The bestselling author of "Flight of the Intruder" now presents a powerful story of an utterly believable Third World War. Filled with up-to-the-minute insider military detail and dramatic, compelling scenes of battles in the air and on the sea, "Fortunes of War" tells an epic tale of three heroes, three countries--and a world in the balance.
FORTUNES OF WAR opens with the assassination of the Emperor of Japan. A right-wing Japanese government trying to cope with economic depression and foreign competition has opted to solve its problems by helping itself to the vast natural resources contained in the Siberian wilderness. The murder of a reluctant emperor is the first step on that road to conquest.
America responds by sending a squadron of F-22 Raptor fighters, its newest super-planes, to wrest air supremacy from the new Japanese Zeros in the skies over Siberia. Colonel Bob Cassidy commands the squadron, but he is a reluctant warrior with a troubled conscience. Flying one of the Zeros is a graduate of the U. S. Air Force Academy, Jiro Kimura, whom Cassidy treasures as if he were a younger brother. Chips in the stormy seas of national destiny, these men are driven by fate toward a bloody confrontation.
Meanwhile, an obsolete Russian diesel/electric submarine, on an errand to clear a wrecked freighter from a seasonal port when the war begins, manages to avoid destruction at the hands of a Japanese anti-submarine patrol plane crew. Captain Pavel Saratov knows that the boat and the men aboard her are doomed, but he decides to fight, for honor if for nothing else.

Pages ripped from history...in this case, the American Volunteer Group (Flying Tigers) of pre WWII fame. This time with a squadron of F-22s and some ex and aging fighter pilots versus a new, secret and stealthy Japanese Zero. Exciting read, if a little light on the technology and naive in it's politics. Yes, there's lots of technology in here, it's just not all exactly right. And, to imagine that a(nother) sino soviet war could exist without US intervention? Hmmm? Those concerns aside, it was a fun and invigorating read/listen. ( )

It seems like it's taken me forever to read this book, which it would seem it really should not have been. I really enjoyed this book and I'm disappointed that it's taken me so long to finish it. I am going to put in my "To Read Again" category -- one I don't currently have -- because I really enjoyed it but because it seems to have taken me so long to read I'm not sure how much I actually enjoyed it ... so I need to reread it. ( )