Dead Hand

9780312879198

0312879199

When Harold Coyle sits down to write a novel, you know the story will have a prophetic quality coupled with the ominous ring of todays headlines. From the New York Times bestselling Team Yankee to the frightfully realistic Gods Children Coyle has written novels that have rightfully earned him the title, the master of military fiction. He more than lives up to this reputation with Dead Hand, a novel of apocalyptic proportions about a world that waits on edge as mother nature triggers a relic from the Cold War. At the height of the Soviet Regime, the Russian leadership believed they faced potential nuclear strikes, capable of knocking out their counterstrike capacity. To foil this threat, they designed a system called Dead Hand, a method of retaliation that could be relied upon even if every person in Russia was incinerated. The perfect Doomsday Machine, except every system has a flaw When an unforeseen asteroid strikes Siberia with the force of a thousand Hiroshimas, Dead Hand is triggered, its fail-safe controls commandeered by ultra-nationalist General Likatchev. Likatchev threatens to topple the government in Moscow and his loyalists block all attempts to stop him. In a hair-raising effort to prevent a global holocaust, a NATO special operations unit is dropped into Siberia, a region ravaged by freezing snow and the hellish aftermath of the asteroid impact. Simultaneously an action-filled adventure and a study of the excessive Russian national pride, which continues to hamper US/Russian relations, Dead Hand once again proves Coyles mastery of military affair, and his ability to see tomorrows headlines today.