Literature / Red Metal

Red Metal, by Mark Greaney (Tom Clancy co-author, The Gray Man series author) and Hunter Ripely Rawlings IV, is a Doorstopper techno-thriller/war novel published by Berkley Books on July 16, 2019 that imagines a World War III scenario where the Russian Federation goes to war with NATO in Europe. Except, Russia's goal is ''not'' to takeover any NATO members or even destroy NATO at all.

In an alternate time span between 2017 and 2020, NATO forces Russia to surrender an occupied Kenyan rare-earth mine at Mrima Hill to the Kenyan government without firing a shot. Embittered by the loss, a shrewd and calculating Spetsnaz officer named Yuri Borbikov spends the next three years creating a very detailed plan to retake the Mrima Hill mine called Operation Red Metal. The plan calls for the Russian Ground Forces to invade and destroy the US African and European Commands in Stuttgart, Germany; all while heightening tensions against China so the US will be powerless to stop Russia from seizing the mine. The high-risk operation's success could mean Russia gaining equal economic strength with the US, and failure could cripple their political power.

In the US, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Connolly and Major Bob Griggs are two operations officers working for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. They investigate an online intelligence leak that severely weakens the Indo-Pacific Command, only to find hints of a greater hidden plot.

What follows is a globe-spanning conflict involving cyber warfare, special operations, tank battles, aerial dogfights, civilian militia fighters, and Russians using militarized trains. Yes, trains.

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This book provides examples of:

• A Father to His Men: Male and female examples on both sides of the conflict.
  • The Russian force that invades Africa is led by Colonel General Boris Lazar, who is this in spades. He has reservations about the whole operation on the basis that it may pointlessly waste Russian lives; and when his force ultimately fails to recapture Mrima Hill, he keeps their professional spirits up as they retreat to the port of Djibouti City.
  • Humorously subverted with Colonel General Eduard Sabaneyev, the leader of the European invasion, who tries to be this but is considered such a hard-ass that his men are more intimidated by him than anything.
  • The Spetsnaz operators are also strikingly loyal to Colonel Yuri Borbikov. So much that Lazar has them quietly pacified when he arrests Borbikov.
  • Colonel Ken Caster is the Commanding Officer of the 5th Marine Regiment (a.k.a., Regimental Combat Team 5) and cares deeply for his Marines, even noting exactly how many letters he'll have to send to the grieving families of those killed in action.
  • Commander Diana DelVecchio captains the submarine USS John Warner (SSN-785) and is noted to have memorized the birthdays of all of her crew, as well as the names of all of their wives.
  • Captain Apollo Arc-Blanchette is a French special forces officer who leads a platoon of the 13th Parachute Dragoon Regiment, and is respected by both his own men and the US Marines who they join forces with. He also personally gives his condolences to each of the families of the men whom he loses, even when one father chases him off with a shotgun.
  • Paulina Tobiasz is a young reservist of the Polish Territorial Defence Force in her early twenties who quickly becomes a battle-hardened soldier able to inspire confidence in other militia volunteers, from older men to young women.
• The Ace: Literally in the case of Major Ray "Shank" Vance, who pilots an A-10 Warthog and deals quite a lot of damage on Russian ground units. The airmen in his wing even offer to paint kill-marks on his fuselage after he and his flight get into an Old-School Dogfight with Russian Su-57s and manage to shoot some of them down. To put that into perspective, the A-10 is a slow, heavy ground-attack aircraft with little maneuverability and certainly isn't designed for dogfighting, while the Su-57 is a fifth-generation stealth fighter. Even after being shot down himself, Shank is able to effectively direct airstrikes from his wingmen as he fights on the ground with Tobiasz's militia.
  • Colonel Ivan Zolotov of the Russian Air Force is also this, being a Su-57 pilot and squadron leader, effectively acting as Shank's Arch-Enemy.
• Action Girl: Paulina Tobiasz becomes this full-stop after barely surviving her first battle against the invading Russians. Despite having little military training as a reservist, she becomes skilled infantrymen (with both an AK-47 rifle and an RPG-7 launcher) and effectively leads her own semi-autonomous cell of militiamen.
