Delta Force

In the mail, Viet-vet John Harriman's latest book Delta Force #1 : Operation Michael's Sword. (Thanks John).

John's latest column in Mudville is here.

The opening chapter of Delta:

Delta Force?Operation Michael?s Sword A novel by John Harriman The Berkley Publishing Group, New York, December 2004 Opening Scene excerpt used by permission of the author

0846 Hours EST, September 11, 2001 ? Over New York City

AS ARMY CAPTAIN CONNOR TYLER sat in a row to himself aboard United 411 in a steep climb, 48 minutes late, from LaGuardia to Las Vegas, he saw a jet strike the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

One moment Tyler is folding his six-five athletic frame across two seats as his flight soars out from runway 31, up and into a brilliant morning, the sun flashing gold off two million facets of the city. Crisp light, stark, clean, geometric beauty. One moment he feels warm, confident, centered, intent. Like any man on the way home. To his wife. To set things right with her. And Brendan. Just to hold him. God bless a baby, a son, a Brendan. He has only to think his name to smile.

The next moment a speck streaks across the film of one of his pewter-gray eyes. His smile freezes.

He cannot blink away the speck and sees it is not a speck, after all but an airliner in a slalom through the skyline glitter of Manhattan. Not above the buildings but among them. The aircraft dips its wings one way, then the other, slashing through the Lego forest. An aircraft in trouble? Maybe out of control? About to ditch in the harbor? His smile flags. He senses danger. He wants to call out a warning. But to whom?

He cranes his long neck, pressing one cheek to the porthole to look back and beneath the wing, feeling his pulse pounding in his throat. His smile a grimace. The plane. It?s not falling. Not out of control. Not trying to miss.

He leans hard left, lending his body language to the craft below, straining against his seat belt, urging the runaway pilot, ?Turn, turn??

Tyler flinches from the window, his hair whipping across his face.

As the plane slams into the rhinestone tower, striking a spark, blooming from a speck to fire. As the explosion punches through and out the other side, a gorgeous lethal orange blossom inferno. As first a groan escapes his chest, then a whisper. Oh, dear God.

?Oh. Dear. God.? He peels strands of hair from his eyes.

To see the fuel fire belching through the glass walls. Flames engulfing the top floors of the tower. An Olympic torch of glass and steel, smoke and fire. Beauty of an ugly, awesome kind. His stomach clenches.

He smells the hot fuel fumes in the wind blown up by the blast. Hears the whoomp, a gentle sound, for all its fury. Feels first heat on his face, a hot wind, then a chill as a cold wind blows back to the epicenter. He hears the shrieks of the dying, shrieking until?

What? No, that can?t be. Different fire, different nightmare. It used to visit him every night, but he hasn?t had it for months. Till now. But?

That was a dream, too. Wasn?t it? What he just saw? Okay, what he was thinking? A few seconds ago? Okay, there was that warmth inside, that certainty, the confidence of knowing he?d made a decision, a right decision. There was that. A bit of hangover, yeah, that, not a sick hangover, but a solemn one. And the guilt for wronging Amy. Sinning yesterday, a dark chocolate sin?he remembers that, but today he?d make it right. Yesterday he?

Yesterday?

A jetliner just flew into the World Trade Center? He looks out the porthole. Yes, a few seconds ago.

Dear God. There is no yesterday.

John described the book to me as "the story of how our men put aside the rules of war after 9/11 and went into Afghanistan to kick ass. By the way, it's not a sermon kinda book. It's a fun read. A few belly laughs. A few pokes at the press and Penta-politics. A few places to make you think."

An airplane book, in other words. Especially if the plane is a 130.