Phantom Leader

New York: Jove Books, 1992. First Printing [Stated]. Mass market paperback. Good. Lisa Amoroso (Map). [12], 433, [3] pages. Map. Signed by author sticker on front cover. Signed on the Dedication page by the author with sentiment. Inscription reads Book III Cheers & V6 Mark Berent. Some cover wear and soiling noted. Amidst the fury of the Tet offensive, four of America's bravest warriors make life or death decisions on land and in the air as they struggle against the ruthless enemy and against the limitations of the human spirit. Lt. Col. Mark Berent, USAF (Ret.) was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota on October 24, 1931. He is a 1965 Arizona State University graduate with a BS in Mechanical Engineering. He lived in Phoenix in the early '60s while attending Arizona State University and has been a permanent Arizona resident since 1996. As an Air Force fighter pilot, he served three combat tours in Vietnam, flying the F-100 Super Sabre and the F-4 Phantom from Air Force bases in Vietnam and Thailand, and the C-47 and the U-10 as the Air Attaché in Cambodia. More than 1,000 of these 4,300 flying hours were in combat, where he earned the Silver Star, two Distinguished Flying Crosses, the Bronze Star, over two dozen Air Medals, the Legion of Merit, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, and the Cambodian Divisional Medal. He also jumped with the Cambodian army and was awarded their paratrooper wings. Lt. Col. Berent is well known as the author of the ROLLING THUNDER five-book Vietnam air war series which made the war and those who fought it understandable to the American public. Note that his main character attended Arizona State University. Derived from a Kirkus review: Berent continues his highly detailed Vietnam War saga (Rolling Thunder, Steel Tiger), taking his Air Force flyers into 1968 and the Tet offensive. Quotations from Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden, which they would probably like everyone to forget, open this volume that covers fewer than eight weeks of the war—the period of the final buildup to, and execution of, the single most important countrywide offensive by North Vietnam against South Vietnam. Captain Toby Parker, the gifted flyer who washed out of fighter training in a drunken fog, now flies forward observer missions in small propeller planes. When his reported sightings of North Vietnamese tanks on the Ho Chi Minh Trail are discounted by his superiors, he goes in for a closer look and photographs but is brought down and captured by the enemy. It takes the Special Forces to free him and to start the trip back to his base with the news that a really big action is underway. Major Algernon ``Flak'' Apple, shot down over North Vietnam, has been less fortunate. He is a prisoner in the Hanoi Hilton. Major Court Bannister, one shootdown short of becoming an ace (it takes five), has been pulled from the Hanoi bombing runs and sent to purgatory in South Vietnam after apparent violations of the Rules of Engagement. Lt. Colonel Wolf Lochert continues his one-man guerrilla war. And as the top brass continue to ignore the signs of a mammoth coordinated assault coming from the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese, Lyndon Johnson hopes to deal with Ho Chi Minh like a fellow Texan. When the offensive finally comes, the surprised Americans and South Vietnamese stagger and then fight the enemy off. It's a military victory for the South—and a political and public-relations victory for the North. The high quality of Berent's reporting—as well as the professional insights that distinguished the earlier volumes— continues to make this one of the best Vietnam War fictional histories.