The Hydra Protocol-David Wellington

The Hydra Protocol David Wellington Morrow, May 13 2014, $25.99 ISBN 9780062248800 On Rikard Island in Eastern Siberia, Spetsnaz trained Russian spy Nadia Asimova finally obtains the Soviet State Secret report she sought. She knows she must warn the Americans in order to prevent a nuclear winter so heads toward Japan and from there the States. At the Pentagon, Chapel’s superior Hollingshead tells him the 1980s Soviet Dead Hand program never was shut down. Also there is Nadia who explains what she found in Siberia about Dead Hand or what her side called Perimeter. If specified conditions occur that leads Perimeter to conclude Russia is under attack; the program will activate by firing missiles at the United States and cause a global nuclear winter. Although still ailing and now heartbroken after Julia Taggart ended their relationship in Brooklyn, Chapel joins Asimova heading to locate and disable Dead Hand while understanding this doomsday machine is a Hydra that reacts to a head cut off by activating a new deadlier head. With nods to Star Trek (The Doomsday Machine) and Star Trek: The Next Generation (Vendetta), the sequel to the exciting Chimera is a superb twisting “Cold War” thriller filled with distrust and triple crosses as nothing except Angel is what he or she first appears. Feeling isolated except for Angel, Chapel struggles with determining who his allies are and who his adversaries are. Fast-paced from the onset, but accelerating even more so when Chapel and Asimova meet for the second time (after a brief encounter off Cuba), readers will appreciate this save the world from a relic only an insane lunatic would create. Harriet Klausner