Flash Point: A Novel - Hardcover

Huston, James W

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688172016 ISBN 13: 9780688172015

Publisher: William Morrow, 2000

Synopsis

With the same daredevil flying action found in Top Gun and the riveting nonstop storytelling that has established James W. Huston's reputation, here is an explosive novel that takes us from the cockpits of carrier-based naval fighters to the inside of the CIA and the Mossad, as one man's determination to avenge a wrongful death has the potential to ignite an international war of deceit, murder, and retaliation.

Sean Woods and Tony Vialli are F-14 pilots stationed aboard the USS George Washington in the Mediterranean. During a port call in Naples, Vialli falls for a beautiful woman he meets on a train who tells him she's Italian. She finally reveals she isn't Italian at all, and lures him out of the country to visit her. Vialli submits false leave papers, swears Woods to secrecy, and flies off to see her. His lover's trip becomes a nightmare when Vialli and the woman are brutally attacked in what appears to be a terrorist action. Enraged over his friend's vicious assault and furious at the lack of American response, Woods thinks the United States should retaliate against the man claiming responsibility, who says he is part of a secret society of Assassins founded in the eleventh century. Woods wants his country to declare war against this man personally, but his congressman pays no attention. A group of Israeli Air Force pilots offer Woods the chance to exact his own revenge by flying a section of F-14s with the Israelis, without the U.S. Navy's knowledge. Woods's flight turns into one of the biggest air battles since World War II. He must fight for his life, then fight to keep what he has done secret from the Navy and the rest of the world-all because of a woman whose identity and motives continue to elude him.

James W. Huston has crafted a spellbinding tale worthy of the best of Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy. His crisp, energetic writing keeps the reader enthralled throughout this multilayered story of military action, personal courage. international intrigue, and true-life events. Having set his own standard with Balance of Power and The Price of Power, he raises it to an entirely new level with Flash Point.

About this title

About the Author:

A graduate of TOPGUN, James W. Huston flew F-14s off the USS Nimitz with the Jolly Rogers. He served as a naval flight officer and worked in Naval Intelligence before becoming a lawyer and the acclaimed author of The Shadows of Power, Balance of Power, The Price of Power, Flash Point, and Fallout. He lives in San Diego, California.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Huston's third military thriller is also his best as it examines the cost of another hypothetical American reprisal against terrorism, this time with a supersonic fighter-jet pursuit of a bin Laden stand-in to his secret desert fortress.In what is probably the only thriller series based on a passage of the U.S. Constitution, Huston, a former Navy F-14 flyboy now practicing law, typically has some plucky legal type--here it's a Navy JAG officer aboard an aircraft carrier off the Israeli coast--discover Article 1, Section 8, which gives Congress the legal clout to determine how force should be applied when American interests are threatened abroad. Huston used Section 8 both in his excellent debut (Balance of Power, 1998) and its much less powerful sequel (The Price of Power, 1999); now he employs it to have Congress declare war on a single person, Sheik al-Jabar, who has apparently revived an 11th-century Islamic sect of assassins to commit mayhem against Israel and the U.S. When one of al-Jabar's attacks against Israel kills a Navy pilot seeking quality time with the beautiful Israeli mystery woman he wants to marry, the pilot's best buddy, Lieutenant Sean Woods, whose father died in a terrorist attack, wants revenge. After discussing his feelings with the carrier's JAG officer, and getting some tips about St. Aquinas's definition of a just war from the ship's chaplain, Woods writes his congressman and, miraculously, gets results. Of course, killing al-Jabar, who hides in ancient fortresses protected by Syria and Iran, will not be easy. While Woods flies spectacular aerial dogfights over Lebanon and Iran, Sami al-Hadad, the NSA's top Arab intelligence analyst, finds evidence that Israel may be using al-Jabar to force the U.S. to declare a war that can't be won. A thinking man's military thriller, with superb action, crackling hardware-speak, and just enough tragedy to emphasize the emotional price for so much gung-ho American heroism. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0688172016
• ISBN 13: 9780688172015
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 480