[Ayes of Texas Trilogy 03] • Texas Triumphant

Twice the Soviet Union had attacked the young Republic of Texas, and twice the Soviets had their noses bloodied.

In 1998 an entire Russian fleet disappeared from the Houston Ship Canal in a cloud of superheated steam and atomic debris, vaporized in the one-man suicide charge of Texas's richest man, Gwillam Forte.

Then, in 2008, the KGB threatened Forte's son with an H-bomb. But the young Texican managed to vaporize Moscow-and a good deal of the surrounding landscape-with its own weapon.

now the Russians were really mad: defeat in Houston had cost them trillions, Moscow glowed in the dark, and their international prestige was lower than whale spit. Yet the world still held three threats for them: Ripley Forte, the Republic of Texas, and the United States.

But the Russians had bought solutions to all three-or so they thought-and black storm clouds were gathering on the horizon...