• Amazon Chaser: Shank becomes attracted to Paulina while fighting with her TDF cell, she also develops feelings for him.
• Ambiguously Jewish: Boris Lazar's surname is of Hebrew origin, though it's also fairly common in Slavic languages.
• America Saves the Day: Subverted, while the US Armed Forces bear the brunt of thwarting Operation Red Metal, the efforts of NATO forces are also greatly highlighted, especially Poland.
  • The French 13th Parachute Dragoons also directly contribute to the US Marine Corps' victory at Mrima Hill when they mark Russian paratrooper staging areas for a massive artillery fire mission.
• Anti-Villain: The Russian soldiers and officers are mostly portrayed as regular soldiers comparable to any other professional military (save for an early instance of executing wounded Polish militiamen). The strategic-level leadership is a mixed bag.
  • President Anatoly Rivkin is a Corrupt Politician who undermines the chain of command of the Ministry of Defence by directly assigning Lazar and Sabaneyev to Operation Red Metal. It's also implied that he authorized the operation without the Ministry's approval. And while he does authorize the operation in response to severe western sanctions, Connolly speculates that he's just as motivated to protect his own personal wealth. He ends up getting sacked by the Duma for his bundling.
  • Colonel General Eduard Sabaneyev is a Glory Seeker (internally muses how he will describe his exploits in his memoirs) who displays some Honor Before Reason tendencies (such as forcing some infantrymen to walk through the snow instead of riding on a T-14 that has its turret blown off on the grounds that such a sight would be "bad for morale.")
  • Colonel General Boris Lazar is the Token Good Teammate. He is shown to be a very respectable man who cares for the lives of his men and isn't willing to risk nuclear war over a single rare-earth mine.
  • Colonel Yuri Borbikov also displays Honor Before Reason and veers into General Ripper territory (despite being a colonel).
    • His Spetsnaz operators also have a much more villainous flare as they kill civilians who may compromise their security, torture spies, and even intimidate other Russian soldiers on Borbikov's behalf.
  • Averted with the Chinese People's Liberation Army, who are portrayed as straight up amoral villains who deliberately manipulate the presidential elections of Taiwan and threaten military intervention over the results, all in the name of reunification.
• Anyone Can Die: By the end of the story, Chandler, Pascal, Shank, and Borbikov are all dead.
• Archetypal Character:
  • The Protagonist: Lieutenant Colonel Dan Connolly.
  • Sidekick: Major Bob Griggs to Connolly.
  • The Antagonist: Colonel Yuri Borbikov.
  • Audience Surrogate: Paulina Tobiasz (for non-military readers).
  • Old Soldier: Colonel General Boris Lazar.
• Artistic License – Military: Mostly averted thanks to extensive research on the part of the authors, as well as Rawlings' military experience. There are a few oddities, however.
  • Boris Lazar is stated to have fought in all of Russia's major wars since the Soviet-Afghan War, which spanned from 1979-'89. Assuming his military service began midway or late in the war, he would have been serving in the Ground Forces of both the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation anywhere from 30-40 years, which definitely should have placed him in the retirement category by late 2020.
  • In the book's timeline, Captain Arc-Blanchette's platoon of the French 13th Parachute Dragoon Regiment is stationed in Brussels, Belgium as part of NATO's Very High Readiness Force, able to quickly deploy to any crisis. However, Arc never seems to consult his chain of command when he leads his platoon to recon strange satellite signals in Germany and Czechia, or when they redeploy to East Africa to resist the Russian invasion.
    • He also introduces himself by his first name, Apollo, when working with the US Marines. Although special forces officers are generally more lenient with military courtesy, this is still something that officers generally don't do, though he may have done this to avoid confusion over his admittedly long last name in the heat of combat.
• Asshole Victim: When the climatic Russian attack on the Marines at Mrima Hill has clearly failed, Colonel Borbikov attempts to play his failure contingency by ordering one of the last remaining Russian artillery batteries to bombard the Marines with nuclear-tipped shells. General Lazar shuts his plan down and has him arrested. Borbikov seemingly complies before attempting to shoot Lazar, only to be gunned down himself.
• Author Appeal: Rawlings is a former Marine officer and his love of the US Marine Corps shines through as the Marines are central in combating the Russians in Africa.
