The Red Horseman (Jake Grafton) - Softcover

Coonts, Stephen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1476746443 ISBN 13: 9781476746449

Publisher: Gallery Books, 2013

Synopsis

Rear Admiral Jake Grafton must stop a Middle Eastern terrorist group from obtaining nuclear weapons in Moscow and avoid an assassination attempt on his life from rogue conspirators within the CIA before it’s too late.

As the infrastructure of the Soviet Union crumbles before the world’s eyes, twenty thousand tactical nuclear weapons, once under the command of the Soviet military, are up for grabs—and U.S. intelligence believes they may soon appear on the open market.

Rear Admiral Jake Grafton, Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, is dispatched to Moscow. His assignment: ensure that the weapons are destroyed before the disappear into a Middle East terrorist pipeline. But Grafton discovers that unidentified American officials want his mission to fail—and will go to any length of stop it. Meanwhile, off the coast of the Canary Islands, the body of British billionaire and media magnate Nigel Keren has been found floating in the sea near his yacht. Grafton’s contracts in Israeli intelligence have evidence that he was the victim of hit squad from within the CIA. It’s the kind of knowledge that could prove fatal, but Grafton can’t back off: if the freelance operation succeeds, Middle East hostility could explode into an international conflagration. The only thing Grafton knows for sure is that he has been targeted for an assassination, and the conspiracy is clearly stamped: Made in America.

About this title

About the Author:

Stephen Coonts is the author of innumerable New York Times bestsellers, the first of which was the classic flying tale, Flight of the Intruder. Coonts grew up in the coal-mining town of Buckhannon, West Virginia, and served as a pilot in the Navy. He still enjoys flying and tries to do as much of it as possible. Find out more at Coonts.com.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Rear Admiral Jake Grafton, aviator-hero of Coonts's Under Siege (1990), etc., now saves the world from potential Armageddon- -and gets to meet Boris Yeltsin and Saddam Hussein in the bargain. The nearly nonstop action begins when an Israeli spy gives Jake's assistant Toad Tarkington a photo that leads Jake and Toad to suspect a CIA cabal at work in numerous evil deeds, including the murder of publishing magnate Nigel Keren (read: Robert Maxwell) by way of ``binary'' poison--poison that, because of the duo's sleuthing, may next be used on them. But despite the threat, Jake and Toad soldier on with their next assignment: to monitor the dismantling of Soviet nuclear missiles. The pair's sojourn in Russia allows Coonts to indulge in his usual soapboxing (``In case you haven't noticed,'' says Jake, ``Russia is a third-world shithole'') even as Jake and Toad meet with beetle-browed generals and try to avoid being poisoned by the CIA cabal. Meanwhile, an anti-Yeltsin KGB faction blows up a Russian nuclear-weapons site, causing a meltdown that may kill a million (```Another million,' Jake Grafton roared savagely. `God in heaven, when will it ever stop?'''). As Russia erupts in panic, Jake learns that the meltdown covered up the theft from the site of several warheads that were then sold to Saddam Hussein. After Jake confers with Yeltsin, the admiral and Toad's pilot-wife take to the skies to bomb the reactor's remaining missiles, shooting down renegade KGB jets in the process. Jake then exposes the CIA cabal and retrieves the stolen warheads through a raid on Iraq--where both the outlaw KGB leader and Saddam himself make a big mistake by getting in Jake's way. Coonts's plots are getting as overcomplicated as Tom Clancy's, but his flying-and-fighting scenes are as exciting as ever. Chalk up another red, white, and blue ace for the author and his jet- jockeys. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Gallery Books
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1476746443
• ISBN 13: 9781476746449
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432