THEY WERE THE TIP OF THE SPEAR. HE WAS THE FIRST TO BE BROKEN.

Captain Rostislav "Rost" Voronov is a true believer. A third-generation soldier and decorated VDV paratrooper, he is the heir to a legacy of Russian military glory forged in the fires of Stalingrad. On the eve of the "special military operation," his faith is absolute. His mission is the stuff of legend: lead a daring helicopter assault on Antonov Airport, seize a critical airbridge, and decapitate the Ukrainian government in forty-eight hours. A swift, surgical strike. A victory parade in Kyiv. That was the promise.

The promise was a lie.

From the moment his formation of helicopters is met by a storm of American-made Stinger missiles, the plan unravels into a blood-soaked nightmare. The "token resistance" turns out to be a battle-hardened Ukrainian brigade ready for a fight. Pinned down, abandoned by high command, and haunted by the catastrophic failure of the 64-kilometer convoy that was supposed to relieve them, Rostislav's war for the Motherland becomes a desperate scramble for survival.

Cut off and hunted, Rostislav must lead the handful of his remaining men on a long walk through the hell his own army has created. But the Ukrainian regulars and their deadly Javelin missiles are not the only enemies. In the ruins of Irpin and Bucha, Rostislav comes face-to-face with the true face of the invasion: the depravity of drunken looters, the cowardice of paranoid political officers, and the bottomless corruption of an army that sees its own soldiers as little more than meat for their maps.

Now an insurgent fighting the very system he once revered, Rostislav has only one mission left: get his men home. But to do that, he must evade the professional Ukrainian Alpha Group hunting him, navigate a treacherous landscape of friends who will poison him and countrymen who will betray him, and confront the ghost of the man he used to be.

From the master of modern military fiction comes The Ghost of Antonov, a harrowing, minute-by-minute account of the battle that shattered an army's reputation and the journey of a soldier who lost his country to find his honor. It is a story about the price of lies, the nature of courage, and the simple, brutal truth that in war, the most dangerous enemy can be the one wearing your own flag.