Reads very much like a Ken Follett novel. Like Follett, Cook knows aviation and what he's talking about. The story is pretty straightforward, other than a little twist at the end that you might actually see coming. It seems that a couple of renegade Russian generals were thinking just like George Patton was thinking. "We're already here, and we've got the army here, and we're going to wind up fighting these guys eventually anyway, so why don't we just do it now?" Only, the allies find out about the plot, but they can't be seen fighting against, what was at the time, our own allies! I was motivated to read Cooks two novels (Aggressor is the other one) after reading his absolutely amazing non-fiction book, "The Hunt for Zero Point"