  • The authors also seem to really like the A-10 "Warthog" Thunderbolt II ground attack fighter, which actually makes sense given Rawlings' previous career as a Marine infantry officer.
• Author Tract: A small one where an NSA analyst explains that the US has been engaged in a cyber war with Russia and China for several years, but the general public is not aware of it. Also how the Chinese-made technology that Americans commonly use can easily be used against them.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: Lieutenant Colonel Dan Connolly, who despite being Kicked Upstairs to the Pentagon is not afraid to jump right back into a shooting war with the Marines of Regimental Combat Team 5.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Much of the combat scenes involve the combatants carefully planning or calculating their next actions, even for things that seem straight forward at face value such as conducting an ambush. It's especially prevalent in the aerial combat and the naval engagements between frigates and submarines, a la Tom Clancy.
• Badass Boast:
  • Colonel Grant after seeing the destruction of Lieutenant Chandler's supply convoy: "We're gonna grab some ammo and fuel and then we're going on the motherfucking attack!"
  • Shank when he attacks an armed Russian assault train: "Die, Commie, die!" (An A-10 pilot chant dating from the Cold War that helps them time their 30mm cannon bursts.)
    • Which turns into, "Die, motherfuckers, die!"
• Bad Vibrations: Polish militia and NATO forces often feel the approaching Russian armor.
• Badass Family: The Arc-Blanchette's. Pascal is a veteran DGSE intelligence officer and Apollo is a platoon leader in the 13th Parachute Dragoon Regiment, a special reconnaissance unit of France's Special Operations Command. Pascal also states that their family has a long history of military service in France's wars.
• Badass Nickname:
  • Major Ray Vance got the callsign "Shank" from being incarcerated in Italy. Tough exactly why he was incarcerated in never explained.
  • Colonel General Boris Lazar is known as the "Lion of Dagestan".
• Batman Gambit: When Connolly and Griggs figure out what Russia's true objective is as the US Armed Forces are preoccupied with Europe and the Pacific. Knowing that their boss will not allow them to brief the Joint Chiefs, Griggs places his name in the meeting schedule knowing that he will be removed and chewed out, allowing Connolly to slip by unnoticed to brief the Chiefs.
• Big Damn Heroes: The crew of the USS John Warner pull an epic one during the battle of Mrima Hill. Just when the Russians are overwhelming the Marines, the John Warner slips through a Russian-Iranian blockade, surfaces off the Kenyan coast, and fires a salvo of Tomahawk cruise missiles that decimates the Russian artillery batteries. Then they immediately dive and escape from the blockade before they can be hunted down.
• Bilingual Bonus: Pascal quotes the medieval French poem The Song of Roland in Old French. "Mult ad apris ki bien conuist ahan." (He has learned much who knows the pain of struggle.)
• Bittersweet Ending: Operation Red Metal is defeated, President Rivkin is sacked by the Duma, and General Sabaneyev is facing trial for war crimes by the International Criminal Court. But victory comes at a heavy price for NATO and Poland's place in it is almost certainly in question after violating the ceasefire with Russia. The Polish president also willingly destroyed his political legacy by authorizing the retaliation and likely allowed his own friends and family members to be killed in Wrocław in order to protect operational security. Meanwhile, China is preparing to invade Taiwan while the US is distracted.
  • Apollo Arc-Blanchette receives the French Legion of Merit, but has to bury his father, Pascal, and is left with the very difficult task of personally apologizing to all of the families of his dead men, some of whom are very hostile.
  • Nearly a Downer Ending with Paulina Tobiasz. She is awarded the Virtuti Militari, Poland's highest military honor, and is commissioned as an officer in the Polish Land Forces. But she is heartbroken by the unexpected death of Shank, who she was in love with, and only has a promissory ring to remember him by. She has also lost all of her friends in the war, has no chance of returning to a normal civilian life, and is also shown to be at least mildly shell-shocked.
• Black Dude Dies First: The first named character to die is an African American officer named Lieutenant Darnell Chandler, who is split in half by a 30mm cannon when his supply convoy is ambushed by Russian Bumerang combat vehicles. In his last moments, however, he fights back against the armored vehicles with just a .50 caliber machine gun, making for a Dying Moment of Awesome.
