'What we do here is not for everyone. It's real hard work, and once in a while we lose folks. Laos and Cambodia are the North Vietnamese Army's backyard. It's their home and they don't like us snooping around. They got anti-aircraft guns, more trucks than you can count and whole companies just dedicated to hunting recon teams. If you find this ain't your thing, then you gotta say so. I know a lot of brave men who just weren't cut out for recon. Got it?' CCC Kontum, a US Special Forces unit, runs top-secret cross border reconnaissance missions.

The President denies their involvement, and the public is unaware of their existence. Any method is permissible in a secret war of relentless ferocity, where achieving your mission and surviving are not the same thing. Bobby Lake dropped out of Harvard to fight in Vietnam, because he wanted to be a hero. But how do you become a hero amongst men who only notice the cowards, where just the price of respect is high, and the cost of being a hero is hard to pay? William F Owen's fiercely dramatic first novel is based on events that took place in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia between January and August 1970.