Army officer's book allows gamers to play along with plot

Soldiers in an Army infantry battalion stationed in Romania got used to seeing one of their senior officers, Maj. Joel Radunzel, typing away on a laptop juiced by a battery pack — in a field tent.

“Trying to make time to write is tough,” Radunzel, a 2002 graduate of Rampart High School, said in a phone interview from Bulgaria, where he’s deployed as part of the European Deterrence Initiative.

But creating an alternate-history thriller of what plays out when the Cold War doesn’t end, and World War III erupts between the Soviet Union and NATO, has been easier than the West Point Military Academy alum thought