Harold Coyle has established himself as one of America's finest suspense novelists. With four consecutive New York Times best-selling novels of epic war, Team Yankee, Sword Point, Bright Star, and Trial by Fire, he is a master of the supercharged merging of global conflicts, strategy, politics, and probable world events. The Ten Thousand represents Harold Coyle at his visionary and apocalyptic best, and it's as intense, startling and thrilling as it is suspenseful.
Hard on the heels of revolution and hope, Europe is suddenly in flames again. Germany is once more the dominant power, her leadership determined to win the world's respect, by bloody force if necessary. In Eastern Europe, where a weakened Russia is struggling against the ambitions of her neighbors, virulent nationalism and ancient ethnic hatreds fan the flames of war, this time with nuclear weapons as the ultimate threat. Caught up in the rising storm of a Europe in dangerous transition is an American army, no longer just keeping the peace, but drawn inexorably into a real shooting war.
Harold Coyle's riveting - and all too possibly prophetic - new novel has the immediacy and the punch of today's fears and tomorrow's headlines. When the Ukraine refuses to hand its store of nuclear weapons to Russia, American troops are sent in to enforce compliance, while a right-wing nationalist German government seizes the opportunity to make a bid for world power....
Trapped by the rush of events, threatened by the specter-become-reality of a united Germany with atomic weapons, the American forces make a bold bid for survival by fighting their way to the safety of the Baltic Sea, crossing a hostile Germany like the Greeks in Xenophon's classic "The Ten Thousand."
Coyle's grasp of geopolitical reality and his sure command of the battlefield - in the words of Stephen Coonts, "Nobody knows war like Harold Coyle, and nobody writes it better! " - is matched by the skill with which he creates and maneuvers a rich and fascinating cast of characters, from the top decision makers - the President of the United States, the Chancellor of Germany, their advisors and staffs - down to the ordinary soldiers and civilians obliged to live or die as a consequence of those decisions.
The story of Lieutenant General "Big Al" Malin's epic march through Germany to the sea pits Americans against Germans for the first time in fifty years, plunging into battle Colonel Scott Dixon (the ongoing central figure in Coyle's novels); Captain Nancy Kozak, the engaging young female combat officer from Trial by Fire; and Colonel Vorishnov and Major Ilvanich, two Russian officers who find themselves fighting side by side with the Americans; as well as countless soldiers and officers on both sides, facing combat - and their consciences - for the first time.
Exciting, frighteningly plausible, absolutely authentic, The Ten Thousand is Harold Coyle's most ambitious and explosive book to date.