Starstruck - Couverture souple

It's one of the stealthiest, most dangerous underwater warships ever built... silent at less than five knots and capable of a massive nuclear warhead punch. It's the weapon every Third World dictator covets. It's the 240-foot-long Russian Kilo Class submarine, and Russia seems perfectly willing to sell it to anyone -- including those governments that frequently violate international law.

Whenever Moscow sanctions the sale of the sinister Kilo to a Middle Eastern nation, the Pentagon reacts with barely controlled fury. But Kilo Class, the chilling new novel by Patrick Robinson, posits the far greater but no less real threat -- Russia's acceptance of an order for 10 newly built Kilos... from the Chinese.

The US Department of Defense is well aware of China's intention to shut the US Carrier Battle Groups out of the Taiwan Straits and then to reclaim, by military force if necessary, the rich independent island that sits only 100 miles off China's eastern coastline.

A strike force of patrolling Kilos could achieve that objective for Beijing, and two of the 10 Kilos have already been delivered. Kilo Class is about US attempts to foil delivery of the other eight. The President's new National Security Adviser, the irascible Texas admiral Arnold Morgan, prepares to send the US Navy's deadliest Black Ops hit squads deep into dark Russian waters. Their missions are executed under the most crushing code of secrecy. One mistake could literally start World War III. The decision is sanctioned by the President of the United States. Now, the world's three most powerful nations silently lock horns -- Russia, determined to deliver the submarines to Shanghai for a payment of billions of dollars; China, determined to reclaim Taiwan by frightening off the US aircraft carriers; and the United States, brutally determined that those Kilos will never fly the flag of China above their bridges.

Out in the terrible depths of the icy North Atlantic, the US Black Ops nuclear submarine awaits its chance, guided by the silent American satellites passing overhead. Deep inside the remote waterways of northern Russia, a team of elite Navy SEALs prepare an extraordinary operation of destruction and mayhem. Moscow brings in an iron cordon of an escort for the submarine deliveries, as Commander Boomer Dunning, the Black Ops captain from Cape Cod, races his 7,000-ton nuclear vessel beneath the polar ice cap to head them off.

Kilo Class  is a taut, page-turning techno-thriller of the highest quality, grounded in fact and ringing with unmistakable authenticity. it is the story of a breathtaking race against time. Peppered with unforgettable characters, it takes the reader into the heart of the control room of a hunter-killer Los Angeles submarine. Most important, it reveals the cold-blooded brutality of the United States Navy, operating at the top of the game.

Silent and undetectable, the Russian-built Kilo-Class submarine is the only true enemy of the American Carrier Battle Groups -- and it is up for sale. Having ordered ten from Russia, who are in dire need of foreign currency, China primes its first three, ready to take control of the Taiwan Strait. Desperate to safeguard its ally on China's doorstep and stop the arrival of the Kilo-Class subs, America launches itself into a secret war, led by the President's National Security Advisor, Admiral Arnold Morgan. As the battle over peace, power and money is played out in the icy depths of the world's oceans and the hinterland of Russia's rivers and lakes, it becomes clear that there can only be one victor ...