Synopsis "Duty and Character Revised Edition (in English)"
Duty and Character: A Military-Political Suspense Novel filled with Honor, Betrayal, and Romance.In the seventies, the Army worried that the M60 series of tanks were no match for the Soviet's best. A new, heavier, more capable main battle tank was needed.Freeman ... a master of the unexpected ... vivid characters spring to life ... in an extraordinary moving and exciting story.C.E. Heller, Military Historian.Hollywood has to make a movie out of this one!KWinkle.In mid-career and mid-life, Major Max Scott is thrust into Washington's seductive power and social settings where he falls victim to a femme fatale, Cordelia Abbott, who, understandably, is out for revenge against any dominating male who crosses her. When Scott's wife dies tragically days later in a car crash, the Army reassigns to Scott to Korea where he can deal with his grief and remorse.At the same time, Captain Sam Stone is learning the harsh realities of dealing with the effects of extreme weather on machinery in an outpost only ninety miles south of the Arctic Circle. Stone will be tempted to join fellow officers in a wife-swapping party but, unlike Scott, he will resist, though he will later succumb to the invitations of a lonely female officer.Fast forward and Scott's career has promoted him to major general and a second assignment in Korea, this time on the DMZ, where an incredibly dangerous act will either end his career or propel him into the spotlight.Scott, Stone, and Abbott's paths cross when Scott, now a three-star general back in the Pentagon, unexpectedly finds love for the first time in decades. He is put in charge of evaluating the overly-expensive but badly needed M1 tank. One test remains. Can the tank function in extreme cold? Scott sends Stone back to Alaska where the tank must successfully shoot, communicate, and cross an ice bridge, all at fifty below zero. The future of the M1 as well as Scott's career and romance hang in the balance when Abbott unexpectedly resurfaces and falsely accuses him of an extended affair years earlier. Honor, duty, and character will decide the fates of all."Colonel Wright watched as the engineers pumped freezing water from the Chena River on top of the already thick ice. Dump trucks were lined up, being loaded with snow. One at a time, they made their way onto the bridge and dumped their loads. A bulldozer pushed the snow to the area where the water was being directed. It spread the freezing slush over a section of the bridge. A second dozer stood by to replace the one on the bridge when the tracks became too filled with frozen slush to grip the ice."We need three and a half feet for the M60's to cross safely," Wright explained ... M60 tanks weighed-in at just over fifty-seven tons. Their successors, the first version of M1's, would be eight tons heavier.""The (M1) tank inched onto the ice bridge and began the agonizingly slow creep across it. Just passed midway, there was an unmistakable loud crack from the ice. Through the open hatch, the tank driver heard it as well. Without thinking, his reflex reaction was to accelerate out of danger. The tank sped up, pushing an unseen wave beneath the ice in front of them. ... Moments before the tank reached the opposite shore, the wave hit and rebounded. ... It broke through at the ice's weakest point, ... just as the tank started up the bank. ... Snow, ice and bits of earth shot out from the rear of the tracks. For a moment, the huge beast hung not moving either forward or backward but as if suspended by some unseen giant hand.From the bank, Smith and MacDougall watched, unable to prevent the pending disaster. Fear gripped their chests so hard neither could breathe. In the commander's hatch, Stone had turned to watch the rear of the tracks and was shouting at the driver to, "Gun it! Gun it." Retired Colonel Jeff Freeman draws on his thirty-plus years of service to bring his debut military-political suspense novel to life.
