Red Flags

A novel of soldiers and spies in the Highlands of Vietnam

Army cop Erik Rider is enjoying his war until he s sent to disrupt Vietcong opium fields in a remote Highland province.

Rider lands in Cheo Reo, home to hard-pressed soldiers, intelligence operatives, and profiteers of all stripes. The tiny U.S. contingent and their unenthusiastic Vietnamese allies are hopelessly outnumbered by infiltrating enemy infantry. And they re all surrounded by sixty thousand Montagnard tribespeople who want their mountain homeland back.

The Vietcong are on to Rider s game and have placed a bounty on his head. As he hunts the opium fields, skirmishes with enemy patrols, and defends the undermanned U.S. base, Rider makes a disturbing discovery: someone close to home has a stake in the opium smuggling ring and will kill to protect it.

Written by a master, and as authentic as Matterhorn or Dog Soldiers, Red Flags is a riveting new addition to espionage fiction.

A conversation with Juris Jurjevics about Red Flags

Q: What makes Red Flags different from other fictional works about the Vietnam War?
A: Most of them are combat novels. Fictionalized memoirs about fighting the enemy on the ground in the jungles, from helicopters, bombers, river boats: us versus them. Red Flags is about corruption and betrayal and espionage in a seemingly simple place. And Americans caught in the middle of this symbiotic marriage of the warring Vietnamese sides, and about the intrigues and duplicity that fueled the war, literally. "You had to sort through them," says the American main character, "to figure out which side you were on." Which is the difficult task the hero faces in order to pull off his very tricky mission. It is also about the native Montagnard tribes that inhabited the Central Highlands, people despised by the Vietnamese, whose language they didn t even speak, but were caught in the vise of this messy civil war-revolution.

Q: What kind of research did you do for the book?
A: I got carried away. I did everything. I sought out declassified documents, rare maps, Army incident reports, archives of missionary organizations. I canvassed veterans on the internet, found and corresponded with the missionary I d known there, located two close friends from the service and met up with them in California for the first time in 40 years, and we phoned two more (who have since met up with the first two). And of course, I read everything I could get my hands on: over a thousand books at this point. The shelves groan.

Q: How much of the book is based on real people and events from your own experience?
A: Too much. Inspired by real events, I think is the expression. Unfortunately.