A New York Times bestseller with “fast pacing, tight plotting, international intrigue” (Cleveland Plain Dealer): When a World War II–era aircraft is discovered in the Arctic, it reveals a secret Soviet anthrax plot… “Don’t ever begin a Ludlum novel if you have to go to work the next day” (Chicago Sun-Times).
A covert ops team investigates a Soviet strategic bomber—and walks straight into a political firestorm—in this thriller of shifting loyalties, mysterious enemies, and deadly secrets in the Arctic.
On a remote island in the Canadian Arctic, researchers discover the wreckage of a mysterious World War II-era aircraft, a discovery that forces the Russian Federation into a shocking admission. The unmarked plane is a Soviet strategic bomber that disappeared with its crew more than fifty years ago while carrying two metric tons of weaponized anthrax.
Desperate to prevent a political and diplomatic firestorm, the U.S. president dispatches a Covert-One team led by Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith to the crash site. But others have reached the frigid, windswept island first, including an international arms dealer and his crew of vicious mercenaries. As for the Russians, they are lying: a second, even deadlier secret rests within the hulk of the lost bomber, a secret the Russians are willing to kill to protect. Trapped in a polar wilderness, Smith and his team find themselves fighting a savage war on two front—against an enemy they can see and another hiding within their own ranks.
