When the United States walks out of NATO, Europe scrambles to raise a single flag of defense while Moscow smiles for the cameras and moves pieces in the dark. In the Pacific, Chinese shipyards burn the midnight arc and whole fleets slip to sea. Alliances fray. Maps change color.
Steve Johnson should choose a side. Instead he chooses a person - Katya Belikova in St. Petersburg - and the small circle that still fights in the shadows as the Flying Dutchman. General Nathaniel Collier is ordered to throw a new wall across the Pacific and do it yesterday. A British Prime Minister with steel under the quiet pushes Europe to move people first and argue policy later. Somewhere, a Russian general writes a plan that begins with mercy and ends with ash.
Three theaters ignite - Europe, the Pacific, North America - and the first casualty is certainty. Orders conflict. Clocks run hot. Every win comes at a price.
