The instant New York Times , USA TODAY , and Publishers Weekly bestseller! Over 100,000 copies sold! “Joel C. Rosenberg continues to mix his unique blend of prophetic fiction and nonstop action unlike anyone else working today.” ―The Real Book Spy on The Persian Gamble. “The plot is intriguing. The pace just keeps accelerating. A must read!” ―Porter Goss, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency on The Persian Gamble. In the follow-up to the New York Times bestselling Kremlin Conspiracy, Rosenberg’s latest international thriller tracks a terrifying nuclear alliance among three world powers―Russia, Iran, and North Korea―and the deadly mission former US Secret Service Agent Marcus Ryker must risk to halt their deadly strategy. Shot out of the air in enemy territory in the middle of the greatest international crisis since the end of the Cold War, former U.S. Secret Service agent Marcus Ryker finds himself facing an impossible task. Not only does he have to somehow elude detection and capture by Russian special forces, but he must convince his own government to grant safe harbor to the one man responsible for the global mayhem―Russian double agent and assassin Oleg Kraskin. While frantically negotiating with his contacts in the White House, Marcus learns that the unstable North Korean regime plans to use the international chaos as a smokescreen to sell nuclear weapons to Iran. With the fate of the entire free world on the line, Marcus makes a deal with the U.S. government―he will go back to work as an international operative and track down the WMDs before they end up in the hands of those with the determination and the means to use them. Marcus and Oleg worked together once before to avert a world war. Can they now find a way to stop world destruction? The Persian Gamble By Joel C. Rosenberg Tyndale House Publishers Copyright © 2019 Joel C. Rosenberg All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-4964-0618-7 CHAPTER 1 SOMEWHERE OVER NORTHWESTERN RUSSIA — 29 SEPTEMBER NINETY MINUTES AFTER THE RUSSIAN PRESIDENT'S ASSASSINATION Don't die, and don't get arrested. Marcus Ryker hurtled through frigid darkness at terminal velocity as words from his childhood echoed through his head. From the day he'd become a teenager, his mother had uttered these words to him more times than he could possibly remember. Every time he left for school. Every time he went out with friends. Every time he borrowed the car or hiked a fourteener or went white-water rafting. Marjorie Ryker knew her only son well. Marcus wasn't simply a kid who loved adventure and pushing all limits all the time. He was an adrenaline junkie, and she'd genuinely — and rightly — feared one misstep could prove catastrophic. Now pushing forty, Marcus was free-falling through a thick band of cloud cover, somewhere over northwestern Russia. He could see nothing. Not the moon nor the stars. Not the twinkling lights of a single city or village or hamlet below. Nor could he hear a sound, save the steady hiss of the oxygen flowing into his helmet. He couldn't hear the air whipping past at 120 miles per hour. He couldn't even hear the scream of jet engines as six MiG fighters bore down on him from multiple angles at twice the speed of sound. Only moments before, Marcus and his two colleagues had lunged out of the side of a Gulfstream IV at an altitude of eighteen thousand feet. Now they were quickly passing under ten thousand feet. But they had swerved far off their intended flight path before jumping. What actually lay below them now was anyone's guess. To their left was the Gulf of Finland. Off to their right — far off, Marcus hoped — was Lake Ladoga. Were they to hit either body of water during the unseasonably early and intense blizzard engulfing the region, their fate would be sealed. They would freeze to death in minutes. Yet if his calculations were correct, they should more likely come down somewhere on a spit of land known as the Karelian Isthmus. That would still put them in Russian territory and thus in serious risk of being hunted down and found. Should that happen, he'd rather die than be arrested. But they could also land within striking distance of the Finnish border, giving them a shot at reaching safety. In the early morning darkness, Marcus forced his mother's words from his thoughts and began mentally ticking through all the gear he'd asked the Agency to load onto the plane ahead of their escape. It would be all they'd have to keep them alive. There were a sniper rifle, an AK-47, and two pistols, all Russian-made. There was a box of ammunition, though certainly not enough to get them through more than limited contact with Russian forces. They had a handheld GPS unit and a satellite phone. They also had an all-weather tent, a hatchet, a hunting knife, ropes, three water bottles, a medical kit, matches, and — A massive explosion erupted above them. The heat-seeking missiles had finally found their target. The dark sky