Publisher's Synopsis
A Single Enemy is a story of three people whose lives cross in the Vietnam War. Brimming with action and historic realism, the book moves from the mountains of Switzerland to Southeast Asia and back again and includes mystery, romance, and spy vs. spy in a tour de force that few readers will be able to put down.
It is 1966. Bill Brixton and his younger brother John decided to climb a mountain in the Swiss Alps. Bill, a college senior, is a very skilled climber and is completely fearless. He loves the danger involved. John becomes terrified during the climb and begs Bill to abandon the climb, but Bill ignores his pleas and continues. Rockfall cuts their climbing rope, and John falls to his death.
Bill is so torn by guilt that he enlists in the Marines and is sent to Vietnam. Two years later, the main story opens with Bill as a Marine helicopter pilot. His best friend and co-pilot Pete Conrad is nearly killed on a medevac mission. In the hospital, Brixton meets lovely Lily Granville, a Navy nurse, and the two almost immediately fall in love.
On their first date, they are attacked and Brixton kills two of the three attackers to prevent them from raping Lily and from killing both him and her. He is charged with manslaughter for killing the two attackers.
His defense counsel is tough-as-nails Maria DeAngelo. The outcome of the court-martial hangs in the balance as Maria needs the attackers' knives, which somehow disappeared from the crime scene, as evidence to defend Brixton.
Major Chris Anderson, who is in actuality the CIA Chief of Station for South Vietnam, links the attack on Brixton and the disappearance of the knives to the increasing number of U.S. helicopters being lost in action. He suspects that the KGB has infiltrated the Marine officer corps with a highly placed agent. He wants to recruit Brixton as an agent to track down and eliminate this "mole."
The novel closely portrays Brixton's court-martial, following the procedures published in the Manual of Courts-Martial. It follows Major Anderson and his chief investigator, Demetrius Christos, as they search for the missing knives and investigate their chief suspect.
The book culminates in a thrilling climax in the Swiss Alps, where Brixton must use every ounce of his skill and training to rescue Lily from a KGB safe house and guide her safely down a near-vertical cliff.
