CENTRIFUGE

Not much time, Mike. He'll want you. . . Mulvahill. . . Perkins, too. . . warn them."" So says the dying Lt. Col. Bull Brooks to ex-Green Beret Mike Slater--who then proceeds to kill three of the assassins responsible for Brooks' murder. But what was his old colonel about to tell him before the attack? Why was he murdered? And why is Slater also in danger--along with fellow Vietnam vets Mulvahill and Perkins? Well, if this were a Robert Ludlum novel, the answer would stay murkily mysterious for 500 pages or so. Here, however, Pollock (Mission: M.I.A.) immediately lets us know that a top CIA agent named Kinard is really a KGB mole--and that, way back in 1975 Vietnam, Col. Brooks and his men saw something that might lead them to guess Kinard's traitorous secret. So, while Slater ponders the puzzle and sets off to warn his buddies, Kinard's KGB bosses keep unleashing death-squads of Soviet-trained terrorists. Mulvahill, a bitter paraplegic, scorns Slater's warning--and is promptly killed. Slater finds Perkins on a Mexican isle, where the two vets fend off a scuba-diving assassination attempt. And then, arming themselves with a car-load of serious Nam-style weapons, Skater and Perkins head up to a cabin-retreat in Canada, ready to repel the biggest KGB assault yet: an onslaught by Russia's ""most decorated and experienced unconventional warfare unit."" Will the CIA, which has been keeping an eye on these doings, help the two heroes out of this predicament? Of course--or so it seems at first. Then, however, the Company uncovers Kinard's mole-identity--but decides to keep their discovery under wraps, turning him into a triple-agent. So it's now in the CIA's interest for Slater and Perkins to die: US forces stand by complacently while the two vets are attacked by over a dozen KGB guerrillas. . . and when Slater comes through it all alive, the CIA is waiting to finish him off. Solid, straightforward action for the gung-ho, blood-and-guts audience: minimal characterization, maximum body-counts, and jungle-weaponry galore.