Book excerpt: All Col. Brock Danforth wanted to do was fly in, give his battered company a morale boost, and fly out. He knew the zone was hot, but his capture by the North Vietnamese Army and his trek north toward the Hanoi Hilton was way more heat than he thought possible. Racing against time, Army Command sends out a crafty Green Beret to lead a team up the Ho Chi Minh Trail deep into the Central Highlands to get the colonel back. But wily, relentless NVA Major Luc Ninh won't be denied his prize, a bargaining chip at the Paris Peace Talks. The author, a decorated combat veteran, gets you down and dirty with the common grunts, the nameless foot soldiers who clawed from foxhole to foxhole for survival against overwhelming odds in the crucial battles for the Central Highlands. Learn what it was like to arrive in country, be assigned a platoon, and patrol into enemy territory for a certain baptism by fire. Crawl into the infantryman's mind as he faces moments of courage and cowardice, gut-wrenching emotion in the face of death, deceit and despair. Relive the horrible sounds of nights in the jungle forest, where you just knew every noise was the click of an AK47, and that the only escape from the misery might be the warm memories of a romantic R&R in Sydney, Australia. In West of Pleiku, the trail into darkness is lined with allusions to the darkest of authors, Edgar Allan Poe. Enjoy the journey!