DRAGON SIM-13

A realistic, computer-driven, military-training exercise becomes a harrowing real-life foray into China for a Special Forces team stationed in Korea. West Point graduate and Special Forces veteran Mayer (Eyes of the Hammer, 1991) knows his guerrilla business. In the summer of l989, as the democracy movement briefly flowers in China, a victim of Mao's Cultural Revolution watches events from Ft. Meade, Maryland, and fears the worst. Dr. Meng's rise as one of China's young computer geniuses in the mid-60's ended in ``re-education'' and flight to the West. Now, sure that he has seen the televised death of his son in Tiananmen Square, Meng- -the mastermind of the Pentagon's most sophisticated computer war games—revenges himself and his family on his old masters. Taking an ongoing training exercise beyond its planned limits, Meng uses his electronic authority to send a Special Forces team over the Korean border to blow up a critical section of a major oil pipeline. Unaware that their mission is private and unauthorized, Captain Mitchell and Sergeant Riley commit their formidable planning skills and their teammates to a risky operation that, with the unwilling help of the Navy, takes them well into Manchuria. The pipeline falls, but no one has planned for a midnight attack by Chinese bears. Neither has anyone planned what to do when your own military masters, unaware that you've flown into the heart of enemy territory, are therefore completely unprepared to help you out. Fascinating, imaginative, and nerve-racking. Mayer's tough, businesslike soldiers again include a tough, businesslike female.