Taking Fire

Ron Alexander is 5 foot, 3 inches tall and weighs in at 110 pounds. He is also the second most highly decorated chopper pilot to come out of the Vietnam War. In this action-driven account, readers will be taken into the heart of the war as they never have before, following Colonel Alexander as he learns the ropes then goes above and beyond the call of duty as a chopper jock in Vietnam.

With the call sign of "MINI-MAN," Alexander became a living legend, piloting Huey slicks and gunships into red hot LZs (landing zones), inserting Blue Teams into infantry battle, buzzing tree tops in a deadly "shark and bait" game in which one pilot served as bait to lure enemy fire while a second waited with machine guns and rockets at the ready, and rescuing fellow soldiers from areas buzzing with machine gun fire.

From one hot zone to the next, readers will take off in the cockpit with Alexander -- a place where both pilots have to keep their hands on the control sticks in case one gets hit -- as bullets smash though the airframe plexiglass, chin bubbles burst and instrument panels erupt in smoke and sparks.

This is a barn-burner of a memoir that spares no details and moves with the pace of an Apache helicopter.