Final Flight by Stephen Coonts (1988)

Final Flight
by Stephen Coonts
Publisher:  Doubleday
Copyright:  1988
Book Club Edition

Stephen Coonts's first novel, Flight of the Intruder, told the story of Lieutenant Jake "Cool Hand" Grafton and his fellow A-6 Intruder pilots flying bombing missions over Vietnam from the deck of the carrier USS Shiloh.  An instant classic, Flight of the Intruder was called by former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman "the best first-person narration of aerial combat I've ever read," and went on to spend twenty-eight weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.  Now, in Final Flight, Jake Grafton returns, this time as commander of an air wing on the supercarrier USS United States, on patrol in the tension-ridden present-day Mediterranean.

After a particularly long cruise, the USS United States is in port in Naples and her crew is enjoying its first liberty in months.  But something's not right.  Several crew members have not reported back from their leave and a beautiful American reporter who boarded the United States in Tangiers may not be a reporter, or even an American.  When one of Jake's men, in a hotel in Naples, witnesses an assassination attempt led by this woman, Grafton realizes the situation is much more serious than he suspected.  What he doesn't know is that Colonel Qazi, an international terrorist, plans to board the United States and steal six nuclear weapons from her heavily guarded arsenal.  Nor does he know that the plot is being financed by El Hakins, the power-hungry leader of an oil-rich Arab state.  And mst important, he doesn't know he, Jake, past forty and recently grounded by night blindness, is the only one who can stop Qazi, in one man-to-man aerial dogfight, one "final flight."

Fast-paced, action-packed, and filled with authentic technical details of modern aerial and nautical warfare, Final Flight is at once a gripping, all too plausible thriller and a powerful, moving portrait of life on a supercarrier in our ostensibly peacetime Navy.

Condition:  Used.  Hardcover.  Dust cover is lightly discolored and shows shelf wear.  Pages are tanning from age.  Previous owner's "Library Of" stamp is on the short title page.

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