Former United States Air Force pilot Dale Brown has once again written a high-tech aerial combat novel that rivals his previous bestselling books and lends credence to the belief that he is the "best military adventure writer in the country today" (Clive Cussler). In Fatal Terrain, Brown brings up issues that make this book his timeliest novel yet.

As we enter the 21st century, the People's Republic of China has attacked Taiwan, and the United States comes to Taiwan's aid. However, the world is shocked when China repels the United States's attempted intervention with relative ease. Attaining military dominance, China begins reclaiming its lost territories throughout Asia. China then unleashes its geopolitical plan, which ultimately aims to render the United States completely helpless. With such chaos going on in the world, the United States has only one chance: Aerial strike warfare expert Patrick McLanahan teams with aerospace engineer John Masters in an attempt to convert the B-52 Stratofortress bomber fleet to the new EB-52 Megafortress. This new bomber, known as the "flying battleship," has rapid-reaction global strike force.

McLanahan joins forces with a small band of military and civilian colleagues as they attempt to outfit the EB-52 Megafortress with state-of-the-art stealth cruise missiles. If anything can put an end to China's plan, it is these new missiles. The future of the free world now rests in the hands of Patrick McLanahan, John Masters, and an assembled team of shadow warriors. However, several unanswered questions involving this last-second outfitting of the EB-52 Megafortress remain: Are these missiles enough? Have they come too late?

" `It's nothing you haven't done before, General,' McLanahan said. `I know you've gone over the Mach at one hundred AGL in the B-1B, and you've shook off fighters in a B-52 down low before, too.' " Readers whose pulse rises at sentences like that will find that Brown's (Storming Heaven) latest hymn to airborne death and destruction will get their engines up to full rev. Laden with acronyms like COMNAVAIRPAC and CINCPAC, full of stiffly worded patriotism ("And thank you for what you and Tiger Jamieson did over Iran and the Persian Gulf. You averted a major world oil crisis, and probably another Desert Storm. Job well done"), the narrative nevertheless manages to jet through a complex story involving a Chinese plot to retake Taiwan. Crippled by huge budget cuts, the Air Force looks hopeless in the face of this aggressionuntil a secret, private fleet of Megafortresses comes to the rescue. As usual, Brown's encyclopedic knowledge of everything military (and his boyish delight in putting it all down on paper) go a long way toward excusing his tinny dialogue and leaden prose. (June)

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