The first book in a blockbuster new series from USA Today bestseller, Ward Larsen!
In the wilds of Siberia, a top-secret Russian fighter goes missing on a test flight. The Russian Air Force begins a search, oblivious to their error: they are looking in the wrong spot. The pilot, Colonel Maxim Primakov, has crash landed during an attempted defection.
The new chief of CIA clandestine operations, David Slaton, wants desperately to find him, but only one man is in a position to reach Primakov—Tru Miller, a rookie operator. Slaton plots a rescue deep inside Russia, not realizing that he will have to outfox the one other man who knows the truth. Victor Dubonin is a general in Russian intelligence. His search for Primakov is deeply personal—and if he doesn’t succeed it will cost him his life.
Soon a small group of Americans, including its top female test pilot, Kai Drake, find themselves hunted in the wilds of Russia. Their survival will depend on one thing—just how resourceful and lethal they can be.
Dark Vector will be available on February 4th, 2025. Please enjoy the following excerpt!
CHAPTER ONE
Colonel Maksim Primakov walked across the ice-clad tarmac of Skovorna Air Base, his boots crunching over frozen sleet. The big hangar lay before him, its high western wall catching the last rays of dusk as another frigid night descended. A Test Pilot First Class in the Russian Air Force, Primakov cut an arresting figure in his flight suit and winter jacket. He was tall and square-jawed, and his pace was steady. His carriage bordered on arrogant. The close-cropped brown hair was more a habit than a concession to regulation, the sign of a man who had neither the time nor inclination to bother with more.
Primakov drew to a stop near the hangar, then turned and surveyed his surroundings. Not for the first time, it struck him that Skovorna looked more like a salvage yard than an air base. The other airfields where he’d been stationed in recent years invariably flew advanced jets. Most of the ones he saw here had not turned a wheel in years. The skeletons of two IL-76 transports lingered at the fence line, their frames rusting after having been cannibalized for spare parts. A once-sleek MiG-29 stood statue-like on two flat tires, access panels on its belly swinging limp in the glacial breeze. Legend had it that the jet had diverted here due to a rough-running engine. A fleet-wide lack of fuel pumps, combined with rampant organizational ineptitude, had eventually doomed the aircraft to rot.
A year ago, Skovorna Air Base had been all but abandoned, an outpost from another era fading to irrelevance. Two rescue helicopters had operated from the main hangar, and an army training detachment taught survival skills to recruits in the surrounding forest. Those complementary missions—teaching soldiers how to survive harsh conditions, and retrieving those who failed—were all one needed to know about the airfield’s remoteness. The nearest city of note, Chita, was two hundred miles west. The closest depot for food and supplies, a logistical outpost of the 29th Army, was a two-day drive in the summer.
In winter Skovorna could only be reached by air. Weeds thrived amid the cracks in the ramp and windows in the outbuildings failed in storms. On that sad trajectory, the airfield had been a year, perhaps two, from complete abandonment.
Then, last summer, Skovorna had been thrown a lifeline.
With the opposite of fanfare, its two active units were reassigned elsewhere. Soon after, construction crews began arriving. To any casual observer, of whom there were few—only the most ambitious trappers and hunters from Olinsk—the alterations at the airfield would have appeared trivial. The big hangar was sealed and spackled, and the main runway and a single taxiway were refurbished. The living facilities were updated, although not enlarged—the unit preparing to take up residence was roughly the size of the old detachment. From a distance, and particularly from above—the only direction that mattered—Skovorna would appear little changed. It had been selected for rehabilitation for two reasons. First was its remoteness. The second, and far subtler, a tribute was its proximity to the Chinese border.
There were now three airworthy helicopters on the tarmac, Hip J models brought in for logistical support. Near the Hips was a transiting AN-26 transport that had arrived yesterday with an extensive array of test equipment. The markings on the cargo jet attested that it was Russian Air Force, although the provenance of what it carried, Primakov suspected, was likely from farther south. And then, of course, there was the other aircraft—the one parked in the heated main hangar whose doors were shut tight. The one that was Skovorna Air Base’s raison d’être.
Primakov turned back to the hangar, and his pale blue eyes canted downward to study the parking apron. The concrete was dusted lightly with snow, but thankfully there was no ice. Taxiing an airplane here in winter was sometimes closer to ice skating, but thankfully there had been little precipitation in recent days, even if the temperatures held fast to the standards of the Siberian Plateau. It was the second week of January, and the program was on schedule, the only setback having been one major storm during Christmas.
Headquarters was pleased.
The colonel scuffed a boot over the ramp, and beneath the snow he noted a few loose chips of concrete. He frowned. This was one of his ongoing crusades. The surface was beginning to disintegrate, damaged by too many brutal winters, yet further repairs would induce delays. To mitigate the risk, he had ordered the active taxiways be swept every morning, and a second time in the afternoon if a flight was scheduled.
He checked the nearby vehicle apron and saw the big sweeping machine sitting idle. Primakov walked over and found no one inside the cab, yet when he opened the door a bit of warmth drifted out. A vodka bottle lay on the floor, the last drop sucked out of it.
His anvil jaw clenched.
Like any Russian military officer, he was accustomed to such battles, yet Skovorna was supposed to be different. The mission here was an experimental cooperative, a model venture between two great nations. It was working, to a point. Not once had Primakov had a request for funding or personnel denied, and the men and women assigned to the project—fifty-six in all—were among the finest in the Russian Air Force. Unfortunately, these days “the finest” was an appallingly low bar.
It hadn’t always been so. During his company grade days, unburdened by commanding anything beyond his own airplane, Primakov had viewed the service as mostly competent. In those years, when the oil had been flowing, and when Europe had been a beach vacation rather than enemy territory, the Russian Air Force had been functional. He remembered new aircraft arriving from the factory, and having enough fuel to fly them. The crew chiefs had been capable, and even the conscripts did their year of compulsory service with little complaint. The horrors of Afghanistan had been largely forgotten, yet there were still enough skirmishes in the Middle East and the Caucasus to keep everyone sharp. Altogether, Primakov had felt as though he was part of an effective fighting force.
Then the rot had begun. The looting by the oligarchs turned excessive, and the regime overreached in Syria and Crimea. The death knell, plainly, had been the invasion of Ukraine. Experienced mechanics had been issued rifles that belonged in a museum and hauled off to the front. Stockpiles of hypersonic missiles and precision munitions, many of which Primakov himself had been involved in testing, were exhausted within months, most of them wasted on civilian targets. Against a far weaker Ukrainian Air Force, Russian fighter jets largely remained grounded. Deep targets were struck not by Russian bombers, but by cheap drones purchased from Iran and North Korea. Within two years the service had been nothing short of gutted.
There was a time when all of that had bothered Primakov.
But no more.
He kicked the sweeper’s door shut and set out across the ramp.
Click below to pre-order your copy of Dark Vector, available February 4th, 2025!
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