Heatshield

by Don Anderson

'Stukalin stared immobile at the screens, stabbing the re-set buttons in the hope that the warning mechanisms were at fault. But they were telling an awful his space shuttle was dying...'When a Soviet experimental one-man space shuttle crash lands in shallow water of the north western coast of Ireland in the 1980s, Major Petr Stukalin survives. His mission is now to return to Moscow by fair means or foul. But he had not factored in being captured by the IRA.The crash sets in motion a contorted sequence of events. In the United States Irish intelligence operative Patrick Faloon is engaged in a deadly game of counter-terrorism against IRA fellow travellers, particularly Martin Riley, whose ruthless sense of purpose stops at nothing.As Ireland becomes the lethal virtual battleground for cold-war superpowers, Faloon must battle against both outsiders and insiders in the race to extract or retrieve the priceless secrets of the technology in the stricken craft. It is a race against time but without rules. Not all the participants are what they seem.

288 pages, Paperback

First published February 9, 1990