• Book Ends:
  • The prologue chapter follows Lieutenant Colonel Connolly leading the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines into combat in Afghanistan. The climatic battle at Mrima Hill has Connolly return to action with Regimental Combat Team 5.
  • Colonel Borbikov engineers the entire conflict after being forced to abandon Mrima Hill in the first chapter, and he ultimately dies trying to take it back.
  • After in the first chapter, Chinese Sea Dragons (naval special forces) infiltrate Taiwan to assassinate a political leader. The novel ends right as they are about to return to Taiwan.
• Boring, but Practical: The cyber warfare conducted by the US National Security Agency and the Russian GRU is not quite as dramatic as shootouts and explosions, but it's a critical aspect of the conflict.
• Broken Pedestal: Borbikov's idolization of Lazar is tarnished by the latter's caution, culminating in an attempt to shoot the general when he refuses to launch nuclear shells at the Americans.
• Bystander Action-Horror Dissonance: Poland deliberately violates the ceasefire as the Russians are retreating through their country (having just invaded days prior). They specifically funnel the Russians forces into the streets of large city of Wrocław where the civilian Territorial Defence Force springs a massive ambush that inevitably causes a lot of collateral damage on top of killing a lot of Russians. The Polish President sanctions this knowing full well that many Polish civilians will die, even his own friends and family who are in the city.
• Cassandra Truth: Connolly and Griggs deduce early on that the tensions with China have been engineered by the Russian GRU and that the Russian Ground Forces are preparing to invade Europe and Africa. Their immediate superiors don't believe them because of Russia's announced war games with Belarus.
• Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys: Completely averted by the French characters.
  • Apollo's father, Pascal Arc-Blanchette, is a DGSE intelligence officer, stationed in Djibouti, who first investigates Spetsnaz activity in Africa. When Lazar's force lands in Djibouti City, Pascal sends intelligence of their armor composition to NATO before he and his friend Tristan are tortured and executed by Borbikov's Spetsnaz as spies.
  • The 13th Parachute Dragoon operators under Captain Apollo Arc-Blanchette also play a critical role throughout the story as they discover Spetsnaz activity in Europe. They later tremendously help the Marines defend Mrima Hill by reconing staging areas of Russian Airborne Forces, and then distracting them with an ambush, allowing Colonel Connolly to call in a devastating artillery fire mission of High-Explosive and white phosphorus rounds that effectively halts the Russian attack.
• Chekhov's Skill: Paulina serves as one-half of an RPG-7 team in her first unit and is specifically stated in narrative to have only fired it a few times. She ends up firing quite a lot of rockets when the Territorial Defence Force ambushes the Russians in Wrocław.
• The Climax: Operation Red Metal comes to a head with the battle of Mrima Hill, where US Marine Regimental Combat Team 5, a platoon of the French 13th Parachute Dragoons, and a battalion of the French Foreign Legion defend the hill against an onslaught from General Lazar's Russian force of BTR units and a VDV regiment.
• Cool Train: The Russians build 3 trains dubbed "Red Blizzard (1-3)" to support their invasion of Europe. In addition to a command center, each of the trains carry supplies, vehicles, troops, fuel, and Anti-Air weaponry to ensure control of the battlespace.
• Combat Pragmatist: The Polish JW GROM and Territorial Defence Force dress entirely in civilian cloths when preparing the ambush for the Russians in Wrocław, which is technically illegal under the Geneva Conventions, but the Poles are more concerned about achieving the element of surprise.
  • Slightly subverted in that the Spetsnaz recon teams see right through it, but don't expect serious resistance.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Despite being a former Ranger officer, Major Bob Griggs is a lazy staff officer who has accepted that his career has "fizzled out" and plainly couldn't care less about his Pentagon job. However, his connection in the NSA allows him and Connolly to figure out Russia's true intentions before the Joint Chiefs of Staff realize it, he is able to creatively navigate the red-tape bureaucracy that is the Pentagon, and has no problem taking heat from his immediate superior on Connolly's behalf.
• Delaying Action: Much of the resistance against numerically- and qualitatively-superior Russian armor thrusts consist of these.
