Ian and Vicki Utz are married spies who really know how to love – their kids, their friends and aviation. They especially know how to romance each other. Besides being CIA spies, both are top Air Force pilots. “Mach 6” is their plum assignment after an extraordinary encounter told in the book, “Complexity.”
Nearly everyone in “Mach 6” is a spy, a counterspy or a saboteur. They are swirling around the most secret and desired research on earth, a Mach 6 aircraft that Ian and Vicki are developing at Area-51. Most nations want the aircraft. Some would war to get it, or its plans. A shadowy conspiracy of twelve, with tentacles into highest levels of many governments covets the technology most of all. Agents are trying to create, protect, steal and destroy what will become a multi-trillion dollar industry – the secret of Mach 6 flight.
Author Will David Mitchell loves God. His books are clean – no swearing, no explicit sex, no horror and are better for that. The thrills, the fun and the love are all the more fine tuned. You can gift his books to anyone without having a red face. His characters can be nutty, outrageous, clever and deadly serious, especially when surprised by more potent adversaries. Don’t be surprised when tragedy turns to elation and vice versa. It happens. Humor reverses despondency. In the mouths of kids, parents find wisdom to amaze them. It happens in reality as well as fiction.
There is an unobtainable material wryly named Unobtainium. In “Mach 6” it is dubbed Non-Existium because it is a rubbery aircraft skin that will withstand the white heat of Mach 6 air friction. It must be invented. Even if it can be made, how does one keep Mach 6 air from blowing out the flame in any jet engine that can also run at takeoff and landing speeds? This book may give NASA workable ideas for all of that. In the 21st century, who really needs an aircraft tail or windows? How do you prevent landing gear door hinges or aileron hinges from burning off? What kind of fuel will power the craft for 90 minutes, flying from San Francisco to Paris, Moscow, Bejing or Tokyo?
And how do two top spies and top pilots keep their loved ones secure, healthy and warm, while the world’s most potent adversaries focus everything on destroying them? How, indeed, when those enemies might even have private nukes on US soil?
It’ll be interesting to find out how they can succeed, if they can succeed.
If they do, in this third volume of the Mach Books series (Audaz, Complexity, Mach 6, The Room bOmb) there will be many more.
Well, the cat’s out of the bag. They do survive Mach 6 and reappear in The Room bOmb, already published. Do enjoy a tale as strong and twisty as a hawser, twisted of ropes, twisted of strings, twisted of threads, twisted of black widow spider webs.
So, if you’re a spy or have been one, or if you’ve experienced the kind of romance Ian and Vicki Utz know so well, if you’ve flown high-Mach aircraft at the edge of space, or if you have worked in secret at Area-51, if you’ve been at the high levels of a team pioneering a whole industry from scratch, you’ll find ‘Mach 6’ eerily familiar. If you have not, then ‘Mach 6’ is a first-person spree into those turbulent worlds.