The Mullah's Storm »

Thomas W. Young has logged nearly 4,000 hours for the Air National Guard in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, and elsewhere. Young has studied writing at UNC-Chapel Hill and the Sewanee Writers' Conference, among other places, and lives in Alexandria, VA.

A transport plane carrying an important Taliban detainee for interrogation is shot down in a blizzard over Afghanistan. For two people-navigator Michael Parson and a woman Army interpreter, Sergeant Gold-a battle for survival begins across some of the most forbidding terrain on earth against not only the hazards of nature but the treacheries of man: the Taliban stalking them; the villagers, whose loyalty is unknown; and a prisoner who would very much like the three of them to be caught. All Parson and Gold have is each other, to stay alive.

It is a novel of relentless pace and constant surprise-and the beginning of a brilliant career.

Publishers Weekly

At the start of Young's well-crafted first novel, a transport plane carrying a high-value prisoner, a radical mullah, is forced down in the rugged Hindu Kush of Afghanistan. Maj. Michael Parson, the plane's co-pilot, and female Master Sergeant Gold, an interpreter who speaks Pashto, must brave a ferocious winter storm and reach a nearby Special Forces team with the mullah, but they wind up in the hands of Taliban insurgents.The SF team rescues Parson, but the Taliban escape, taking the mullah and the translator in opposite directions.The team must try to recapture the mullah, but Parson can't abandon Gold because"You love your comrades more than you hate your enemies."Young (The Speed of Heat: An Airlift Wing at War in Iraq and Afghanistan) draws on his own war experiences for verisimilitude, which, along with believable characters and an exciting plot, makes this one of the better thrillers to come out of the Afghan theater. (Sept.)