Book excerpt: THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS--WHERE DANGER REIGNED SUPREME AND DEATH WAS A CONSTANT COMPANION The fighting was fierce in the Central Highlands where Green Beret George Dooley served with elite Special Forces A-teams, training the rugged Montagnards in guerrilla warfare and accompanying them on patrols. The Viet Cong and NVA were entrenched in the sparsely populated Highlands, where towering mountains gave them the ruthless upper hand. The missions Dooley led, often in enemy territory, provided a steady diet of sniping, ambushes, booby traps, and mines. As the war escalated, Dooley commanded his own A-team, and the battles against the large numbers of crack NVA troops became even more desperate and deadly. By then military command routinely assigned anything-but-routine missions to Special Forces and expected them to meet their objectives. BATTLE FOR THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS details the unbelievable valor of these legendary American warriors. . . .