Eagle Facing West

Abandoned for forty years by their country, "the keepers" were the youngest and fittest U.S. pilots captured during the Vietnam War. Held as bargaining chips and never returned, the aviators toiled in a secret tier of prisons—their cries for help unanswered. Desperate for freedom, they launch an escape hinging on the hijacking of a commercial airliner.

But someone has been listening all along: During a highly unorthodox Capitol Hill briefing in 2011, USAF Major Brent Bailey is slipped top-secret satellite imagery containing pilot distress signals. The Air Force general who broke protocol to hand off the imagery is court-martialed for sexual misconduct and found dead the day of the meeting.

Bailey joins forces with his co-worker Rick Eden, a gritty battle-hardened Army Ranger, and the men head to Vietnam on a congressional trade delegation. Once in country, the men realize that the distress signals in the general's folder coincide with a missing and presumed hijacked airliner. Bailey and Eden—who would rather torch their careers than leave their countrymen to rot— hurl themselves into the folds of a long-buried secret with dire consequences for the pilots, the passengers, and the D.C. politicians scrambling 9,000 miles away.

About the Author
Jay Mach is the pen name of a former congressional staffer and a military insider. The duo has close ties with the U.S. Special Operations Forces community and U.S. Air Force pilots. A sequel is in the works.