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![Red Metal by [Mark Greaney, Hunter Ripley Rawlings]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51whyEqzaIL._SY346_.jpg)
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Red Metal Kindle Edition
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From the New York Times bestselling author of the Gray Man series comes a startlingly realistic novel of World War III.
A desperate Kremlin takes advantage of a military crisis in Asia to simultaneously strike into Western Europe and invade east Africa in a bid to occupy three Rare Earth mineral mines that will give Russia unprecedented control over the world's hi-tech sector for generations to come.
Pitted against the Russians are a Marine lieutenant colonel pulled out of a cushy Pentagon job, a French Special Forces captain and his intelligence operative father, a young Polish partisan fighter, an A-10 Warthog pilot, and the commander of an American tank platoon who, along with his German counterpart, fight from behind enemy lines.
Through grand land, sea, and air battles to a small unit fighting hand-to-hand in the jungle, Russia and the US face off in a terrifying but thrilling battle for world dominance - with constant the threat of a Russian nuclear detonation ever present.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherSphere
- Publication date16 July 2019
- File size5375 KB
Product description
Review
'As with all of Greaney's work, this is a fun read. If only all our wars were fiction.' -- Kirkus Reviews --This text refers to the audioCD edition.
From the Publisher
Book Description
About the Author
LT. COL. HUNTER RIP RAWLINGS IV is an active duty Marine and a veteran of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. A former infantry battalion commander and light armored reconnaissance officer, he has served for more than twenty years. He is currently assigned to Quantico as the Warfighting Director for Marine Corps Command and Staff College. In his spare time, Lt. Col. Rawlings is an avid scuba diver, small-craft sailor, and microbrewer. --This text refers to the paperback edition.
Product details
- ASIN : B07QMN387W
- Publisher : Sphere (16 July 2019)
- Language : English
- File size : 5375 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 658 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: 32,122 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- 113 in Techno-Thrillers
- 157 in Technothrillers (Books)
- 181 in Political Fiction (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Mark Greaney is the #1 NYT bestselling author of SIERRA SIX, a Gray Man novel. The film version of the first book in the series, THE GRAY MAN, will debut on Netflix in July 2022, starring Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans. Mark has written or co-written seven Tom Clancy novels, and is also the co-author of the 2019 military thriller, RED METAL, and the Audible Original Audio Drama, Armored (optioned for film by Sony Pictures). The Gray Man series also includes, RELENTLESS, ONE MINUTE OUT, MISSION CRITICAL, AGENT IN PLACE, GUNMETAL GRAY, BACK BLAST, DEAD EYE, BALLISTIC, ON TARGET, and THE GRAY MAN.
Mark lives in Memphis, Tennessee
Learn more at MARKGREANEYBOOKS.COM
New York Times Bestselling author, Lieutenant Colonel Hunter Ripley "Rip" Rawlings IV, was a Marine Corps infantry and Reconnaissance Officer with 23-years of service. With ten deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, CJTF-HOA, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia to name a few. An Infantry and LAV Reconnaissance Officer, he had additional specialties of military advisor and operations planner. He served in billets from Scout Platoon Commander, LAV Reconnaissance Company Commander, FAST Commander up to Infantry Battalion Commander.
Learn more at: www.riprawlings.com
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Some of the scenarios are a little fantastic BUT this is a work of fiction that I enjoyed immensely. The ending appeared to point directly to a sequel and I hope that happens.
To anyone who enjoys action/techno, this is for you.
Top reviews from other countries

