Instructed to guide in a speed boat crossing from Russia in the Bering Strait, special forces Major Rake Ozenna watches in horror as the operation culminates in a fatal firefight - and the loss of vital intelligence of a deadly new weapon. A weapon of unimaginable power. But who sabotaged the mission? Who possesses the weapon - and what is their ultimate goal? Rake's search takes him to the remote outpost of Uelen on the Russian coast - and the discovery that he is up against a formidable enemy from his past. As world leaders gather in Bonn for the signing of the new European security treaty, Rake enters a desperate race against time to prevent a catastrophe beyond imagining.
Trauma surgeon Carrie Walker is taken aback when her estranged uncle, a senior Russian naval officer, makes contact, claiming to have explosive information which he is offering to share with the West. She travels undercover to Moscow to meet him, but when the operation goes catastrophically wrong, she finds herself stranded and on the run. The one person she can trust is her former fiance Rake Ozenna. What does Carrie have that is so important, and can Rake reach her before her enemies - and before high-profile military exercises off the Norwegian coast trigger a global catastrophe?
Special agent Rake Ozenna watches as a fleet of Russian military helicopters head straight for his home. His tiny Alaskan island, with a population of just eighty. What he doesn't know yet, is why. Russia is playing a dangerous political game, reclaiming Rake's island as their own, even if it antagonises the US. Caught in the crosshairs of sabre-rattling big powers, Rake is determined to save his people and his island, even if it costs him his life.
In the sphere of future global politics, no region will be as hotly contested as the Asia-Pacific, where great power interests collide amid the mistrust of unresolved conflicts and disputed territory. This is where authoritarian China is trying to rewrite international law and challenge the democratic values of the United States and its allies. The lightning rods of conflict are remote reefs and islands from which China has created military bases in the 1.5-million-square-mile expanse of the South China Sea, a crucial world trading route that this rising world power now claims as its own. No other Asian country can take on China alone. They look for protection from the United States, although it, too, may be ill-equipped for the job at hand. If China does get away with seizing and militarizing waters here, what will it do elsewhere in the world, and who will be able to stop it?
In Asian Waters, award-winning foreign correspondent Humphrey Hawksley breaks down the politics-and tensions-that he has followed through this region for years. Reporting on decades of political developments, he has witnessed China's rise to become one of the world's most wealthy and militarized countries, and delivers in Asian Waters the compelling narrative of this most volatile region.
