Francisco. She kisses him and the two go their separate ways.