During the dog days of the USSR, desperate Russian scientists fought to create a weapon that could preserve the balance with the US - one that no sophisticated defence system could stop. They turned to one of the oldest killers of all - Smallpox. Modifying it to evade the human immune system, they created something so destructive that even they realised that it could never be used. The disease - codenamed HUNTER - was left to rot in an obscure lab in the heart of Russia as the Soviet state collapsed around it. But now a disgruntled former Russian scientist has defected to a shadowy group of terrorists and has taken passage to the Middle East in a rusty freighter full of so-called freedom fighters. In his case is stored one test tube of this new plague. Out of fear and anger, he has sold his soul to the devil. And in the midst of the worst storm in the history of the Mediterranean, only two men can stop him. Commander William Steadman of the attack boat USS Portland and Captain Rem Reonov of the Russian Akula class submarine Gepard hold the fate of the world in their hands.
The trouble is their masters refuse to recognize that they're on the same side and they may have to destroy each other before capturing the ship...But what no-one knows, least of all the hapless terrorists on the freighter, is that HUNTER is already free on the boat and that the end of the world is already upon them...
- ISBN10 0752865013
- ISBN13 9780752865010
- Publish Date 1 March 2007 (first published 20 July 2006)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 12 October 2009
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Orion Publishing Co
- Imprint Orion (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd )
- Format Paperback (A-Format (178x111 mm))
- Pages 480
- Language English