Matt Pontowski Books in Order

Matt Pontowski's series tracks a fighter pilot who never quite leaves the front line, even as politics closes in around him. He is the grandson of a World War II hero who later becomes president, and that family history matters every time he climbs into a cockpit. Herman uses the Matt books to show how one flyer's career threads through decades of crises from the Middle East to China and South Africa.

In Firebreak, the Middle East is sliding into disaster. Iraq, allowed to rebuild after an earlier war, joins Egypt and Syria in a new offensive against Israel, backed by a terrifying nerve gas. Israel is ready to answer with nuclear weapons, which would set the region on fire. The only way to stop it is a strike by the 45th Tactical Fighter Wing, flying F 15s under the eye of President Zack Pontowski and led in the air by his grandson Matt, who has to balance duty, survival, and a complicated relationship with an Israeli agent on the ground.

Call to Duty (also published as Mosquito Run) steps sideways in time to explore Zack Pontowski's past and how it shapes the present. In the modern storyline, pirates and drug traffickers snatch four young Americans from a yacht in Southeast Asia, including the daughter of a powerful senator. Under pressure at home and abroad, the president looks back to a desperate World War II mission he flew in a Mosquito bomber over occupied France. The novel braids the two campaigns together, asking what heroism looks like for an aging leader who still feels most alive in the cockpit.

Later books push Matt back into the center. In Dark Wing, he commands the 303rd Fighter Squadron, a unit of A 10 Warthog ground attack aircraft that everyone says are obsolete. When unrest in Hong Kong and southern China turns violent, Matt volunteers his squadron for a covert mission to support pro democracy forces. Washington officials, intelligence analysts, and Chinese rebels all have their own agendas, but it is Matt's pilots and crews who have to fly into high tech air defenses at low altitude.

Iron Gate sends Matt and his A 10s to South Africa on a United Nations peacekeeping deployment. A white separatist movement has carved out a breakaway enclave in the Karoo and may be on the brink of building a nuclear weapon with the help of a rogue scientist. Tied down by restrictive rules of engagement and thin political backing, Matt works alongside a French Foreign Legion commander to keep a regional conflict from turning into something far worse.

Matt's path also intersects with Madeline Turner's story, especially in The Last Phoenix, where a near retired general is once again asked to assemble a volunteer air group for a war the regular forces cannot fight. Throughout the series, Herman leans on his own flying experience to make briefing rooms, squadron bars, and close air support runs feel lived in. The tone is fast moving and technical without losing sight of friendships, family ties, and the strain of carrying a famous name into one more mission.