The Anomaly

A powerful alliance of Pacific-Rim corporations, for reasons of economic survival, launches a telerobotic satellite--with camera eyes and robotic arms controlled from Earth--and secretly mines several U.S. reconnaissance satellites. The satellites are destroyed as each flies over a Russian cosmodrome. The U.S. assumes the Russian military, in league with ultra-nationalists vying for control of the government, is responsible. The U.S. retaliates, destroying Russian satellites. The Russians, attacked seemingly without provocation, prepare to retaliate massively against the U.S. During the last of the satellite minings, a slight collision occurred, blurring a set of reconnaissance pictures. The blurriness intrigues a CIA analyst who begins an ever-deepening investigation into what caused it. The analyst and a CIA covert operative uncover the truth at the last minute and play major roles as the President, the military, and NASA try to prevent the world traveling past the point of no return on a road toward World War III. The novel depicts how a group of multinational corporations might use sophisticated technology to alter world events to suit their needs, similar in purpose to the way religious and political groups use terrorism today. With international corporations growing larger and technology advancing, the probability increases every day that something like the events in this novel might occur.