Winner Take All

An exciting blend of techno-thriller and spy fiction, Flannery's new book exploits a near-future setting. The U.S. and Russia are preparing Operation Pit Bull, a high-tech war game involving the best of the former adversaries' navies. At stake are not only new weapons systems and future arms sales, but also the integration of Russia's armed forces into a new, civilian-controlled order. Old-guard hardliners in Ukraine, led by General Pavl Normav, have their own agenda: provoking the longtime Cold War antagonists into a nuclear-tipped shooting war that will make Ukraine the center of a re-created Soviet Union. National Security Agency staffer Bill Lane suspects Normav's intentions. Can he convince his superiors and the Russians, while dodging assassins, before Pit Bull turns from an exercise into grim reality? Flannery ( Moving Targets ) constructs a plausible political scenario for a byzantine turn-of-the-century world in which friends and enemies are still sorting themselves out. He describes modern naval warfare clearly and accurately for general readers and is such a skillful storyteller that one of the novel's most exciting episodes involves an aerial duel conducted entirely by electronic simulation. His new book is a winner in fact as well as title. (Mar.)