Covert-One
14 primary works • 26 total works
Book 1
Two bestselling authors collaborate to spin a deadly tale of science, espionage and government gone fatally wrong.
Hades – that ancient place of Greek mythology we now call Hell – is the name of a seemingly unbeatable doomsday virus. For three frantic days, scientists in a US government laboratory have been trying to unlock the virus’s secrets as people across the continent die in excruciating agony. Meanwhile, Lt. Col. Jonathan `Jon’ Smith, MD, is summoned to a clandestine meeting in the dark of night in a Washington DC park with his oldest friend, an FBI agent. Suddenly attacked, Smith escapes home to find the woman he loves is dying of the virus.
Smith is a surgeon and career soldier with intelligence training. Assigned to the army’s high security Hot Zone infectious diseases institute at Fort Detrick, Maryland, he quickly uncovers evidence that his lover’s death was no accident. Everywhere he turns for information, Smith is stopped by forces he can’t see or name. Convinced she was murdered, he turns rogue to find the killer. Joining forces with a beautiful CIA agent, he uncovers a horrifying plot to infect millions with a deadly pandemic.
From London to California, Washington to Iraq, Smith risks everything against a powerful corporation, high officers in government and the US army, and a determined genius out to destroy them at any cost while the world is held to ransom for billions of dollars.
Book 2
The powerful new novel in the bestselling Covert-One series.
Lt. Colonel Jon Smith, currently working as a medical researcher, is contacted by a Russian colleague with an urgent request that they meet in Venice in ten days. When they meet, however, his colleague is killed almost instantly in a hail of automatic gunfire but not before he passes on to Smith the vital intelligence - someone is out to steal Russia's store of the smallpox virus. Completely eradicated, smallpox is the deadliest of viruses and could well cause an epidemic of unheard of proportions should it be unleashed on the
population at large. Smith, with the help of his colleagues at Covert-One, must prevent the virus from being stolen. But his adversaries are several steps ahead of him and now he must find and stop the conspirators before they loose Armageddon upon the world.
Book 3
Third novel in the Covert-One series.
When an explosion and fire destory part of the esteemed Pasteur Institute in Paris, cyber wizard Marty Zellerbach is left in a coma, while the body of one of the world's top computer scientists - Emile Chambord - hasn't been found at all. Although a terrorist group takes credit for the bombing, American and British officials begin to wonder. Chillingly, perhaps the situation is even worse than it appears.
At the same time in a clandestine army lab in Colorada, Lt. Col. Jon Smith is part of a team working to create a DNA computer. With his background in molecular biology, this project intrigues him: molecular computers will be the most powerful computers the world has ever seen. A single bottle of DNA can crunch more mathematics than all the conventional silicon computers on earth today.
When Jon learns his old friend Marty is seriously injured in the explosion, he's about to leave for Paris. Then Nathan Klein, the shadowy chief of Covert-One, shows up with an assignment - find Dr. Chambord. It appears the Pasteur bombing was a decoy to hide the kidnapping of the scientist, because, with Marty's help, he's succeeded in building the globe's first working molecular computer. The military implications are terrifying if the computer falls into the hands of a rogue government or terrorist cell.
From Paris to London, Brussels and Algiers, Jon Smith searches for the scientist and the ambitious forces behind the bombing and theft. With the help of colleagues Peter Howell, Randi Russell, and a recovered Marty, Jon uncovers a web of deception on the brink of reshaping Europe and threatening the destruction of the United States.
Book 4
Book 8
Book 8
Book 9
Dattar arranges for his men to steal the bacteria and use them to bring down the West once and for all. Can Jon Smith stop him?
Book 9
Book 10
Book 10
The superb new edge-of-your-seat Covert-One novel in the series created by the undisputed master of the thriller genre, Robert Ludlum.
The Merge: a device destined to revolutionise the world and make the personal computer and smart phone obsolete. When Covert-One's Jon Smith is assigned to assess its military potential he discovers that its enhanced vision, real-time battlefield displays, unbreakable security, and near-perfect marksmanship could change the face of warfare for ever.