• Determinator: Most of the NATO characters in general.
  • AH-64 Apache pilots 1st Lieutenant Sandra "Glitter" Glisson and Chief Warrant Officer 2 "Jesse" James are effectively left stranded in the air when Ansbach Army Airfield is destroyed by the Russians. With no other options, the two keep attacking Russian armor units until they crash from fuel exhaustion. They survive.
  • Lieutenant Colonel Tom Grant assumes command of the 37th Armor Regiment when the war begins in Europe, scrapping together a composite tank regiment made up of maintenance personnel, plus the German 203rd Panzer Battalion. Only being ordered to enforce a ceasefire stops him from relentlessly counter-attacking the Russians, and even that is only temporary when the ceasefire breaks down and Colonel Grant leads the regiment right back into the attack. Even into neutral Belarus.
  • When Lieutenant Darnell Chandler's supply convoy is ambushed by Russian Bumerang fighting vehicles, he jumps on an M2 Browning and fights to the death.
  • Paulina Tobiasz. She fights back with just a bolt-action Mosin-Nagant rifle when her first unit is wiped out around her and later leads her own unit to fight back against the better-equipped Russians at every opportunity.
  • Shank attacks a Russian military train armed with anti-aircraft weapons and keeps it up until he destroys it even as his own plan takes damage.
  • Regimental Combat Team 5 tenaciously defends Mrima Hill against Lazar's Russian force that hammers them with more artillery and more armor in the climatic final battle.
• Didn't Think This Through: After being missing in action during the battle of Mrima Hill, a wounded General Lazar shows up just as Colonel Borbikov tries to have one of their last artillery batteries fire the nuclear shells on the hill. Despite the fact that Lazar had previously shown reservations about using nuclear weapons, Borbikov expects him to authorize the fire mission, only for Lazar to promptly have him arrested. Borbikov then takes a rifle from one of his guards tries to shoot Lazar, only to be gunned down by the other guard.
  • Sabaneyev's force in Europe also pulls a bad one when they reach friendly Belarus (after being forced to fight their way through Poland) and leave a rearguard at the Bug River that fires on the US 37th Armor Regiment that's hot on their heels. Sabaneyev expects that the Americans and Germans won't violate Belarusian neutrality by continuing their offensive pursuit, but taken fire from the other side of the border provokes them to do just that. The Russian engineers also inadvertently allow the American and German tanks to cross the river by leaving a bridge standing that they deem too weak to support tanks. The 37th Armor solves this obstacle by simply sending the tanks over one at a time.
• Dirty Communists: The People's Republic of China tries to manipulate the Taiwanese presidential elections in their favor by assassinating a communist candidate, framing it on the anti-communist Kuomintang government, and threatening military intervention if the Kuomintang gets re-elected. They then attempt to play the innocent card when a US Navy destroyer sinks a PLAN submarine after being fired upon. And when the Kuomintang is ultimately re-elected, the People's Liberation Army prepares for full invasion.
• Double Standard: General Sabaneyev is shocked that the US 37th Armor Regiment (and the German battalion with them) would chase his force all the way into neutral Belarus, despite the fact that he just led a massive raid into Germany and destroyed several US bases.
• Due to the Dead:
  • Paulina places a bouquet of red, white, and blue, flowers on Shank's casket as she tearfully mourns his death.
  • Apollo also buries Pascal in a military funeral whilst barely holding back tears.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: Subverted. Special operations forces are critical players throughout the story, the battles make it abundantly clear that they simply can't win a conventional war all by themselves and are most effective when executing missions that they are specifically purposed for, i.e., infiltrations, surgical strikes, covert reconnaissance, and unconventional warfare.
  • The authors also explicitly distinguish between special operations forces by nation while displaying the missions they conduct.
    • Russian Spetsnaz units: infiltrations and reconnaissance.
    • French 13th Parachute Dragoon Regiment: reconnaissance.
    • US Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance.
    • Polish JW GROM (Operation Maneuver Response Group): unconventional warfare.
    • Chinese Sea Dragons: infiltrations by sea.
• Embarrassing Nickname: First Lieutenant Sandra Glisson got the callsign "Glitter" from accidentally dumping chaff on her commander's Apache and following up by saying "Ooh, pretty," over the radio.
