Synopsis
It's one of the stealthiest, most dangerous underwater warships ever built...silent at under 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 China.
The U.S. Defense Department knows full well of China's intentions to use submarines to shut the U.S. Carrier Battle Groups out of the Taiwan Strait. And then to reclaim, by military force if necessary, the rich independent island which sits only one hundred miles off her eastern coastline. A strike force of patrolling Kilos could achieve that objective for Beijing. Two of the 10 Kilos have already been delivered.
The President's new National Security Adviser, the irascible Texan Admiral Arnold Morgan, prepares to send the U.S. Navy's most deadly Black Ops hit-squads deep into dark Russian waters. Their mission - to foil delivery of the...
Publishers Weekly
Those pesky Chinese are at it again. In the gripping techno-thriller sequel to Robinson's Nimitz Class (1997), the genre's new most favored villains have bought a number of highly capable, stealthy "kilo class" submarines from Russia to use as a threat against Taiwan. Navy Commander Cale "Boomer" Dunning, skipper of the nuclear-powered sub Columbia, is tapped to seek out and destroy the Kilos before the Chinese can take delivery. His assignment involves much derring-do, including a vividly described SEAL mission and a hair-raising transoceanic passage under the polar ice cap. Although Robinson excels in describing action scenes and armaments, careless writing and an abandoned subplot involving a hijacked researched vessel mar his tale. So does the smug assumption that our military knows best when to attack ships of another nation. Nevertheless, this is a sure hit for fans of military and adventure fiction. (May) FYI: Nimitz Class is currently in production with Universal Studios.