Flying to Pieces Hardcover - 1997

From the publisher

In 1997 they seem to be just a bunch of raunchy old men with wild stories to tell anyone who will listen, but once they were the hottest pilots in the Pacific - men who could fly anything, anywhere, any time. And they've just been handed the chance of a lifetime. Elmo Benteen has called an Emergency - a sudden invitation to all his old flying buddies to come to his airfield for a weekend of drinking and carousing and swapping old stories. But this emergency is a real one. Benteen is dying, and there's a secret that he doesn't want to take to the grave with him. Benteen, who flew transport planes in the Pacific after the war, knows where to find a cache of old Japanese air force planes - not wrecks lying all over the floor of some jungle, but planes in pristine condition, properly mothballed and stored before the end of the war. The planes are worth millions on the aircraft collector's market. Elmo wants his old buddies to go get them and split the proceeds with his only child. There are only a few small problems - how the heck do a group or retirees raise the money to finance a salvage mission of this size, without alerting every other treasure hunter on the face of the earth? And without alerting the native inhabitants of the island to the value of the planes?