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eBook Category: Mystery/Crime
eBook Description: While reading the obituaries, Brad Carpenter, a San Diego homicide detective, recognizes the North Vietnamese Army officer who killed his best friend nearly 30 years ago. Somehow, that NVA soldier had not only come to the United States during a time when he should not have been able to do so, but he had established himself as a respected businessman. When did he come to the US? What was he doing here? How did he die? Brad is driven by his past to find the answers to these questions. His unauthorized investigation as well as his pursuit of the man's killer, takes him away from his family and his official investigative duties to Denver, Colorado, where both the killer and the police relentlessly stalk him. Rooted in one of the most ill-conceived CIA programs of the Vietnam War--the Phoenix Program--In Pursuit of the Enemy tells of a cruel and haunting past that must be revisited in order to heal a shattered present.

eBook Publisher: SynergEbooks, Published: SynergEbooks, 2007
Fictionwise Release Date: June 2007

1 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [747 KB], eReader (PDB) [264 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [252 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [227 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [239 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [260 KB], hiebook (KML) [603 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [331 KB], iSilo (PDB) [207 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [260 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [309 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [348 KB]
Words: 79772
Reading time: 227-319 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
ISBN: 0744313198

Kim woke with a start, and immediately he knew something was wrong.

Goose flesh prickled his skin and his head felt as if it was stuffed with cotton. His mouth was dry. A strange bitter taste lay on his tongue.

Filling his lungs with frigid air, he tried to open his eyes, but they would not respond. A cold dampness pressed against his right cheek and he smelled rich, earthy scents: dirt ... leaves ... and something else, clean and fresh.

Christmas, he thought, then frowned. No, that wasn't right. But somehow the smell reminded him of Christmas.

Then, suddenly, he knew what it was--the scent of pine.

A stiff wind whistled through tree limbs high above and a gust hit him in the face. He shivered in the icy blast.

Again he tried to open his eyes. This time he succeeded, and a crust of dried mucus broke free. Still, he could see little from where he lay on the ground, his cheek pressed into the cold wet carpet of pine needles, twigs and loam.

He rolled onto his back and gazed into a sky solid gray with overcast, then propped himself up on his elbows and looked around. He was in a forest, but it was a forest totally unlike the semi-tropical one he knew. This forest was composed almost entirely of towering pines, their massive needle-covered branches standing firm against the wind. Here and there he spotted clumps of light-barked trees, their bright yellow leaves standing out against the dark green of the pines.

At first he thought he might be in the mountains east of San Diego, but somehow the pines seemed all wrong for that, totally out of place. Although the San Diego area possessed pine forests, he was sure none of them were like this one. These trees were far more massively beautiful than anything to be found in Southern California, their lower branches reaching nearly to the ground, thick with dark green needles. Yet they were not the towering Sequoias that grew farther north, up along the California coast. These trees looked like the ideal pines found only in travel brochures, or on the fronts of Christmas cards.

Within seconds it began to snow, the flakes falling large and wet, melting as soon as they hit the ground. His clothing quickly became soaked, and he shivered in the cold wind.

Now Kim knew this was nowhere near San Diego; it could not possibly be snowing this early in the season, even in the mountains east of the city. Further north, perhaps, but certainly nowhere in Southern California.

He became suddenly dizzy as he struggled to a sitting position. It seemed as if he was drunk, or perhaps he had been drugged. That would certainly explain the bitter taste and dryness in his mouth.

After a few seconds the dizziness passed, and he regained his equilibrium. He looked around again, this time carefully studying his surroundings. He was in a small grassy glade, ringed by pine trees. The glade was less than twenty feet across, and two other men inhabited it with him. The ground sloped steeply downward and to his left, toward where the others lay motionless on their stomachs, their right arms curled above their heads, their right cheeks pressed to the ground--just as Kim's had been when he had awakened. Their faces were turned away from him.

The nearest man possessed a light build and wore torn and faded blue jeans, a soiled white T-shirt and sneakers without socks. His black hair was long and not horribly clean. The man beyond him had a somewhat more massive frame. He also had black hair, but he wore it short, as did Kim. Besides jeans in considerably better condition than those worn by the man nearest to Kim, he wore a red flannel shirt and hiking boots. A pistol lay next to both of their right hands, above their heads.

Kim looked down to where his own right hand had rested only a moment before. A revolver lay on the carpet of brown pine needles and loam.

He picked the weapon up, turned it over in his hands. It was a .38 caliber police special, the wooden grip nicked and scarred by years of use and abuse, the metal pitted in spots.

The revolver's heft generated a strange feeling in Kim's mind. He hadn't held a gun in many years, not since coming to the United States. Although his son was now grown, Kim still did not allow guns in his house; he had seen too much of the damage they could do. In fact, he had caused too much of that damage himself.

