Never Mind, We’ll Do It Ourselves: How a Team of Renegades Broke Rules, Shattered Barriers, and Changed the Face of Warfare Fore

The Inside Story of How a CIA Agent and an Air Force Officer Joined Forces to Develop America's Most Powerful Tool in the War on Terror.

Predator Rising is the character-driven story behind the origins of the Predator drone program and the dawn of unmanned warfare. A firsthand account told by an Air Force team leader and a CIA team leader, Predator Rising takes the reader into the back offices and secret government hangars where the robotic revolution went from a mad scientist idea to a pivotal part of global air power.

The story will reveal the often conflicting perspectives between the defense and intelligence communities and put you inside places like the CIA's counterterrorism center on the morning of 9/11. Through the eyes of the men and women who lived it, you will experience the hunt for Osama Bin Laden and the evolution of a program from passive surveillance to the complex hunter-killers that hang above the battlespace like ghosts. Poised at the junction between The Right Stuff andThe Bourne Identity, Predator Rising will document the way a group of cowboys, rogues, and bandits broke rules and defied convention to change the shape of modern warfare.

Alec Bierbauer has spent a lifetime conducting counterterrorism and counterintelligence operations in venues ranging from Bosnia to Yemen and Afghanistan. With an emphasis on integrating emerging technologies into high-risk special programs, he was the CIA’s point man in the development of the Predator program. Bierbauer resides in Huntsville, Alabama.

Col. Mark Cooter (USAF, Ret.), a distinguished Air Force intelligence officer, has operational experience in DESERT STORM, the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya operations. As a Predator squadron operations officer, Mark led Predator programs from their near inception in Bosnia through joint Air Force/CIA operations in Afghanistan and beyond. Col. Cooter lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

Michael Marks has worked around the world within the US intelligence and special operations community, a career that stretches from the jungles of Nicaragua to the mountains of Afghanistan. A bestselling author, his books have been adopted by venues such as the FBI Academy and the Army Asymmetric Warfare Group. Marks resides in New York City.