Red Storm Rising is an outstanding novel about a fictitious third world war between the Warsaw Pact nations and the countries of NATO. Written before the recent reforms in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, this war comes at the height of the Cold War.

The war is started when three Islamic terrorists infiltrate the Soviet Union's largest oil refinery and destroy it. As a result, the members of the Polit Bureau are faced with the fact that the Soviet Union will suffer from an enormous fuel shortage that will cripple the Red Army, Navy, and Air Force in under a year.

To the Russians, this is an unacceptable predicament, so plans are made for the Soviet invasion of both the Middle East and Western Europe to gain fuel supplies.

Clancy intricately describes the land war in Europe, the sea battles in the North Atlantic, and the dogfights all over the world. The reader is taken at Mach-2 in an F-15, under the polar ice cap in a 688 attack submarine, and into an Abrams M-1 main battle tank rolling across the West German landscape.

Red Storm Rising is by far Clancy's best book, and once I started reading it, I could not put it down. I strongly recommend this novel to everyone.