Silent Enemy

Starred review from June 27, 2011
Young's riveting follow-up to The Mullah's Storm is an airborne version of the movie Speed. Soon after takeoff from Afghanistan, Maj. Michael Parson, the pilot of a giant C-5 Galaxy flying patients injured in a terrorist bombing to Germany for medical care, receives the message that there's a bomb on board and it's set to go off if the plane descends to a lower altitude. Sgt. Maj. Sophia Gold, who starred with Parson in The Mullah's Storm, lends a helping hand as the members of the air crew struggle to survive. Besides the bomb threat, they're running out of fuel; they're beset by storms with deadly lightning, devastating hail, and hurricane force winds; an active volcano is spewing ash into the atmosphere; and unfriendly nations that won't allow them to land even if they can defuse the bomb are trying to shoot them out of the air. Aviation thriller aficionados will cheer, and readers of any genre will gnaw their fingernails to the quick. Author tour.

July 1, 2011
Young's follow-up to The Mullah's Storm (2010) is better than its predecessor. Major Michael Parson, now a pilot, receives orders to take victims of an attack on the Afghan National Police training center in Kabul to a hospital in Germany. One of the wounded is Sergeant-Major Sophia Gold, the woman with whom Parson shared a desert adventure years earlier. After the plane takes off, Parson receives a call that there is a bomb on board. Soon word arrives that other planes from the airport have exploded, so the crew and passengers quickly realize the threat is real. Full of the kind of military jargon that aficionados love, the novel also boasts intense action and surprisingly deep characterizations for a military thriller. Fans of Clancy, Coonts, and Dale Brown need to add Young to their must-read lists.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)