Black Ops Hardback - 2008

by W. E. Griffin

The Russian bear is stirring and it's hungry in the #1 New York Times–bestselling series'thrilling fifth novel.The first disturbing reports reached Delta ForceLieutenant Colonel Charley Castillo in the form of backchannelmessages concerning covert U.S. intelligenceassets working for a variety of agencies suddenly gone missingand then, suddenly, inexplicably, found dying. Or dead.One in Budapest, Hungary. One in Kiev, Ukraine. One inAshgabat, Turkmenistan, mere klicks from the Iran border. Andthen one in Virginia, along the Potomac River, practically in theshadow of CIA headquarters.Castillo finds the information both infuriating and fascinating,particularly after a recent experience with two CIA traitorswhose own deaths were swift and suspicious. Despite therebeing some similarities, though, he thinks there's something differentwith these new cases, something he can't quite put hisfinger on. At first, it's idle thought, but Castillo expects it's onlya matter of time before the commander in chief assigns him andhis group of troubleshooters in the innocuously named Office ofOrganizational Analysis to look into the deaths while all thoseintel agencies fight among themselves trying to put the piecestogether.Meanwhile, Castillo has problems of his own fallout fromrecent missions involving a clandestine rescue of a DEA agentfrom South American drug runners, and the confiscation of somefifty million dollars from thieves in the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal.He's made more than a few enemies, he knows both foreignand domestic. And then comes another back-channel message,this one delivered personally by his lethal friend, the Russianmobster arms dealer. All that has happened so far, he says, isjust a warm-up for what's about to come out of the Kremlin.Could sabers be rattling for a new Cold War? Or worse?Presidential Agent C. G. Castillo is about to find out. . . .Filled with Griffin's trademark rich characters and cutting-edgedrama, this is another exceptional novel in an exceptionalseries.