Description:

This is the story of a professional fighter pilot by a professional fighter pilot, and from the moment you meet Captain Cleve Saville, the hero of this novel, you know the excitement of authenticity. Because of this extraordinary authenticity, because you so instantly accept Saville as the kind of man he is, his reasons for doing what he does and needing what he needs become your own. Saville is a born flyer who comes to Korea with every prospect of chalking up enough enemy kills to make him an ace. But the MIGs are hard to find. The half-dozen flyers of Saville's squadron who have found them and scored notable victories—among them the brash and cocky Lieutenant Pell—are heroes of Officers' Bar. More important, they are right in their own eyes. Saville flies day after day without even seeing, let alone engaging, an enemy plane, and what he endures when he no longer believes in his own essential "rightness" affects a half-dozen destinies besides his own. In particular, it determines the outcome of Saville's long-desired meeting with "Casey Jones," the legendary enemy pilot. The drama of flight, the desperate action of battles in the air, the piercingly real ordeal of a man fighting to regain his sense of his own identity make this a breath-taking story. You will not forget Cleve Saville's discovery of fear, nor his ultimate triumph.