Outlaws Inc.
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4.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
In the world's most dangerous and war-torn trouble spots, you will find a small band of men risking their lives to fly the planes that bring in desperately needed aid and supplies. But they're not heroes. These combat-hardened veterans fly giant Soviet-era superplanes which carry a dark secret: 15 tonnes' worth of secret compartments which they fill with illicit payloads.
Their hidden cargo is virtually impossible to detect, and these cowboys of the air will carry anything, from drugs, guns, diamonds and money to people - whatever you've got, to anywhere you want them to take it. But they pay a heavy price: crews routinely lose their lives to gun-toting pirates, terrorists, hostile state forces, jealous competitors and alcohol.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
One of globalization's seamier corners the shadowy network of Russian aviators flying rattletrap cargo planes full of contraband to the world's hellholes is poked with a stick in this colorful expos -cum-adventure story. BBC correspondent Power flies along with "Mickey" and his crew of Soviet Air Force vets in their Ilyushin-76 transport plane, a model prized for its secret cargo holds that customs officials never check. The crew and their ilk go everywhere there's money to be made, legal or not: they transport building supplies, generators, and heroin in Afghanistan, humanitarian aid and blood diamonds in Africa, cocaine in Latin America, and arms almost everywhere. It's a story rife with ironies the same flight, the author notes, could carry U.N. food for refugees and Kalashnikovs for the militias who destroyed their homes which Potter traces upward to the hypocrisies of financiers and governments. But the book's heart is his vivid, atmospheric reportage on the hungover flyboys who subject their planes held together more with duct tape than rivets to potholed airstrips, crazed aerobatics, and ground fire. Through the dissolute romanticism peeks an arresting glimpse of an airborne proletariat desperate for a risky paycheck. 8 pages of b&w photos.
