Flash Point
Featuring the same daredevil flying action found in Top Gun, this explosive novel 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. After first saying she is Italian, she later 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.
Behind the Book
When I was on the Nimitz, my squadron visited Israel. In the usual banter with the Israeli Air Force pilots, debating exactly who the best fighter pilots in the world are, one of my fellow officers challenged the Israelis to a dogfight the following morning when we pulled out of Haifa. Much to our surprise, they accepted. We knew we couldn't ask permission; it would be refused—too dangerous, not enough planning . . . So we arranged for the right people to be on the flight schedule on the next morning launch. The rendezvous didn't come off because a clever TAO noticed that our airplanes weren't where they were supposed to be. But I have always wondered, what if a fully armed F-14 had a really good reason to disappear off the radar for a couple of hours? Could it be done? What if harm was done? Could it be hidden? And what if the pilot who did it was doing it for vengeance? Would he be sent to prison?
Sean Woods does all that and more. This is the book that most closely reflects my own time aboard the Nimitz in the Mediterranean, but also poses the question that we have now been wrestling with for a couple of years: Can we declare war against an individual? Should we? Should we employ acts of war against terrorists, or is there a better way?
Media Coverage
"Huston combines high-tech, high adventure, and high style with soft romance to produce a fast-moving thriller that will delight air-combat buffs as well as fans of Middle-East skullduggery."
—Booklist
"Huston's third military thriller is also his best . . . superb action, crackling hardware speak, and just enough American heroism."
—Kirkus
Excerpt
Chapter One
The dirty white van sputtered and stalled as it approached the Gaza checkpoint. The driver looked harried. He leaned forward and tried to start the van quickly. The engine caught, turned over, and stalled again. He glanced in his mirror and ahead of him at the other traffic.
One of the Palestinian guards watched the driver out of the corner of his eye as he waved two more cars through the border checkpoint. The van was about to block the morning's commuter traffic—the thousands of Palestinians who crossed into Israel every day to work the menial jobs the Israelis didn't want.
The Israeli soldiers on the other side of the border were much more serious about the traffic crossing into Israel. Exhausted from unending vigilance coupled with interminable boredom, they imagined a bomb in every car. They carried their loaded M-16s in their hands and sweated under their bulletproof vests. To them Gaza was just a large Trojan Horse.
The van had created a gap; only a lonely Fiat stood between it and the checkpoint. The Palestinian guard glanced toward the checkpoint and walked to the van. The van lurched, then started to move, inching along. It sat with its engine chugging reluctantly, waiting for the Fiat, now thirty feet in front of it, to pass through.
The rusty Fiat was waved on and the van was next. The van shuddered and the engine quit. The driver turned the key and the starter noisily cranked the engine. It wouldn't catch. Again and again he tried, without success. The Palestinian guard approached the window angrily. "What is the problem?" be asked gruffly in Arabic.
"I've had some engine trouble" the driver replied, also in Arabic. "Move it or we'll push it into the ditch! You're blocking the way!" The road into Israel was crowded. The bright morning sun was low in the eastern horizon, shining into the eyes of the Palestinian guards.
"Yes, yes. I'm trying..." The driver leaned forward as if lending his own energy to the van. He turned the key with his right hand, and reached subtly under the dash with his left and flipped a switch. The van chugged to life with half its cylinders working. The driver smiled at the guard apologetically and the vehicle began moving slowly toward the checkpoint. It was clear it would take the van a long time to make it.
"Get this thing off this road!" the guard finally yelled, exasperated with the slowness of the stupid white van that was now blocking the entire checkpoint. The Israelis watched and waited with concern. Anything out of the ordinary received humorless, intense scrutiny; any problem, any angry outburst, anything. It could be someone about to do something dramatic, or a diversion for someone else.
The driver nodded, surrendering, and began a Y-turn to go back the way he had come. The Palestinian guard, his rifle in one hand, watched in disgust. The van turned around, now headed toward Gaza City, the driver apparently abandoning any hope of getting to Tel Aviv. He reached under the dash again, and the van's engine coughed and died once more. The guard, barking obscenities, angrily advanced toward the window on the right side of the van. The driver suddenly raised an enormous handgun and fired, the bullet penetrating the man's bulletproof vest, throwing him back onto the side of the road, where he lay silently, his legs jerking involuntarily.
The rear doors of the van flew open and eight men with large machine guns rushed out and opened fire. The bullets made a distinctive, unusual sound as they flew toward the Israeli and Palestinian guards who fell quickly as the bullets tore through their protective vests. The eight fanned out and fired with precision, aiming at the targets each had been briefed to hit. The Israeli guardhouse on the other side of the border was splintered, the guards inside shredded. On both sides of the border, the cry went out for Palestinian and Israeli reinforcements. Six Palestinian guards lay dead on the Gaza side.
The shooters stood staring at the dead guards on both sides, as if waiting for something. An Israeli Armored Personnel Carrier raced for the border from its safe point a half mile away. There was a loud metallic sound and a TOW missile flew out the van's open doors from a tube bolted to the deck inside. The thin wire that carried the guidance information to the missile trailed behind it as the TOW raced toward the Israeli APC, slamming into the belly of the armored vehicle, instantly killing the Israeli soldiers inside.
The Palestinian and Israeli soldiers at the checkpoint were dead, but dozens of others were rushing to the border from their safe positions a mile away. The eight shooters, unharmed, ran back to the van, diving through the closing rear doors. The driver threw both of the switches under the dash and the finely tuned eight-cylinder engine roared to life. The van sped off in the direction of Gaza City.
Several soldiers standing in the back of an Israeli truck approaching the checkpoint began firing at the van. The M-16 bullets, small but fast, slammed into the back of the vehicle but fell harmlessly, bouncing off the van's inner lining of Kevlar. Small chips of rubber flew off the solid tires as the bullets bit, but nothing slowed the van.
It sped down the highway, back the way it had come. A Palestinian security truck raced toward the border near the retreating van. Too late, the truck driver realized that the target he was pursuing was the van about to pass them. The truck slowed but the van had already raced by, untouched. It reached the outskirts of the city and made a sharp turn into an alley. Another van pulled in front of the entrance to the alley, blocking it completely.
The white van stopped deep in the alley and the eight men and the driver quickly walked away, blending in with passers-by who were completely unaware of what had happened. Each of the shooters wore clothes different from those he had worn during the attack, and each left his weapon lying on the floor of the van next to the TOW launcher. They split up, each taking a different direction, then climbed into the unremarkable sedans that were waiting for them and disappeared...