The French Army in Kenya. The French Army has never been in Kenya, it has always been safely inside the UK sphere of influence. It was originally part of the Empire from the late 1800s until independence in 1964, after which it joined the British Commonwealth. The French “bit” of Africa is over in West Africa and consists of a huge amount of desert. It is also keeping the French armed forces fully tied up trying to contain various Islamic fundamentalist Jihadists wandering the desert pathways. The UK is involved over there providing strategic airlift to France, something they lack themselves. In addition to these points it is also worth pointing out that the UK has a battalion training in Kenya for something like 6 months of the year, so if the Kenyans were to request anyone’s support, it would naturally be the army that has experience working in their environment and with their army.
Russian Army Structure. The authors make a great deal about the Russians employing a Brigade for their strategic Operational raids into Germany and Kenya. Throughout the narrative, however, the authors continuously refer to Regiments as part of the brigade. I suggest a quick Google search of Russian Rifle Regiment to get some background. A MRR is in every other army’s terminology, a Brigade. It consists of 3 or 4 combat battalions with supporting arms. A Motor Rifle Division consists of three or more MRR plus supporting arms (artillery, engineers, AD etc). It is therefore quite clear that the Russian forces in each theatre are a strong divisional sized formation with a full range of supporting arms.
Russian hacking. The authors have the whole gamut of NATO communications taken down by elite hackers. Unfortunately this is just not going to happen since NATO secure communications are not connected in any way to the internet so cannot he hacked by the Russians. So in the event of a Russian attack NATO forces would be in communication with each other and their Supreme Operational HQ at Mons in Belgium from the very first moment, and certainly by the time the Russians bounce the early Polish forces.
Russian Air Attacks. As the opening stage of the Russian attack, Russian Air Force aircraft penetrate NATO airspace to attack satellites over Germany. There is some hat tipping towards the NAEW force in Germany, but it does not get off its backside. This is a travesty of the real situation. NATO maintain an Air Policing Mission at all times (24/7) over the eastern border. This consists of at least two two ship patrols north and south and backed up at all times by at least one AWACS. While it is possible for Russia to attack satellites over Germany they would e unable to do this with detection and a rapid escalation of the NATO posture
American counter attack. This is formed by a scratch force of logisticians and maintainers at Grafenwohr. I remain confused how a Brigade level force of non-tankers are able to continuously engage with and effectively defeat a formation 3 to 4 times larger composed of combat arms specialists. I was a military maintainer so am happy for my side of the house to get some recognition, but steady boys.
Route in Africa. For some reason the authors have the Russians, with Iranian support decide to invade and take over Djibouti. After securing the port and surrounding area the Russian Brigade (actually read as Division) sets off for Kenya. Unfortunately the only usable road out of Djibouti takes the traffic to Addis Addaba, the capital of Ethiopia. There is no way around this as south and south-east from the port is the Ogaden desert. For reason unknown, the Ethiopian army is not involved is trying to stop a Russian force invading their country. No explanation of this is given and no side bar demonstrates that the authors understand this. If you ever visit Ethiopia you will discover that the infrastructure does not support the sort of forces being deployed here, and getting a force of this size and complexity over the Ethiopian escarpment would be a major achievement in its own right. Given that Mogadishu in Somalia is not defended by an army and is very close to the northern border of Kenya, one has to wonder why that was not the chosen drop odd spot – easy to reach, no local opposition and shorter travel to destination.
My last comment is about the NATO response. There is none, even though SACEUR would have the following forces at his disposal from day one: French Rapid Reaction Corps at Lille, German Dutch Corps at Munster, Westphalia, UK 1st Armoured Division North Germany, EuroCorps at Strasbourg, plus additional US Forces throughout Germany – and that is just the army boys. As already identified above, NATO secure comms would have been buzzing from the moment the Russians crossed into Poland and SACEUR in Mons would have taken very strong and immediate action to marshal Allied forces and respond quickly.
US Marines. I thought the whole Marines thing worked well, the dialogue was robust and punchy, just what you expect from good troops of this type. The combat sequences were very authentic and well written and I had no problem with that aspect of the story. It is a pity that the strong effort here was let down by poor research on these other points.

On the flip-side, the actual premise of the book (essentially Russian army units invade all the way into Germany, with no-one stopping them, aided by hackers magically switching off air defences and so-forth) is truly ridiculous. Hacking is not magic and cannot simply switch off firewalled systems, the Russians could never get that far that quickly. Also, the MacGuffin of the story (rare earth metals that can only be extracted from a few mines) is basically wrong - "rare earth metals" are not actually as rare as the story makes out. I don't think the comments from some reviewers about this story being "expertly researched" and so-forth are entirely deserved.
All the same this was an entertaining read.


I had previously thought that his one weakness was the lack of technical knowledge of military hardware and tactics, compared to Clancy but the input of a USMC Lt. Colonel has fixed that in spades.
A fast paced, entirely believable novel about Russian ambitions present day that is a guaranteed page turner from start to end.
I read it in just two long sessions and can't wait for more books in this ilk from Mark Greaney.
There's a new king of the techno-thriller and that's Mark Greaney. The other so called 'Clancy' novels by Cameron are a very poor imitation of Clancy’s writing style and best avoided.

A number of different characters whose lives interleave into a huge story (in terms of both number of pages and complexity). I was impressed that not all the characters survive - not to throw any spoilers in, but heroes can die too, and it's a brave author who acknowledges that.
A very good read for anyone who is interested in modern warfare, with a decent amount of what-comes-around to deal with some characters' hubris.