Dead Reckoning is the definitive and dramatic account of what became known as "Operation Vengeance"--the targeted kill by U.S. fighter pilots of Japan's larger-than-life military icon, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the naval genius who had devised the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor. At 7:58 a.m. on December 7, 1941, an officer at the Ford Island Command Center typed what would become one of the most famous radio dispatches in history: "AIR RAID, PEARL HARBOR. THIS IS NO DRILL," as the Japanese navy launched a surprise aerial assault on U.S. bases in Hawaii. In a little more than two hours, more than 2,400 Americans were dead, propelling the U.S.'s entry into World War II. Dead Reckoning tells the epic true story of the high-stakes operation undertaken 16 months later to avenge that deadly strike. New York Times best-selling author Dick Lehr recreates the events leading up to the climactic clash in the South Pacific skies--frontline moments loaded with xenophobia, spycraft, sacrifice, and broken hearts. He focuses on Army Air Force Major John W. Mitchell, who was tasked with conceiving a flight route, literally to the second, for the only U.S. fighter plane on Guadalcanal capable of reaching Yamamoto hundreds of miles away--the new twin-engine P-38 Lightning with its fabled "cone of fire." Given unprecedented access to Mitchell's personal papers and hundreds of private letters, Lehr reveals for the first time the full story of Mitchell's wartime exploits up to the face-off with Yamamoto.