Something wicked this way comes. In Taiwan, the pro-China candidate has been assassinated, ostensibly by militants who want to protect the current anti-China candidate from not being reelected. China is threatening war and loading troopships as a reprisal. The Russians are playing war games in Iran, and suddenly all of Europe’s communications infrastructure — including NATO’s — has gone dark. And now there are Russians running amok in Eastern Europe! What on Earth is going on here? The reader begins Red Metal a few steps ahead of NATO, as the Russian viewpoint chapters have already told us the plan: the attack into Europe is a raid to destroy DC’s “Africa Command” in Stuttgart and slow western response to the main thrust of the Russian assault: the seizure of an area of Kenya with enormous rare-earth mineral deposits, an area Russian corporate interests had formerly owned but been forced to turn over to Kenyan authorities. However cleverly planned the assault, though, once action is engaged and the fog of war descends, there’s no telling what may happen. Red Metal is the first modern military/technical thriller I’ve read in perhaps twenty years, and I picked it up out of curiosity given the current state of eastern Europe. I found it unexpectedly absorbing, clipping through a hundred pages a day despite the sheer amount of technical detail and subsequent googling. The constant flux of action helped considerably, but so did the characterization.

The Russians have, on paper, a great plan of coordinated assaults. But, as both von Molkte and Evander Holyfield noted, no plan survives contact with the enemy. Who can predict their actions? The theme of War and Peace finds an interesting echo here: while the Russian general might seek to impose his will on the world and redraw it to his liking, moving both Allied and Russian parts to achieve that end, in the end the cumulative actions of the game pieces themselves have an unpredictable and rippling affect. Say a French diplomat decides to disregard precaution and stay put, reporting on troop numbers instead of retreating for shelter with the rest of his office — or that a young militia woman who’s the Polish equivalent of a National Guard weekend warrior might choose to fight instead of run. Or an American sub captain, knowing she’s wholly outnumbered, seeing a brief window of opportunity to “shoot her shot”. I’m not studied up on modern warfare at all — not the infantry equipment, the motorized vehicles, the missiles, the jets. My most ‘modern’ military references are from..um, In the Army Now, and I somehow doubt a Pauly Shore movie is terribly accurate. (Though, interestingly, it also involved Kenya.) I can’t therefore comment on how accurate the technical aspects of this are, though given that it’s coauthored by a Lieutenant Colonel I’m happy assuming they’re on point. What I can say works is the characterization here, as we alternate between a series of Allied and Russian characters and witness the unfolding action directly. Some of the characters I was very much rooting for, and this being a war they don’t all survive — and some survive but in broken bodies. Most of the characters are likable to a degree, but especially the Polish woman whose refusal to give up when her unit had been crushed turned her into a propaganda hero. She’s oblivious to this, absorbed by the fight, but it gives her a sense of authority that other characters recognize, and so she becomes the nucleus of a never-say-die group of partisans. She will stop at nothing to continue the attack on Russians within Poland, including pressing a wounded American pilot into helping her use America air units to pull off an ambush.

Although this book is dated today in terms of some geopolitical aspects (Russia doesn’t appear to be wanting for rare earth minerals), and technology has presumably marched on from this period where the Russians were still using some cold war equipment, but the big actors remain the same — as do their desires. China is still fixated on taking over Taiwan — surely there’s a parable written somewhere about a mighty creature that ruins itself by obsessing over something it could let go? — and Russia is…well Russia, jealous of its place in the world and willing to fight to regain its former status as a world power to be reckoned with. It appears that Greaney has been literal-ghostwriting Tom Clancy novels the last few years or so, and I’m curious as to what kind of plots he’s spinning up. As far as Rip Rawlings, he’s struck out on his own with a book that sounds like a modern Red Dawn, so I may give that shot.