Patrick McLanahan #03 - Night of the Hawk

✍ Scribed by Brown, Dale

• Publisher: Berkley Books
• Year: 1993
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 350 KB
• Edition: Berkley mass-market ed
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

From Publishers Weekly

Set in the immediate future, this blockbuster demonstrates the exciting possibilities open to the techno-thriller in a post-Soviet world. Lithuania, seeking to remove the last traces of Soviet rule, plans to get rid of a secret research facility where scientists have developed a Stealth-type bomber--with the involuntary aid of none other than David Luger, presumed killed in Flight of the Old Dog . Luger has instead been captured, brainwashed and given a new identity, but somehow he has retained his professional expertise. Informed of his survival, the U.S. government mounts a rescue. But Gen. Brad Elliott, who led the Old Dog mission, makes plans of his own involving the EB-42 Megafortress, with its bristling array of missiles and electronics. Then the two operations become entangled in a Lithuanian uprising and an invasion from neighboring Belarus. While the rescue subplot is neither credible nor necessary, and while the Old Dog's frequently recycled crew is becoming somewhat shopworn, the Lithuanian story line sets the stage for dramatic high-tech adventure.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Brown brings back the souped-up helicopters that were the technostars of Hammerhead (1990) for a supporting role in a near- future war between Lithuania and Belarus. That's Byelorussia to those still updating their old globes. Lithuania is the much more likable victim in a war that parallels Saddam Hussein's attack on tiny Kuwait. The villains here are a General Anton Voschanka, a Byelorussian who also heads all CIS (ex-USSR) forces in the neighborhood, and Viktor Gabovich, an especially nasty ex-KGB type who controls a supersecret aeronautical research center near the Lithuanian capital. Both these creeps hate the new commonwealth, loathe the Lithuanians, and pine for the old world order. One of their chief irritants is General Dominikas Palcikas. Palcikas was a Soviet hero until he cast his lot with the renegade Baltic republic. Now he is head of the tiny Lithuanian defense forces. Tough, charismatic, and just a touch fascist (but not in the least Nazi), Palcikas has heard the sabers rattling across the border, and he's whipping his forces into shape for war. But the Byelorussians are armed with nuclear weapons and outnumber the Balts a zillion to one. America's post- Bush president wants to help when the invasion starts, but he doesn't want to get dragged into war. He is forced to reach for the mad genius of the Air Force, General Brad Elliott, who has a plan that will save Lithuania and, at the same time, rescue one of the heroes of a previous Brown novel (Flight of the Old Dog, 1986) who's been brainwashed by the KGB into believing he's a Soviet plane designer and has been chemically induced to design the first Russian Stealth bomber. Elliott and his troops make good use of those handy new helicopter-cum-fixed-wing planes that float like butterflies and sting like bees. Longer than Desert Storm--but with much more satisfactory results. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.