Red Ice: A Cold War Thriller

At the height of the Cold War, a cashiered SEAL officer living in Japan is retained by a world-famous Russian dissident to rescue a friend from the Siberian Gulag. The SEAL officer recruits and trains a group to undertake the cold weather operation and even finagles an off-the-books diesel submarine . . . for a price. The rescue is grueling and the withdrawal harrowing.

Red Ice takes place in Japan's Honshu and Hokkaido Islands, South Korea, Russia's Kuril Islands, the Sea of Okhotsk, and Siberia.

It is a relentless tale of cross-cultural naval intrique as it is practiced in rubber boats and kayaks, in pup tents and snow caves, on skis, and aboard submarines. Red Ice is savagely authentic in its description of this brand of unconventional warfare and of the individual tensions that haunt the men who practice it.

Captain Crossland served as a Navy SEAL platoon officer in Vietnam in 1971. During his combat tour in Cà Mau, An Xuyên Province, Vietnam, he participated in Phoenix operations (the abduction of high level Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army leaders) and Britelight operations (the rescue of American P.O.W.s). Immediately following his Vietnam tour, he served as an advisor teaching unconventional warfare tactics to the South Korean Underwater Demolition Teams in Chinhae, Korea. On completion of his active duty, he elected to attend law school and remain in the naval reserve. As a reserve officer he received orders to South Korea on nine additional occasions.

In 2002 he was mobilized as a reserve officer for duty with Naval Special Warfare Group One Afghanistan and elsewhere in Central and Southwest Asia. In 2005, Capt. Crossland retired with 35 years commissioned service, active and reserve, as a SEAL officer.