Eagle Station

The fourth novel in this Vietnam series (after Phantom Leader ) takes place during the fall of 1968. As a desperate President Johnson seeks to purchase goodwill by halting the bombing of North Vietnam, fighter pilot Court Bannister and Special Forces colonel Wolf Lochert team up to protect Eagle Station, a clandestine radar installation in northern Laos. These series regulars are joined by new faces, including a helicopter pilot and a para-rescue specialist, in a sequence of adventures that begins with a hair-raising aerial rescue and concludes with hand-to-hand combat against a Soviet team sent to capture the radar station. A strong subplot focuses on U.S. efforts to establish contact with POWs in North Vietnam. The author believes an intensified air campaign would have won the war and despises the politicians who refused to allow it, and his message occasionally gets in the way of his story. But the action scenes are first-rate throughout, displaying the command of detail Berent's readers have come to expect. ( June )