Robert Ludlum's the Arctic Event

Robert Ludlum & James H. Cobb

Book 7 of Covert-One

Language: English

Published: Sep 26, 2007

Description:

On a desolate island deep within the Canadian Arctic, a scientific expedition photograph the wreckage of a bomber on a mountain glacier. To the world at large, the half-century old aeroplane is merely a relic of the early Cold War. Only a handful of insiders know that it still represents a major threat to civilization, as the aircraft is a Soviet Air Force biological warfare platform, still armed with two tons of active weaponized anthrax.

Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith of Covert-One - the personal action arm of the President of the United States - is assigned to lead CIA agent Randi Russell and the lovely, but lethal, weapons expert, Professor Valentina Metrace to secure the site. But on the island Smith and his team find themselves confronted with a traitor from within their ranks.

Cut off from all outside aid, the operatives must struggle against both betrayal and the brutal polar environment. Gradually they become aware that something else exists within the hulk of the ancient bomber: a secret potentially more devastating than even the plane's warload, and one that could bring about both a cataclysmic revision of global history and serve as the trigger for a Third World War.

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.

**

From Publishers Weekly

Ponderous prose and a less than credible plot-line weigh down Cobb's Covert-One novel, the seventh in a series (The Hades Factor, etc.) based on a concept created by the late Robert Ludlum. After the chance discovery of a crashed aircraft in the Arctic Circle, the Russians, who are on the verge of signing a landmark antiterrorism pact with the United States, inform President Samuel Castilla that it's a Soviet plane that went down in the 1950s while carrying a ton of weaponized anthrax. Castilla, who suspects that there's more to the story than the Russians are letting on, orders series Jonathan Smith, chief operative for the shadowy Covert-One intelligence service, and his team to investigate. Two women whose field skills are matched by their physical attractiveness join Smith, setting up predictable situations when they fall into the hands of the bad guys. Veteran thriller fans are likely to find the underlying premise behind the Russians' duplicity unconvincing.
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Review

"...high-octane action - bags of it, leavened with the kind of narrative energy that made Ludlum's thrillers such invigorating experiences. It's a page-turner - Cobb has the measure of his late mentor." Good Book Guide