This Tom Clancy real-life military thriller is more nuanced than his novels, because its object is not simply to dramatize armed conflict but to relate the life lessons of his source, jet-pilot-turned-Desert-Storm-air-commander General Chuck Horner. Horner is no war cheerleader like General "Buck" Turgidson in Dr. Strangelove. He loathes the arrogance of the backwards, nuke-happy Strategic Air Command and the madly out-of-touch Vietnam War planner Robert McNamara