Frederic Zumbiehl

1958. Buck Danny continues the covert operation intended to rescue American nuclear scientists kidnapped by the USSR in 1951. Unfortunately, nothing goes as planned, and Buck and friends find themselves struggling to escape the clutches of deadly SMERSH operatives - the Red Army's counter-intelligence arm ... From Russia to Iran and Turkey, from desperate dogfights in the air to commando operations on the ground, courage and consummate skill will be the key words of this conclusion to a two-part story.

1951. A plane carrying an American general and 40 nuclear technicians makes an emergency landing off the coast of Ireland. When rescuers reach the spot, though, they find nothing - no life rafts, no bodies ... The West cannot afford to leave anyone with knowledge of atomic weapons in enemy hands, so it will be up to Buck and his friends to find the missing men, thanks to an experimental, high-altitude, Mach 3-capable aircraft: the Rapier...

Duncan and Lucie, marooned in 1917, are determined to return to their own time. While Lucie poses as her own great-great-aunt and attempts to find out what happened to them, Dunc joins the Lafayette Squadron, a unit of American volunteers, in hope of finding a plane suited to using the experimental device that pulled them into the past. But this is the time of the Red Baron, and the skies of France are deadly to Allied pilots...

Project Skyborg, the Air Force's prototype AI pilot, has turned into a complete disaster. While the system works, it has unfortunately been hijacked by agents of the Circle, a shadowy criminal organisation whose nefarious plans Buck has already thwarted several times. The terrorists are now in possession of an AI-controlled F-16 with which they intend to strike an important target and start a deadly war. They have also called upon Sato, who's kidnapped Sonny and plans to use him to lure his sworn enemy Buck into a trap The conclusion of a two-part story started in volume 14.

Buck and his friends are sent to Edwards Air Force Base on a new top-secret assignment. Their joy at being test pilots again is short-lived: they are in fact to test and train an artificial intelligence program that could very well one day replace them in the cockpit of a fighter jet. As if that wasn't enough, the project is plagued by a string of incidents, to the point that Buck begins to - rightly - suspect outside interference ... A two-part story concluded in the next volume.

The operation to rescue Tumb from the Nazis hiding in Argentina has derailed dramatically, and now Sonny, too, is a prisoner. That leaves Buck and Mossad agent Beata to continue the search, both for their friends and for the secret Nazi base. A mission that is becoming more urgent by the hour, as this remnant of the Third Reich managed to escape with some of their secret weapons at the end of the war, and are preparing for a major operation...

1953. Buck, Sonny and Tumb have been sent to the Patuxent River Flight Test Centre to help design and test the Sea Dart, a seaplane jet. Meanwhile, a former SS general previously in command of Nazi special projects, Hans Kammler, has been spotted in Argentina by an American agent - who is then promptly murdered along with every member of the local CIA network. The task of locating a potential secret Nazi base then falls to Buck, his friends ... and the Sea Dart.

Buck and his friends have managed to recover the blueprints of the Soviet supersonic bomber, but they're stuck on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, with the entire Stasi hunting them. To maximise the chances of someone making it out, they decide to take different routes. But while Tumb and Sonny return to East Berlin with the blueprints, Buck chooses to go and destroy the existing prototypes on their base in Russia - what amounts to a suicide mission...

October 1961. The Soviet Union is working to create a supersonic bomber capable of launching nuclear weapons. Horrified by the warmongering of his political masters, one of the scientists working on the project decides to defect to the West with the aircraft's blueprints - but the KGB's reputation is well-deserved, and his attempt quickly turns into a nightmare. Soon, plans and counter-plans are put in action, and Buck and his friends find themselves thrust in the middle of a deadly game of spies...

While searching the Sea of Banda with his friends, hoping to find the third American atomic bomb stolen by the Japanese die-hards, Buck finds himself marooned on a small island. The good news is that it he has, in fact, found the secret base he was looking for. The bad news is that Devil's Island is crawling with Japanese soldiers, Dayak headhunters and all the dangers found in an untamed jungle. With all this arrayed against him, how is one man supposed to save America from a nuclear strike?

September 1945. Japan has just capitulated, and World War Two is official over. Buck, Tumb and Sonny find themselves on a flight to Tokyo where they are to receive a well-deserved medal. But while the Emperor himself ordered his country to surrender, there are still die-hards in the Japanese military determined to continue fighting. Among them, members of the terrifying Unit 731, guilty of horrific war crimes and specialists in bacteriological warfare - among other things...

War has engulfed Korea, where the great powers are fighting to ensure the domination of their ideology. With the introduction of the superb MiG-15, the North Koreans and Chinese are on the verge of gaining air supremacy. Even American jets can only compete because of the superior training of their pilots. With the threat of veteran Soviet pilots tipping the balance, Buck is tasked with testing a new, far more formidable version of the F-86 Sabre in combat conditions. But saboteurs lurk...