NO PLACE TO HIDE

A gritty, realistic, and sometimes preachy final installment in the late Carroll's Vietnam War trilogy (North S.A.R., 1991; Ghostwriter One, 1993). In the spring of 1975, Navy pilots Tim Boyle and Santy are sent to Saigon to help coordinate the evacuation of the Americans and their South Vietnamese friends. As North Vietnamese forces approach, the city is nearly paralyzed with fear. Santy and Boyle fight the clock, Viet Cong sappers, incompetent superior officers, and the accidents that befall those under the pressures of war. Meanwhile, Navy SEALs Thompson and Dalton are trying to locate one of their own, Tony Butler. Listed as MIA since 1968, Butler has been leading montagnard tribesmen in a guerrilla war against the North. Thompson and Dalton have been in sporadic contact with him, and send him one last message: If you want out, it's now. As Butler heads south to his rendezvous point, Thompson and Dalton make their way north, through the North Vietnamese armies rushing toward the final battle. Back in Saigon, the evacuation resembles a riot, and Carrollin top form herecreates a palpable atmosphere of doom and despair. When Thompson and Dalton finally reach Butler, Boyle and Santy make one last air-borne foray into the jungle. As in his previous novels, Carroll's authentic details immerse you in the action, whether he's describing the landing of a disabled helicopter on an aircraft carrier, or the Saigon crowds storming the US Embassy. But the presence of political message begins to grate: The real villains, we read over and over, are a gutless Congress and a US citizenry lacking moral courage. Strangely, Carroll assigns the presidency little blame. And the military? It's always pure of heart and motive. Still, the intense drama of a nation's collapse, combined with jolting action scenes, carries you through the polemical discourse.