• Expy: Dan Connolly is similar to Jack Ryan (which makes sense given that Greaney was a long time Clancy collaborator). They're both Marines (or in Ryan's case was a Marine) with Irish names who's official job is to analyze military intelligence for the higher ups, but also jump directly into the action.
• False Flag Operation: The Sea Dragons pull off one of these at the beginning of the novel, murdering a pro-Communist Taiwanese politician so that blame will fall on Taiwanese anti-Communists... and giving mainland China a pretext for an invasion.
• Foreshadowing: Some criticisms voiced about Operation Red Metal come back to haunt the Russians later.
• The Ghost: Colonel Zolotov, commander of the Su-57 squadron, is a cross between this and a One-Scene Wonder. Only a single mission is presented from his perspective, but "Shank" and his fellow A-10 pilots have repeated clashes with his unit. The implication that it's Zolotov himself in one of the opposing cockpits is clear.
• Gratuitous Foreign Language: Given the multiple nationalities present in the story, some words and phrases are spelled in Russian, Polish, French, Swahili, and even Old French in one chapter.
  • Connolly also uses the Latin phrase "in flagrante delicto" to describe the affair between the two Pacific Command officers, which Griggs mistakes as Spanish.
• Gray-and-Gray Morality: The Russians are the clear instigators of the conflict, but even Connolly notes how they are primarily motivated by the pressure of severe economic sanctions. The US, German, and Polish forces also take some ethically questionable actions such as violating the ceasefire and invading neutral Belarus just to wipe out the Russian force in Europe.
  • The violation of Belarusian neutrality is Lampshaded by Lieutenant Colonel Tom Grant, who fully expects to be court-martialed when he leads the 37th Armor Regiment in the attack. He simply gets re-assigned to Fort Bliss when it's all over.
  • When the Marines at Mrima Hill are about to be overrun, they use white phosphorus artillery shells to devastate the Russian paratroopers before they can deliver the final attack. The use of white phosphorus munitions is hotly disputed in real life, and the Marine artillery batteries only resort to it with explicit Pentagon authorization from Lieutenant Colonel Connolly.
  • Averted with the conflict between China and Taiwan, which is clear-cut Black-and-White Morality.
• Hero of Another Story: Boris Lazar's combat record includes the Soviet-Afghan War, the Chechen Wars (and the intermediate War of Dagestan), the Russo-Georgian War, and the present-day Russo-Ukrainian War.
• Hollywood Hacking: Initially averted when it's plainly explained how the GRU was able to spy on a PACOM general by remotely accessing his laptop camera, using the Chinese-built hardware as a "back door".
  • Averted later when the GRU disables NATO's entire European communication network to set off Operation Red Metal. Granted, they had help from the Russian Air Force destroying multiple satellites.
• I Choose to Stay: Pascal's love for Africa has him decide against going on the evacuation flight out of Djibouti. This leads to him getting
• Killed Offscreen: Pascal after being captured by Spetsnaz operators. It's also stated that they tortured him for spying.
• La Résistance: The Polish Territorial Defence Force is portrayed as a realistic version of this. In practical terms, they are little more than a militia of civilian reservists with little training, poor discipline, and outdated weapons. They are, however, able to cause the Russians a lot of headache through guerilla warfare, which is shown to be just as costly for them.
• Lean and Mean: Sabanayev is the tall and thin contrast to the stout Lazar.
• Military Maverick: This tendency of Tom Grant leads him to ignore an attempted command from NATO HQ to stay within Poland and invade neutral Belarus to pursue Russian forces.
• Never My Fault: As the European component of Red Metal turns into a NATO invasion of Belarus, Sabanayev foists the failures on his subordinates.
• Old-School Dogfight: While making attack runs on the Russian Ground Forces near Wrocław, Shank's A-10 flight is attacked by an Su-57 fight. Given that the A-10 doesn't have nearly the same speed or maneuverability as the Su-57, and isn't armed for air-to-air combat, it would seem like an imminent CurbStompBattle, but the A-10s actually manage to defend themselves and fight off the Su-57s using an actual A-10 tactic called "Circle the Hogs" (circling around a small ring of airspace with their guns pointed outward, making it dangerous for enemy fighters to directly attack them).
