In the 1980s a new generation of post-Viet Nam mercenary pilots emerged. They were equal-opportunity journeymen who worked for South American drug cartels and CIA operatives alike, ferrying marijuana, cocaine, weapons, and covert special forces teams for fun, profit, and occasionally even patriotism.

Mercenary Pilot is the first-person account from one of these mercenaries, known simply as The Doctor, whose eight-year smuggling career and ability to avoid capture and federal prison time made him a folk hero to associates in the Caribbean, Central and South America, and a thorn in the side of DEA agents who were never able to catch him red-handed, often thanks to The Doctor’s CIA handlers. While he was occasionally marched off to jail on various Caribbean islands, he would be released as soon as his employer wired money to the local authorities.

The book recounts The Doctor’s adventures, close calls, derring-do, crash landings, and wild rides as well as the people he worked for or crossed paths with including Pablo Escobar and a certain US Lieutenant-Colonel who orchestrated the Iran-Contra hustle. To put these mercenary times in perspective, the book sets The Doctor’s story against the social and political upheavals of 1980s America, a time when more people than not still trusted the government.

While there have been some well-known, notorious mercenaries, it’s usually because they ended up dead. The most successful mercenary pilots flew under the radar, literally and figuratively because being a household name is not conducive to business or longevity. The Doctor was one of the lucky ones; after using up his nine lives, he got out of the business and went on to have a long, successful career as a professional pilot although for years his old friends at the CIA kept tabs on him. So it’s only now, thirty years later, that he feels safe/comfortable enough to share his exploits that are by turns funny, uncomfortable, and frightening and taken together present a Polaroid snapshot of a world that will seem more fiction than fact.

But these really are the true adventures of The Doctor.