Operation Graupel

Eleven missing seconds. An unexplained course change. A decision that cannot wait for certainty.

Aboard an American destroyer, Executive Officer Beth McDonald sees something the sensors cannot explain. An unidentified object disappears, then returns at a changed bearing. The evidence is fragmentary. The implications are not.

Beth's refusal to dismiss the encounter draws her into a military assessment reaching the highest levels of government. In Washington, President John Daniels has inherite...