Centrifuge

J. C. Pollock is a mysterious figure; he published seven special forces/spy thrillers between 1982 and 1993 that are well-regarded by fans of the genre, then disappeared from the scene without a trace. I read his 1985 book, Crossfire, a while back and thought it was very good (note to self: post a review). He brought an insider's technical knowledge of special ops and espionage that strongly suggests he worked in those fields himself then decided to write fiction about it, sort of like an American Andy McNab for the 1980s. As Pollock's goodreads profile puts it:

He is a topic of speculation on the Internet and many suspect that he was a CIA agent attached to the SOG during the Vietnam War, but this has had not been confirmed or denied. It appears that his life is like the novels he wrote.

I decided to try Pollock's 1984 offering, Centrifuge, to see if was of a similar quality. 

As the story opens, Mike Slater is flying his small amphibious plane to a wilderness lake in northern Maine. He has been summoned there by his former special forces commander in Vietnam, colonel Brooks, who Slater hasn't seen since the final days of that war eight years earlier. Slater quickly learns that he was not invited there for the fishing, but to help Brooks with a potentially very serious national security problem. Brooks, who now works as the chief of security for a top secret defense research facility, can't reveal any details to Slater; he simply wants to show him some photographs and ask him if he recognizes the man shown. But just as Slater is about to look at the photos, a hidden assassin shoots the colonel with a sound-suppressed firearm and Slater never gets a look at them. Brooks does warn Slater before he dies that someone will come after him too, along with the other two survivors of his special forces unit in 'Nam. Slater instantly goes into survival mode, using the skills he learned as a Green Beret to evade, track and kill the assassins armed only with his survival knife. He manages to eliminate three of them, but one gets away and takes the photos with him. He finds German passports on the dead men, and as he is flying back to civilization, wonders what kind of dark shadows from his past have come back to stalk him.

It's an exciting start to the novel, suggesting a larger conspiracy and containing a level of detail about special ops procedures that was rare in thrillers of that era. Unfortunately, this opening scene is probably the best part of the book. After that we are introduced to some key players at Chestnut Ridge Farm, the facility where Brooks worked, as they try to discover who killed Brooks and tried to kill Slater, and why. We learn that Slater has retired from special forces and now runs a kennel where he trains attack and guard dogs. We also meet the Soviet mole inside the Farm, learn about his background, his history with SOG ("studies and observations group", a highly classified spec ops unit in Vietnam), his motivations for defecting to the Soviets, and his connection to Slater's last mission in 'Nam.

When one of the two remaining survivors of that mission is killed, Slater has no doubt that the other man, named Perkins, will be targeted soon. So he travels to Mexico to try to persuade him to join forces and fight back. Perkins is very skeptical and doesn't want anything to do with his shadow warrior past, but after they come under attack right on Perkins's boat he agrees to join Slater and leave Mexico immediately. The two men decide to make their stand at a remote cabin Slater owns on a lake in the Quebec wilderness. They stock up on automatic rifles, grenades, claymore mines and survival gear and fly to the lake. This sets up the novel's climactic confrontation between the two Green Berets and whoever is trying to kill them—presumably KGB assassins but possibly hostile elements of their own side as well. We're given a detailed account of how they prep the battlefield by setting booby traps, scouting escape routes and planning ambushes around the lake. 

The action scenes are interspersed with intrigue at the Farm, where the investigators are closing in on the suspected mole, the mole is making emergency contact with his handlers, the mystery of the mole's connection to Slater is being solved, devious schemes are being hatched, and everything hinges on whether or not Slater and Perkins win their war with the assassins. We also meet the elite twelve man Soviet commando team that is assembled to end Slater and Perkins once and for all. The final showdown at the cabin is tense and believable special ops action, with a twist ending that highlights a running theme of the book: when duplicitous spooks get involved in the wars of honorable soldiers, the soldiers usually lose.

This novel was about half special forces action and half espionage tradecraft and intrigue, showcasing Pollock's technical knowledge of both domains. But that was also its main flaw: at times it felt like I was reading a special forces or spycraft manual that had been turned into a novel. It got a little too by-the-numbers, predictable and technical, and lacked drama, personality and surprises. Fans of realistic, technical 1980s-era spec ops, spycraft and survivalism should enjoy the book, as long as you're OK with its limitations.

Get a copy of Centrifuge here.