Meanwhile, CIA operative Randi Russell encounters an entire village of murdered Afghans - all equipped with enhanced Merge technology. As Smith and Russell investigate, they're blocked by someone who seems to have access to the highest levels of the military.
Is the Merge really as secure as its creator claims? And what is the Pentagon so desperate to hide? Smith and Russell are determined to learn the truth - but will they pay with their lives...?
Book 11
'A page-turner of non-stop action that should leave his fans begging for more' NEW YORK POST
'The real titan of the genre is Robert Ludlum' GQ
'A master at the conspiracy theory type of thriller, his books operating on an ever-spiralling series of surprise revelations, with double, treble and quadruple crosses as everyday as sun-ups and sunsets' IRISH TIMES
One evening in Washington, DC, several high-ranking members of government disappear in a mass kidnapping. Among the kidnapped is Nick Rendel, a computer software coding expert in charge of drone programming and strategy. He is the victim with the most dangerous knowledge, including confidential passwords and codes that are used to program the drones. If revealed, his kidnappers could reprogram the drones to strike targets within the United States.
Jon Smith and the Covert-One team begin a worldwide search to recover the officials, but as the first kidnapping victims are rescued, they show disturbing signs of brainwashing or mind-altering drugs. Smith's investigation leads him to Fort Detrick, where a researcher, Dr Laura Taylor, had been attempting to create a drug to wipe memory from soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. But Dr Taylor's research was suspended almost a year ago, when she was placed in a mental institution. Now, if Smith doesn't figure out the brainwashing drug, and track down the kidnapped Nick Rendel, the kidnappers will soon have the power to carry out drone strikes anywhere in the world...
Book 11
Book 12
Japan and China are thrown close to the brink of war when a Japanese warship is attacked. Meanwhile top Covert-One operative Jon Smith is sent to recover mysterious material from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear reactor.
Smith vanishes, and CIA agent Randi Russell goes on an unsanctioned mission to find him. She discovers that the missing samples may be evidence that Japan, led by Chief of Staff Masao Takahashi, has been developing next-generation weapons systems in preparation for a conflict with China.
The Covert-One team must prevent Takahashi from sparking a war, or the world will be dragged into a battle certain to kill tens of millions of people and leave much of the planet uninhabitable.
Book 12
With U.S. intelligence agencies wracked by internal power struggles and paralyzed by bureaucracy, the President is forced to establish his own clandestine group - Covert-One - selected from the very best operators America has to offer. It is only activated as a last resort, when the threat is on a global scale and time is running out.
In Northern Uganda an American Special Forces team is wiped out by a group of normally peaceful farmers. Video of the attack shows even women and children possessing almost supernatural speed and strength, consumed with a rage that makes them immune to pain, fear, and all but the most devastating injuries.
Covert-One's top operative, Army microbiologist Colonel Jon Smith, is sent to investigate the attack and finds evidence of a parasitic infection that for centuries has been causing violent insanity and then going dormant. This time, though, it's different. The infection is purposely being kept alive and the director of Iranian Intelligence is in Uganda trying to make a deal for a biological weapon to unleash on the West.
As Smith and his team are cut off from all outside support, they begin to suspect that forces much more powerful than the Iranians are in play - forces that can be traced to Washington itself.
The very first Covert-One novel from the Sunday Times bestselling author Robert Ludlum.
An unknown doomsday virus has claimed the lives of four people - including the fiancee of Covert-One's Lt Col. Jon Smith. Devastated and enraged, Smith uncovers evidence that this was no accident; someone out there has the virus, and the pandemic that threatens millions of lives was planned...
Not knowing who to trust or where to turn, Smith assembles a private team to fight the deadly virus. As the death toll mounts, the quest leads them to the highest levels of power and the darkest corners of the earth. And Smith and his team must hunt down a genius determined to destroy them.