What is going on here? he wondered. He remembered leaving his office at about 4:30 in the afternoon. He had stopped for a case of beer at the liquor store three blocks from his house in Linda Vista, just north of San Diego. Bottles, not cans; he didn't like the taste of beer from a can. He and his wife were entertaining friends at a barbecue in their back yard, and the six-pack in the refrigerator would not be enough.

As he walked back to his car carrying the case of beer, he suddenly felt a sharp prick on the back of his neck. Before he could turn around a flush of weakness washed over him and he dropped the beer in the street. He heard the bottles shatter on the asphalt as he went down. That was all he remembered.

The prick on the back of his neck had felt like a needle. He brought his free hand up and felt along the bristles of a recent haircut. There was a slightly raised bump there, but it wasn't as swollen as he had thought it would be. He thumbed his jaw. A full day's growth of beard, maybe more. And he was still dressed in his business suit--brown, conservative, well tailored, but now mud-splattered and wrinkled.

Kim wondered why anyone would want to stick him in the back of the neck with a needle. Twelve, maybe fifteen years ago he had read in the newspaper about something similar happening. Someone had been using darts to inflict wounds on innocent pedestrians on the crowded sidewalks of New York City. He couldn't remember if the attacker had been caught or not, and it really didn't matter; this hadn't felt like a dart, and it certainly hadn't happened in New York.

The longhaired man down the hill groaned and stirred. Kim tucked the revolver behind his belt, then got to his hands and knees and crawled to where the man was coming awake. He was young--Kim guessed no older than twenty.

As the youth gained his senses, Kim sat beside him and watched. He knew the boy could have trouble coming awake; there was no way to determine what drug had been used on them, and everyone had different tolerances to different chemicals, but it had seemed like a rather powerful drug.

The boy's breathing was shallow yet regular, and he sniffed several times, as if testing the air. Then he jerked and his eyes snapped open. He lay perfectly still for nearly half a minute, staring into the overcast sky. Finally, he turned his head toward Kim and gazed intently at him.

"Where am I?" the young man said after a few seconds. His accent sounded Southern. Like Kim, he was Vietnamese.

"I don't know," Kim answered in his native tongue. "I just came to myself."

The youth's gaze became blank; he didn't understand what Kim was saying. Kim repeated his statement in English.

The other sat up and tasted his mouth. He made a face. "I feel like shit," he said. "What's that taste?"

Kim nodded. "I think we have been drugged."

"Drugged? Why?"

"I do not know."

The young man gingerly picked up the pistol lying beside him. It was a semi-automatic. He held it between his thumb and index finger, as if he was afraid it might go off.

"Nine millimeter," Kim said.

"What's it for?"

Kim shrugged, then looked at his own weapon tucked behind his belt. "I found one, too."

The boy gingerly put the gun down beside him. "Who are you?" he asked.

Kim told him, careful not to give his family name. You never know, he thought. The boy might be one of those responsible for what was happening here, placed in the clearing to gain Kim's confidence. If nothing else, Kim had learned a certain amount of caution all those years ago, in the Vietnamese jungle.

"My name's Peter ... uh, Pete," the boy responded, "Pete Pham." Kim noticed the boy was not so cautious; he had given his family name. And he had given it last--his name was westernized.

"What is the last thing you remember, before waking up?" Kim asked.

"I was waiting for the bus, on my way to class at U. of A.," Peter answered.

Alabama, Kim thought, again listening to the boy's accent, not Arizona or Alaska. To Peter he said, "And you felt something on the back of your neck."

The boy reached up and rubbed under his hair. "That's right. How did you know?"

"The same thing happened to me. May I have a look?"

Peter twisted at the waist, turned his head and lifted his hair. In the dim light Kim could just make out the needle mark.

The boy turned back, then hooked a thumb toward the short-haired man laying unconscious a few feet away. "Do you know who he is?"

"I have no idea," Kim answered. "I had hoped perhaps you could tell me."

Peter shook his head, then picked up the nine millimeter lying beside him. They stood and Peter tucked the weapon into his belt as they went to the other man. Peter squatted, took the man by the shoulder and shook him. The man did not respond. Peter shook him again, harder. There was still no response.

Kim squatted beside Peter and rolled the man over. The man was Korean, between thirty-five and forty years old. His lips were blue. Kim gazed at the man's chest, but he could detect no movement; the man was not breathing.

Kim checked the man's pulse at his neck. After a few minutes he removed his fingers and stared into Peter's eyes.

The boy stood, took a step back. "Jesus Christ!" he said. "Is he...?" He couldn't finish.

"He is dead," Kim supplied. The boy swallowed hard several times, his eyes wide with fear.

Kim took the pistol lying beside the dead man's body. It was a .45 semi-automatic, considerably newer than the .38 tucked behind Kim's belt.

He stood and faced downhill. "I guess we may assume civilization is down there, somewhere."

The boy nodded.

They started down the slope in silence, the .45 swinging loosely against Kim's leg.