Flight Of The Old Dog

Flight of the Old Dog is one of the original and classic military techno-thrillers in the entire world. It is the basis of the PC flight simulator "Megafortress" published by Three-Sixty Pacific. It has been translated into twelve languages, and sales have exceeded a million copies. The United States and the Soviet Union are on the brink of nuclear war. At a top-secret research facility at Kavaznya, Sibera, the Soviets have developed a ground-based laser weapon capable of shooting down American satellites, and they are betting that the American president doesn't have the guts to risk starting a nuclear exchange. But at a top-secret flight test site in the Nevada desert called "Dreamland," a team of test pilots and engineers have created the Megafortress: a venerable B-52 Stratofortress strategic bombers modified with stealth technology, computers, digital avionics, state-of-the-art weaponry, and performance-enhancing features that makes it unlike any B-52 bomber--or any other warplane--ever flown. Now it's time to flight-test the Megafortress, and the Air Force assembles the best pilots, bombardiers, and navigators to see what this creation can do. One of them is Captain Patrick McLanahan, considered the best B-52 bombardier in the Air Force. The others on the crew are hard-charging pilots and world-class engineers, and McLanahan is nothing like them. But the team leader and aircraft commander, Lt. General Brad Elliott, can see that McLanahan is a quiet professional and a natural-born leader. Soviet spies soon discover the Megafortress, and they recognize that a fleet of these advanced planes can practically neutralize all of the Soviet Union's air defenses. Back-channel negotiations begin, and the U.S. is willing to mothball the Megafortress if the Soviets mothball the Kavaznya laser. That is completely unacceptable to the Soviet leader, and he hatches a daring plan to deal with the Megafortress while keeping his devastating laser weapon. Just prior to a live fire flight test, a team of Russian commandos invade Dreamland with the goal of stealing the Megafortress…or destroying it. The crew just barely manages to escape. The American president orders the top-secret aircraft back to Dreamland, but Brad Elliott and the vice president hatch a daring plan of their own: use the Megafortress to penetrate the Soviet Union's stiff air defenses and destroy the Kavaznya laser. Thus begins the aerial cat-and-mouse game across ten thousand miles and wave after wave of the Soviet Union's most advanced air defenses and fighter-interceptors, which are all on full alert. Most of the Megafortress's crew have no military training. They have supplies for only a few hours, and are outfitted for the deserts of southern Nevada, not the frigid steppes of Siberia. They have flown the Megafortress only a few times, and only in carefully scripted test flights. With Brad Elliott at the controls, Patrick McLanahan realizes that it's up to him to organize and get the rest of the crew ready for the fight of their lives.

Flight of the Old Dog is the runaway bestseller that launched the phenomenal career of Dale Brown. It is the riveting story of America's military superiority being surpassed as our greatest enemy masters space-to-Earth weapons technology-neutralizing the U.S. arsenal of nuclear missiles. America's only hope: The Old Dog Zero One, a battle-scarred bomber fully renovated with modern hardware-and equipped with the deadliest state-of-the-art armaments known to man

Featuring sixty black-and-white photographs of old dogs shot by Pulitzer Prize–winning photographer Michael S. Williamson and narrated by Washington Post staffer and columnist Gene Weingarten, this is a perfect collection for dog lovers that celebrates “man’s best friend.” Anyone who has ever loved an old dog will love Old Dogs. In this collection of profiles and photographs, Weingarten and Williamson document the unique appeal of man's best friend in his or her last, and best, years. This book is a tribute to every dog who has made it to that time of life when the hearing and eyesight begin to go, when the step becomes uncertain, but when other, richer traits ripen and coalesce. It is when a dog attains a special sort of dignity and a charm all his own. If you've known a favorite old dog, you'll find him or her on these pages. Your dog might go by a different name and have a different shape, but you'll recognize him or her by the look in an eye or the contours of a life story. There is the dog who thinks he is a house cat; the herder, the fetcher, the punk and the peacock, the escape artist, the demolition artist, the patrician, the lovable lout, the amiable dope, the laughable clown, the schemer, the singer, the daredevil, the diplomat, the politician, the gourmand, and the thief. Plus, as a special bonus, you will find the first Latvian elkhounds ever photographed. Old Dogs is a glorious gift book and a fitting tribute to that one dog you can't ever forget.

