BLACKBIRD

Here, Merek (Target Stealth, 1988) has his heroes flying and spying their way around the Middle East, where unrestructured Soviets, diehard East German communists, and bloodthirsty Arabs have ganged up in a plan to wipe out Israel. International forces of evil have cleverly poked out America's satellite eye in the sky over the Holy Land--all in order to carry out their unspeakably horrid plan to eliminate Israel's nuclear capability using chemical and biological warfare. Fortunately for the Free World, the Pentagon bean-counters' plan to junk all the Blackbirds, the Air Force's venerable ultrafast spy plane, has not yet taken effect. Venerable ex-astronaut and general Scott Cartwright and brilliant, macha National Security Director Madeline Murdoch smell the trouble in the eastern Mediterranean and send the Blackbird for snapshots over the objections of the satellite-dependent CIA. One bit of trouble is that Adam Glassman, Cartwright's protÉgÉ and the best Blackbird pilot in the world, has been accused of spying for Israel. Cartwright has not only to find out what's brewing geopolitically, but he's got to clear Glassman's name and identify Israel's mole in American intelligence--tasks that take him from coast to coast and continent to continent in the time it takes most people to get to the airport. Action soon focuses on the Republic of Tarak, next-door to Israel, where the evil poisons are brewing in a refinery run by the meanest man in Russia--and where Cartwright finds himself prisoner when his sabotaged Blackbird blows to bits. Fast-moving and pleasantly tense technothriller.