The Day Before Midnight
A Novel
-
-
4.2 • 84 Ratings
-
-
- $8.99
Publisher Description
“A breathtaking, fascinating look at what could happen—given the possibility of an atomic ‘given.’ A wrap-up you'll never forget.”—Robert Ludlum
The countdown begins when welder Jack Hummel is abducted from his suburban Maryland home ans whisked to the South Mountain MX missile site—a top-secret nuclear complex now taken over by paramilitary terrorists.
All that stands between the Uzi-armed commandos and the launch button is a half-ton titanium block. They want Jack Hummel to cut through it—so they can unleash a devastatingly brilliant plot that threatens global disaster.
Now a Delta Force veteran and a think-tank defense wizard must get inside South Mountain—by defeating their own super-security systems and a darkly ingenious enemy leader . . .
. . . while Jack Hummel's torch burns closer and closer to the launch key . . . while the clock ticks closer to midnight—and Armageddon.
Praise for The Day Before Midnight
“Rockets toward a shattering climax like an incoming missile.”—Stephen Coonts, author of Flight of the Intruder and Final Flight
“Nonstop action and mounting tension.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Slam-bang action and relentless suspense.”—The Washington Post
“The novel crackles and jolts.”—Chicago Tribune
“The one to beat this year in the nail-biter class . . . an edge-of-the-seat doomsday countdown thriller.”—Daily News, New York
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hunter ( The Spanish Gambit ) has written a smoothly believable race-against-time thriller with frightening plausibility. Unidentified military terrorists kidnap welder Jack Hummel from his Maryland home and direct him to cut through a block of titanium to reach a launch key in the South Mountain MX missile site. The president decides to send in the crack Delta assault team, but the man best suited to command them is Col. Dick Puller, who was discredited and disgraced in Iran in 1979. Puller, in turn, must work with the only man who knows the missile silo, its designer, Prof. Peter Thiokol. The leader of ``Aggressor-One'' is discovered to be Russian Military Intelligence chief Arkady Pashin: he is charismatic, reactionary and messianically determined to launch the single MX that will trigger a massive Soviet reply. Part of the fast-moving plot revolves around two abandoned coalmine tunnels, a stupid Russian spy and Thiokol's estranged wife, who unwittingly gave the Russians the plans for South Mountain. The 7 a.m.-to-midnight action flashes cinematically on Delta Force, the crack Russian Spetsnaz troops and various civilians. The book is fun, even if the finale is too drawn-out and a bit preachy: `` . . . the regular people, the Rest of US'' will save us. 40,000 first printing; $40,000 ad budget.