In one of his boldest bestsellers, Dale Brown creates a shattering scenario of the ultimate race for technology… America’s most advanced fighter plane, DreamStar, has been hijacked. To retrieve it, Lt. Col. Patrick McLanahan takes on his most daring assignment since the Flight of the Old Dog. The odds are against him. His plane, the Cheetah, is less advanced than the DreamStar. And so begins the greatest high-flying chase of all time…

The destruction of a Russian air base by robotic U.S. warplanes has reawakenedthe bear -- and America must pay a terrible price. In retaliation, Russia's leader launches the most devastating military sneak attack since Pearl Harbor, decimating America's strategic air forces. Now an embattled U.S. president must choose between two horrific scenarios: a cease-fire on the enemy's terms ... or respond with every weapon in the nation's arsenal, possibly triggering global thermonuclear war. Disgraced and demoted to a desk job, aerial warfare expert Brigadier General Patrick McLanahan saw the nightmare coming -- and only he can stop the relentless Russian war machine. But the fight for the future must take place in the blazing skies, a battlefield off-limits to the discredited former commander of Air Battle Force ... unless McLanahan takes matters into his own hands.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of The River: In this "end-of-the-world novel more like a rapturous beginning" (San Francisco Chronicle), Hig somehow survived the flu pandemic that killed everyone he knows. His gripping story is "an ode to friendship between two men...the strong bond between a human and a dog, and a reminder of what is worth living for" (Minneapolis Star-Tribune). Hig's wife is gone, his friends are dead, and he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, Jasper, and a mercurial, gun-toting misanthrope named Bangley. But when a random transmission beams through the radio of his 1956 Cessna, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life exists outside their tightly controlled perimeter. Risking everything, he flies past his point of no return and follows its static-broken trail, only to find something that is both better and worse than anything he could ever hope for.

"With some dogs you share a boil in the bag breakfast and maybe a blanket on a cold desert floor. Some you wouldn't leave in charge of your Grandma unless you wanted to find out just how fast the old girl could run. But, if you're very, very lucky there will be the one dog you would lay down your life for – and for me that dog is Buster." Buster, an English springer spaniel who has served his comrades and his country with unstinting devotion, has saved thousands of lives. This is the story of his partnership with RAF Police Sergeant Will Barrow, told by Will himself, describing how each came to save the other's life. It is a relationship that produced some heroic feats—including sniffing out explosive vests that led to the arrests of two suicide bombers—in the dust and desert heat of Afghanistan and beyond. Buster, uniquely, has served five tours of duty in three theatres of war (Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan)—more than any other military dog. He also won the prestigious Crufts Friends for Life Award in 2012, and has gone on to become the official lifetime mascot of the RAF Police, the only dog in history to have been honored in that manner. A best friend in dog's clothing, an RAF dog with his mossy feet firmly on the ground, Buster is truly a dog in a million.

The new Gulf War is erupting, and this one will be far bloodier than the first. A newly powerful Iran is flexing its military muscle in the Middle East. The Iranians have declared the Persian Gulf their territorial waters-and an American ship has just been sunk to prove the point. With a military racked by budget cuts and a public reluctant to fight, the president must end the crisis before it escalates. The solution: Project Future Flight, a surgical stealth campaign to silence Iran’s modern weapons. The personnel: Colonel Patrick McLanahan and the surviving crew of the Old Dog. The stakes: success-or full-scale war…

Who says dogs can’t fly? Meet Zora: a dog with a big dream and an even bigger personality. All Zora wants to do is learn how to fly so she can catch that pesky squirrel in her yard. But try as she might to prove to her friend Tully—a skeptical cat—that dogs truly can fly, nothing seems to work. Until Zora finds the right motivation, that is. Kathy Stinson’s charming story of perseverance is beautifully brought to life by Brandon James Scott’s exuberant and wonderfully expressive illustration. Touching on themes of optimism and determination in the face of failure, The Dog Who Wanted to Fly is a book anyone—even a cat—will love.

WITH A NEW EPILOGUE BY THE AUTHOR World-class free climber Steph Davis delivers a “thrilling and infectiously interesting” (San Francisco Book Review) memoir about rediscovering herself through love, loss, and the joy of letting go. The paperback includes a new epilogue in which Davis shares how her husband Mario’s tragic accident has affected her relationship to climbing and flying. Steph Davis is a superstar in the climbing community and has ascended some of the world’s most challenging and awe-inspiring peaks. But after her first husband makes a controversial climb in a national park, the media fallout escalates rapidly and in one fell swoop leaves her without a partner, a career, a source of income...or a purpose. In the company of only her beloved dog, Fletch, Davis sets off on a search for a new identity and discovers skydiving. Falling out of an airplane is completely antithetical to the climber’s control she’d practiced for so long, but she perseveres, turning each daring jump into an opportunity to fly, first as a skydiver, then as a base jumper. As she opens herself to falling, she also finds the strength to open herself to love again, even in the wake of heartbreak. And before too long, she meets someone who shares her passion for living life to the limit. With gorgeous black-and-white photos throughout, Learning to Fly is Davis’s fascinating account of her transformation. From her early tentative skydives, to zipping into her first wingsuit, to surviving devastating accidents against the background of breathtaking cliffs, to soaring beyond her past limits, she discovers new hope and joy in letting go.