In R. J. Pineiro's The Fall, a sci-fi thriller, a man jumps from the upper-most reaches of the atmosphere and vanishes, ending up on an alternate Earth where he died five years earlier.Jack Taylor has always been an adrenaline junkie. As a federal contractor—he does dangerous jobs for the government that fall out of the realm of the SEALS and the Marines. And this next job is right up his alley. Jack has been assigned to test an orbital jump and if it works, the United States government will have a new strategy against enemy countries.Despite Jack's soaring career, his personal life is in shambles. He and his wife Angela are both workaholics and are on the verge of getting a divorce. But the night before his jump, Jack and Angela begin to rekindle their romance and their relationship holds promise for repair. Then comes the day of Jack's big jump. He doesn't burn up like some predicted—instead, he hits the speed of sound and...

As 01-01-00 approaches, Susan Garnett, a senior analyst at the FBI's high-tech crime unit, and Cameron Slater, an anthropologist, must draw on their combined knowledge of ancient glyphs and modern algorithms in order to crack a code hidden in a formidable computer virus. Susan traces the virus's signal to its point of origin, an area near Tikal, the site of one of the largest cities of the ancient Maya. Susan and Cameron travel to the remote jungle, convinced that if they fail to solve the riddles, both ancient and new, before the turn of the new millennium, the virus could trigger a powerful event of global proportions.