Ryan W. Aslesen

Part 2 of a series, this book is about Max Ahlgren, CIA/black ops agent. In the previous novel, Max was part of an armed squad that traveled to Alaska to see why a mining operation had suddenly stopped. There, they faced people who had turned into hideous creatures, with extra arms and horns and a need to kill everything. The mining operation was vaporized, and Max was the only survivor of the squad.

In this novel, the North Koreans have gotten hold of the test data from the Alaskan mining operation, and plan to use it to, at minimum, give immortality to Kim Jong-Un. Max is seduced by a Korean woman named Juno to join a super-secret operation. The intention is to parachute into North Korea, find the (mostly underground) installation, get the test data, and destroy everything, with help from a backpack thermonuclear bomb.

The squad arrives at their target, but things start going wrong soon after. Juno, the leader of the mission, has a private set of objectives. The safe return of all members of the squad is not necessarily among them. After the squad survives attacks by North Korean soldiers, the practically indestructible monsters are unleashed. Perhaps they were political dissidents, or just "test subjects". The nuke is armed, and the test data is found. Can Max, and his rapidly dwindling number of squad mates, make it out alive? After that is the small problem of reaching the coast and activating the rescue beacon.

This is a pretty violent story (the body count gets pretty high by the end), but it is a really good story. Max learns, pretty quickly, just who he can, and cannot, trust. I look forward to more books in this series.… (altro)