Nimitz Class
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4.0 • 6 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
It's as big as the Empire State Building, a massive floating fortress at the throbbing heart of a U.S. Navy Carrier Battle Group. Its supersonic aircraft can level entire cities at a stroke. Its surveillance gear can track every target within thousands of square miles--in the air, on the surface, and under the sea. Its crew of six thousand works night and day to keep this awesome military machine at peak performance. It's a Nimitz-Class nuclear carrier, the most powerful weapons system on the planet. Nothing can touch it.
So when the first stunned messages say only that the Thomas Jefferson has disappeared, the Navy reacts with disbelief. But as her battered escorts report in, the truth becomes inescapable: a Nimitz-Class carrier has been claimed by nuclear catastrophe--the mightiest military unit on earth, vaporized without warning by an accidental detonation of unimaginable power. No other explanation is possible.
But as Navy maverick Bill Baldridge begins to investigate the disaster that claimed his idolized brother's life, another chilling alternative begins to emerge from the high-tech web of fleeting sonar contacts and elusive radar blips. It points to a rogue submarine commanded by a world-class undersea warrior with the steely nerve and cunning of a master spy. Suddenly it's up to Bill Baldridge to track down this shadowy nuclear terrorist, who has already turned America's ultimate weapon into the biggest sitting duck in history--and who still has another nuclear-tipped torpedo in his tubes. He's already proved he has the icy ruthlessness to incinerate six thousand sailors without a qualm. What will he do for an encore?
In these pages the modern military springs to life, form the Pentagon's tense conferences to the screaming flight deck of a giant carrier to the silent conning tower of an attack sub on full alert. But as Bill Baldridge races against time to pursue the nation's most deadly enemy, we are forced to ask ourselves serious real-life questions: Have defense budget cuts jeopardized our national security? Are we prepared to defend ourselves against naval terrorist? How safe are we? Nimitz Class is a world-class techno-thriller with a plot as riveting as Hunt for Red October--and an explosive twist out of tomorrow's headlines.
Today it's a novel. Tomorrow it might be the news.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a scenario rendered with terrifying plausibility, the Nimitz Class aircraft carrier Thomas Jefferson, on station in the Arabian Sea, surrounded by its Battle Group of cruisers, destroyers and frigates, with its aircraft, weapons and 6000 sailors, is vaporized by a nuclear explosion. What appears at first to be a horrible accident turns out to be an act of terrorism, the result of an attack by a nuclear-tipped torpedo. Behind the attack lurk Baghdad and a "genius" Iraqi submariner trained by the British and now on the loose in a Russian-built Kilo sub. Only Lt. Commander Bill Baldridge, brother of one of the officers slain aboard the Thomas Jefferson, has the requisite experience and imagination to understand the possibility and implications of the attack. Now he must convince his superiors and his colleagues in other nations of his theories before he can set about staving off further attacks and achieving justice. While the rich technical detail here is impeccable, every bit the equal of Clancy's, the storytelling is not. British journalist Robinson writes ponderous prose and his pacing is fitful as the action too often gives way to talk while the Western military forces develop strategies to deal with the situation. Military fiction fans will admire his authoritative exploitation of weaponery and tactics, however, and most readers will be engaged, despite some sluggish passages, by his persuasive cautionary tale about the perils of military downsizing at a time when rogue nations are amassing weapons of great and terrible destructiveness. 250,000 first printing; $325,000 ad/promo; film rights optioned by John McTiernan; simultaneous HarperAudio; foreign rights sold in the U.K., France, Germany, Holland, Brazil and Italy; translation, first serial and dramatic rights: Ed Victor.