Black Heart

Eric Van Lustbader stormed onto the bestseller charts in 1980 with the publication of The Ninja, a dark, sophisticated, pulpy thriller that perfectly anticipated the obsession with ninjas and all things Japanese in the 1980s. With that novel, Van Lustbader established the elements of a formula that he would cash in on for many years: a Western protagonist schooled in Eastern martial arts, a sinister super-assassin from the East, a global conspiracy rooted in historical events spanning East and West, Eastern mysticism and mythology, martial arts violence, explicit sex, dark psychology, intense romance, and a melodramatic writing style that tries to elevate all of this to high literature. I have to admit, I'm a sucker for this formula.

Van Lustbader's second novel in this vein, Black Heart, published in 1983, is perhaps his  most ambitious. It's a very long (700 pages), complex narrative with numerous threads and characters that span Cambodia in the early 1960s to the USA in the early 1980s, by way of the Vietnam War and the Khmer Rouge reign of terror. It begins with the assassination of the governor of New York during the throes of sexual passion by a mystic assassin named Khieu. It so happens that the close friend and political advisor of the victim is a man named Tracy Richter, an ex-Special Forces soldier and ex-member of a clandestine outfit called "the foundation". When Richter is informed that the foundation suspects the governor didn't die of a heart attack but was in fact assassinated, he takes it upon himself to solve the mystery and track down the culprit.

As the story unfolds, we learn that there's a sinister network call the "angka" originating with U.S. Special Forces in the Cambodian jungle that by the early 1980s has infiltrated the highest corridors of power in D.C. Among the angka's leaders are the head of  a corporation that develops advanced weapons systems, a senator who is a leading presidential candidate and hardline anti-terrorist, and the director of the CIA. These men are involved in an all-too-plausible conspiracy: secretly sponsoring terrorist attacks around the world in an effort to come to power on an aggressive anti-terrorist platform. They also have connections to Richter, the foundation, and various other players in a way that makes everything very personal.

The main character of this tale is really the assassin Khieu; in addition to his lethal present-day operations as an assassin for the angka, we get many flashbacks to his experiences in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge's brutal rise to power. Van Lustbader explores how a man who began as a humble Buddhist with humanitarian ideals could turn into a murderous revolutionary and finally an almost inhuman mystical assassin. It's an intriguing look into the "black heart" of his antagonist—one of Van Lustbader's main strengths as a writer.

By the last quarter of the book there are so many plot threads running that you almost need a spreadsheet to keep track of them—old vendettas, political agendas, terrorist plots, criminal enterprises, police investigations, romantic dramas, spiritual traumas, family honor—but they all converge toward the end in a suitably dark, violent and mystical climax.

One of the most interesting aspects of this novel for the student of shadow warfare is how Van Lustbader anticipates the "War on Terror" 20 years in advance. The senator's plan to attack terrorists worldwide, invade Islamic countries, take their oil and ensure America's global dominance sounds eerily similar to the program that "neoconservatives" would roll out after 9/11/2001. Black Heart offers a neocon conspiracy that will make "9/11 was an inside job" conspiracy theorists nod in understanding. As the senator muses:

His smile widened now as he thought of 31 August and Macomber's plan. Because of that, there would be no opposition to him at all. By then America would have had its first taste of a terrorist assault on its home soil and it would mobilize.

Gottschalk rejoiced, not only for himself but for the entire country. It was just like the days before America entered World War II: it took great hardship and some loss of life for the sleeping giant to be awakened. But once aroused, Gottschalk knew, no nation on earth could stand before her. Let the terrorists beware. As of this night, their days are numbered. Attacked on its own soil, America could then send out its strike forces into the Middle East, the oil-rich nations of the Gulf, the obliteration of the known terrorist camps, the destruction of already shaky Islamic governments. Oil for the cities of America and, with it, an end to the Soviet Union's stranglehold on much of the world.

In many ways this novel is a re-telling of The Ninja, with a Cambodia/Vietnam War backstory instead of a Japan/World War II one, the dramatic opening assassination of a VIP, the discovery by the shadow operator protagonist of foul play involving an Eastern killing technique, the detective work with a gruff New York cop to identify the assassin, the uncovering of a vast conspiracy by Western industrialists and politicians, the love interest who gets caught up in the plot, the twisted mysticism, horrific violence and extreme sexuality of the villains. Like I said, this was Van Lustbader's formula in the 1980s—it's ambitious, intense stuff, though at times over-written, implausible, melodramatic and pornographic. He easily could have trimmed a couple hundred pages off this novel and made it a tighter read, but in an era when Stephen King, Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy were at the top of the bestseller charts, these fat, complex thrillers were all the rage. And once in a while, if they're well done, they're fun to read. Black Heart is well done; it's 1980s Van Lustbader at his most epic. If the style is to your taste, you should enjoy this novel.

Get a copy of Black Heart here.