• Omniglot: Pascal is able to speak 8 languages, a trait useful in his position as diplomatic staff and DGSE agent.
• Reassigned to Djibouti: Pascal considers his career to be at a dead end given his current posting.
• Resigned to the Call: Paulina's bravery gets her an officer rank in the Polish Land Forces, which she joins more out of duty than willing choice.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Griggs risks his career in trying to bring attention to Russia's impending attack.
• Semper Fi: To be expected when one of the authors is a retired Marine. Not only is the main protagonist a Marine infantry officer with a combat record in Afghanistan, but Regimental Combat Team 5 becomes absolutely vital in defending Mrima Hill from the Russians and by extension defeating Operation Red Metal as a whole.
  • Their Determinator tendencies are Lampshaded by Captain Arc-Blanchette: "They push back on everything and then listen for certainty from their leaders. Lie to them about the odds, and they won't believe another thing you say, but tell them they are going to die in a hail of glory, and they will advance towards hell."
• Sequel Hook: The Sea Dragons reappear in the epilogue, this time spearheading a full scale invasion of Taiwan.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Paulina becomes this over the course of the novel.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: After completing their objective in Germany, the Russian force in Europe beings retreating back to Belarus under protection of a ceasefire with NATO. But given that they invaded Poland in the process, (who have a long history of wars and occupation from Russia) the Poles deliberately violate the ceasefire and turn their whole country into a quagmire battlefield that makes the Russian retreat costly.
  • It goes From Bad to Worse for the Russians when they fire on the US-German armor units who were escorting them in the chaos of the Polish ambush at Wrocław, which naturally prompts full retaliation from from NATO authorized by the US president. From there, the European half of Operation Red Metal quickly devolves from a success to a disaster.
    • It gets even worse for the Russians when they finally reach Belarus but the US 37th Armor Regiment just keeps attacking them even in neutral territory after the Russian rearguard fires at them from across the border.
    • The Russians also expect the Belarusian Armed Forces to assist them, citing their military pact, but the Belarusians refuse to to directly assist either side as they are caught between the military might of two superpowers.
• Tank Goodness: The ground combat between the NATO and Russians forces in Europe is primarily armor based. M1A2 Abrams for the Americans, Leopard 2s for the Germans, and T-14 Armatas for the Russians.
  • Also a case of Tanks, but No Tanks for Russians, as they end of relying more on armored personnel carriers (BTRs) and infantry fighting vehicles (VPK-7829 Bumerangs) rather than tanks. Justified as most of Sabaneyev's T-14s are destroyed or rendered inoperable and the lighter and faster Bumerangs make for more practical vanguard vehicles. Lazar is forced to leave behind his T-90s entirely after the USS John Warner destroys their oil tankers, and consequently relies entirely on BTR-82s for frontal assaults and ZSU-23-4 "Shilka" vehicles for anti-air protection.
  • Marine Regimental Combat Team 5 also only has a few older M1 tanks and mostly use LAV-25 recon vehicles from the 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion. It actually becomes a problem for them as the LAVs are much less armed and armored than the BTRs.
• Token Romance: Played straight with Shank and Paulina at first after they fight off a Russian attack, then mercilessly Subverted when Shank dies in a Spetsnaz ambush.
• Took a Level in Badass: At the time of the invasion, the only combat-capable US Army forces in Germany are the maintenance sections of the 37th Armor Regiment, who were deployed ahead of the actual tanker in preparation for future exercises. When the Russians come knocking, however, the maintenance personnel quickly become full-on tankers. Justified in that they (informally) have just as much experience operating the M1A2 Abrams tanks, albeit not in combat.
• War Is Hell: Most convincingly demonstrated in the damage wreaked on Poland and Germany during pitched battles between NATO and Russia.
• When You Coming Home, Dad?: Conolly's frequent absences from home are touched upon in the novel.
• Would Hurt a Child: The leader of the Sea Dragon unit that infiltrates Taiwan unflinchingly shoots and kills a little girl who sees him to avoid compromise.
• You Are in Command Now: Tom Grant finds himself in command of the 37th Armored Regiment when the Russians attack.

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