Off the coast of Africa lie the beautiful Canary Islands, a resort destination of millionaires. But underneath this idyllic paradise is one of the most volatile fault lines in the world. There, an alliance between radical Islamic terrorists and a rogue element of the Chinese government is planning to unleash an act of unimaginable geological terrorism that could devastate the U.S. East Coast, striking it with waves up to 1000 feet high.

In the central Asian Republic of Tajikistan, twelve nuclear warheads, stolen by the Russian Mafia, are about to be smuggled out of the country into the hads of the conspirators. Charlie and Ilya go on an intercept mission, but before they can retrieve them, the weapons disappear.

Lia is sent to Berlin to infiltrate the operations of a ruthless Chinese billionaire, whose machinations have come to the attention of the NSA. She risks immediate execution if her true identity is revealed. Meanwhile, in a hotel in New Jersey, a bestselling author is assassinated to prevent the release of his stranger-than-fiction story about an Islamic plot to change the course of history.

Their paths all converge in the Canary Islands, where Lia finds herself in the hands of a sadistic torturer. Unless the Deep Black team intervenes, the islands could be the epicenter of apocalypse, with millions of lives — and the entire world order — at stake.

Coonts and Keith employ a laundry list of familiar elements in their ho-hum third Deep Black thriller (after Deep Black: Sea of Terror): suitcase nukes, an evil Arab jihadist who calls himself the Jackal, a female agent who's captured and must withstand heinous torture. Series hero Charlie Dean, one of the National Security Agency's Deep Black senior field operators, and his partner, Ilya Akulinin, have come to Tajikistan to chase down the nukes. Charlie and Ilya are in constant communication with the Deep Black ops center at Fort Meade, Md., via a transceiver imbedded in bone behind their ears. This back-and-forth play-by-play lends interest, but it also means if the agents stumble into trouble, they have resources that allow them to get out of danger far too easily. Suspense, such as it is, is heightened primarily by a character going out of transmission range. (Feb.)

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