Phantom Chase, The Novel

Abstract

The master's thesis Phantom Chase, The Novel constitutes Part I of an envisioned two-part suspense adventure story. The thesis introduces characters and presents events occurring in these characters' lives in Hawaii and South Vietnam and the end of 1967. The submitted thesis develops two plot lines: 1. A fictional re-telling of the rationale for and creation of the C.I.A.'s Phoenix program in late 1967. 2. A fictional re-counting of events leading to a disastrously failed Phoenix mission in Xuan Loc village, Tay Ninh province, Republici of South Vietnam, in early 1968 prior to the initiation of the Tet offensive. A plot summary of Phantom Chase at the time a completed manuscript is ready for submission to a prospective publisher might read: America's divisive Vietnam era is over, but its soul-wrenching echoes still reverberate. The place is the beautiful Austin hill county and coastal plains of south Texas. The year is early 1988; and the brave men who fought America's longest war, again, are dying form enemy bullets. A mirror image of the war in Vietnae has broken out, and this time the bloodiest battles are being fought in America's heartland. Only two survivors of the Vietnam war have the knowledge, the courage, and, as they discover, the responsibility to stop the wanton killings of America's greying veterans. But to do so, special investigations branch Detective Sergeant Raffy Ortiz and his former Phoenix team commander, ex-Special Forces Captain Brian Carmody, must unravel a twenty-year old web of lies, loves, and hates that stretches from the Texas Governor's Mansion, to the nation's White House, and back to the time and place in the world where they, too, killed willingly for God, country, honor, and revenge.