title: Black Watch: The Men Who Fly America's Secret Spy Planes
author: Ernest K. Gann
description: Gann ( The Aviator ; The High and the Mighty ) here looks at the 99th Squadron of the U.S. Air Force, responsible for flying the U-2 and SR-71 high-altitude reconnaissance planes. After describing the surprisingly fragile crafts, he concentrates on the men who fly them, dedicated, highly skilled and supremely confident; he sketches several memorable portraits, especially of the higher-ranking officers. But the best is reserved for last as Gann follows Cecil Hopper through his training to become a U-2 pilot: his initial interview in which he demonstrates a mix of self-esteem and diffidence, his inaugural solo in the spy plane, his first mission in the Far East in which he comes dangerously close to disaster. The book is stirring and suspenseful. <br />Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
zlib_text: DARK WATCH
  
    
  
  Clive Cussler
  
  with Jack Du Brul
  
    
  
  Juan Cabrillo and his ingenious crew aboard the clandestine spy ship Oregon
  have made a very comfortable and very dangerous living from working for high-
  powered Western interests. But their newest clients have come from the
  east—the Far East—to ask for Cabrillo’s special brand of assistance. They are
  a consortium of Japanese shipping magnates, and their fortunes are being
  threatened by brutal pirates trolling the waters of Southeast Asia.
  
  Normally, such attacks are aimed at small ships and foreign-owned yachts. Now,
  giant commercial freighters are disappearing, and Cabrillo suspects that the
  pirates have joined forces to take down the bigger ships. But when theOregon
  confronts the enemy, he learns that the pirates’ predations hide a deadly
  international conspiracy—a scheme of death and slavery that Juan Cabrillo is
  going to blow out of the water….
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  1
  
  T HE aging Dassault Falcon executive jet drifted smoothly from the sky