In a top-secret location deep in the Ural Mountains, Russian President Gennadiy Gryzlov has built Russia’s most dangerous weapon to enhance Russia's superiority in the country's long-running battle with the West. From inside Perun's Aerie lies an intricate network of underground tunnels and chambers that is the heart of the Russian cyber warfare programme. Here, Gennadly has built his supercomputers and is launching a carefully plotted series of attacks on an unsuspecting US and its European allies.
After taking action against Romania, nearly causing a nuclear power reactor to self-destruct, the Russians turn their attention to Poland’s electrical grid and banking system. With each attack, President Gennadiy Gryzlov uses his supercomputers’ technology to deliver one mercilessly strike after another.
In the first strike targets against Warsaw, Poland, the Russian malware wipes out the records of nearly every Polish bank account, imploding the country's financial system and panicking the rest of Europe.
Meanwhile, American President Stacy Anne Barbeau knows the Russians must be stopped, but she’s unprepared to take on Gryzlov by herself. Instead, she is forced to turn to her political adversary, former President Kevin Martindale, whose private military group has the means and operators necessary to locate and obliterate the Russians’ secret base.
To fight with Gryzlov’s secret soldiers, Barbeau and Martindale turn to Brad McLanahan and his Iron Wolf team of top-secret human-piloted combat robots. Brad, who is on holiday with his new Polish girlfriend, Major Nadia Rozek, is then called back to duty. The members of the Iron Wolf team also break out their newly created, but never used, fancy stealth fighter, the XCV-62 aircraft and a handful of other really cool next-gen weapons.
Brad not only must deal with the international intrigue, but also the crippling decisions about his father's health and his role in his father's business. With the world's fate hanging in the balance, will Scion succeed in turning back Gryzlov before he can realise his notorious ambition to conquer the world? Can Scion and the CID (Cyber Infantry Device) robotic army that it manages save the day for Poland? This is because the McLanahans and Scion are on the most wanted list by the United States Government and their new president.
Eventually, an assassination plot is revealed, adding to the tension and hard-hitting suspense. As the Russians go after an enemy head of state, McLanahan and his team press forward towards an explosive ending.
While the human-piloted robots seem a little far-fetched, Brown makes it work in a way that seems plausible and fun to read. Also the intensity and description of the attack on the Russian secret base at Perun's Aerie Cyberwar Complex is so vivid and suspenseful that the readers will virtually be feeling both the excitement and thrills like they are there watching the fight. So is the attempt to escape from the war zone after a brutal showdown at the Ural Mountains by McLanahan and his Scion team in the Iron Wolf XCV-62 stealth aircraft that the readers will be sitting on the edge of their seats as they join these soldiers struggling to escape from the Russian fighter planes, missiles and radars.
Price of Duty is a smart, action-packed adventure that features some of the finest cyber terrorist attacks in print. The action scenes are well written. The concept of the Cyber Warfare attacks is very realistic and it is also frightening to think that it could really happen in the world today.
