She's known as the Snow Maiden-an operative of a secret group dedicated to world domination. To get their hands on her, U.S. Special Forces Captain Alexander Brent and his team will have to outmaneuver a terrorist faction bent on wiping her off the face of the earth.

**

About the Author

Thirty years ago Tom Clancy was a Maryland insurance broker with a passion for naval history. Years before, he had been an English major at Baltimore’s Loyola College and had always dreamed of writing a novel. His first effort, The Hunt for Red October—the first of the phenomenally successful Jack Ryan novels—sold briskly as a result of rave reviews, then catapulted onto the New York Times bestseller list after President Reagan pronounced it “the perfect yarn.” From that day forward, Clancy established himself as an undisputed master at blending exceptional realism and authenticity, intricate plotting, and razor-sharp suspense. He passed away in October 2013.

David Michaels is the author of two Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon novels and several Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell novels.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

ONE
Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
2021 (Present Day)

For five years after the nuclear exchange between Iran and Saudi Arabia that killed six million and crippled the world's oil supply, Manoj Chopra had been having a recurring dream:

He was five years old, dashing through the slums of Mumbai, and being chased by three men with long, metallic wings extending from their backs and glistening in the sun. They said they were angels, but their skin was translucent, with flickering flames coursing beneath. They seemed to smile, yet their heads were like fire-filled globes devoid of real expressions. They seemed unaware of the heat and flames.

Their voices came in silky whispers, and they said they wanted to save him, but he wasn't sure if he could trust them, and he understood that if he got too close, he'd be burned.

So he ran. And they chased him down the alleys, across the trenches, the sewers, the garbage heaps, and the crowded city streets choked by businesspeople, tourists, and beggars.

He would turn down another street, and suddenly one would take flight and swoop overhead, then drop in front of him, fold his arms over his chest, and with wings extending, say, "You are a good boy, Manoj. You will always do the right thing. So come with us now."

"I'm afraid."

"Don't be."

"I want to come with you, but I can't."

"Why?"

"Because I have to stay here."

Chopra charged past the fiery angel and ducked into a small house, the same house that appeared repeatedly in the dream.

About a dozen women and children sat on the bare floor, all of them making bidis by placing tobacco inside small tendu leaves, then tightly rolling them. They would secure each bidi with thread, then move on to the next one, hoping to make more than a thousand in a single day.

One of the women was Chopra's mother. The two teenaged girls who sat beside her were his sisters, and all three were deeply in debt to the bidi contractors who loaned money at ridiculous interest rates in order to keep them enslaved. This had been Chopra's fate. In his youth, he had rolled thousands of bidis himself.

"Go away," his mother said. "I still love you."

"I can't."

"You can't stay here. Is this the life you want? Your father would have wanted better."

Chopra's father had been killed in a construction accident, leaving his family with bills and no medical insurance.

Chopra shook his head at his mother. "He's gone. He will never know about me and what I do."

"Go with them."

Chopra glanced back. In the doorway, framed by the afternoon light, stood one of the angels. He glowed in silhouette and extended a hand. For a moment, Chopra thought the angel had his father's face. He tensed and turned away as now a woman strode from the back of the room, along with an impeccably groomed man in a dark suit.

"He has, we believe, an eidetic memory," said the woman, whose face came into the light and whose hands were covered in chalk. She was one of Chopra's teachers from senior secondary school (high school).

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