The Zero Option

The Cold War is going badly for President Reagan's administration.

Support in Europe for the Soviet Union is on the rise while acceptance of the new US intermediate-range nuclear missiles is waning.

Enter Roy Garret, a bright young NSA analyst with a plan.

That plan goes into effect on September 1, 1983 when Korean Air Lines flight 007 takes off from Anchorage, Alaska, bound for Seoul.

On board: 269 civilians including one US Congressman with too many secrets.

The airliner rendezvous with a US spy plane over the Bearing Sea, then overflies a top secret Soviet Submarine base and is finally shot down off Sakhalin Island. Or is it? No wreckage or bodies are recovered. And a radar tape showing what really happened to KAL 007 has disappeared.

Thirty years later, the missing radar tape falls into the hands of the daughter of a KAL 007 passenger and the son of the US spy plane commander.

Determined to keep the facts hidden after all this time is New Mexico Governor Roy Garret, who is now contesting the US presidency.

What follows is a desperate chase across the Siberian snows to uncover the facts.

Can two young idealists outwit the forces ranged against them, or will Uncle Sam and the Russian Bear bury the truth once and for all. 'Like Tom Clancy, Rollins possesses a remarkable ability to dramatise the technologies of war, both covert and overt.' THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN