Final Flight: Jake Grafton Series, Book 2 [Kindle Edition]

Most of the story takes place on the aircraft carrier USS United States, and I found the descriptions of how a modern aircraft carrier functions fascinating. A ship like this and the aircraft on board it are an incredibly complicated yet awesomely powerful fighting machine.

Stephen Coonts describes in detail many of the procedures involved in launching and recovering the airplanes on an aircraft carrier. The level of complication is such that I found myself surprised that these things function at all, let alone function reliably.

The assault on the aircraft carrier by a group of ruthless terrorists, and its defense by the seamen and marines made great reading. I also loved the description of the dog fight between the lone F-14 Tomcat and four MiG-23 Floggers. This was a real edge-of-the-seat climax to the story.

As mentioned above, I found it appealing that most of the characters in the story actually come across as real people, with real people's problems and worries and motivations and good sides and bad sides. Also, the U.S. Navy is depicted as an organization with certain deficiencies, such as excessive bureaucracy, suppression of private initiative and lack of rewards for individual thought.

This is in contrast with most techno-thrillers, where all the characters are stereotyped and shallow "good guys" or "bad guys", and the western military organizations are the epitome of efficiency and functionality.

Despite what I've just said about the characters, I did find the top bad guy somewhat unrealistic, and this is the reason for the lack of the fifth star. Am I really supposed to believe in someone who,
- makes love to a female assistant in the locked trunk of a limousine?
- talks to a Russian General via a radio transmitter in a belt buckle?
- spends 1/2 hour burning a top secret manual for a nuclear bomb a few pages at a time in a furnace in the basement of a hotel?

But despite my problem with the top bad guy I really liked this book, and am looking forward to reading more of Stephen Coonts' books.

Unfortunately, this isnï¿t helped by his shipï¿s position in the Med, where it attracts the attentions of a sinister arab mastermind, Col. Quazi. Owing his services to a fanatic arab leader with whom he is at odds, Quazi nevertheless plans and executes a daring and bloody infiltration of Graftonï¿s carrier, with an eye towards its ï¿specialï¿ weapons (okay, its nukes! At the time, the USNï¿s policy was to neither confirm nor deny the existence of nuclear weapons on any of its ships; given that the United States is a huge and modern aircraft carrier, Quazi figures his chances of finding nukes aboard are high).

This was a great book, one that turned technothrillers on their head, even if it wasnï¿t as much fun as ï¿Intruderï¿. For one thing, virtually none of the characters that made the older book fun return (like the boisterous and snobby ï¿Razorï¿, the craven ï¿Rabbitï¿ Wilson or the noble and demanding Camparelli; ï¿Tigerï¿ Cole, Graftonï¿s old navigator, doesnï¿t return and his replacement here, ï¿Toadï¿ Tarkington doesnï¿t quite fill Tigerï¿s shoes; ï¿Cowboyï¿ is back, but more on him later), and much of the priceless repartee that Coonts gave his fliers is absent here. Grafton, who was a very approachable character in the older book is more remote here ï¿ owing to both his higher rank (fewer people can talk to him one-on-one) and the complex plot involving terrorists which keeps Grafton from becoming a character central to the book. Coonts seems deliberately dead serious, but he handles it well. Coonts also manages to save the day without relying on the typical technothriller stand-bys: instead of special forces or expert analysts or the heroic and hunky operative, Coonts has the day saved by the embattled sailors of the USS United States, led into battle by its grizzled chiefs. When the gravity of the crisis hits Washington, Coonts manages to avoid creating the typical scene in which the planners and generals are already gathered in front of some situation room in the Pentagon, guaging the situation from countless computer screens (instead, Grafton and company have to conference the situation over the phone with an assistant SecDef, one who ofcourse orders Grafton NOT to fly off into battle). Technothriller authors often insist that their plots are ï¿frighteningly plausibleï¿, but Coonts succeeds here because he embraces the chaos that eludes other writers who are enamored or addicted to plots in which hi-tech and brilliant heroes will save the day in the end. If ï¿Finalï¿ has one big flaw, itï¿s the arabs ï¿ not that their evil, theyï¿re just boring. The plot works at Quaziï¿s reluctance to make his master a nuclear power, but doesnï¿t work that hard at it. Still a worthy read, and one of the great technothrillers suffering only in having been eclipsed by ï¿Intruderï¿.