Blue Dragon Cafe (ePub)

in The Jackals Feed, Frank Burnham barely survives the demented, blood-soaked ambitions of a modern day African tyrant. Blue Dragon Cafe begins in an earlier time. It is 1954 and Dan Burnham, Frank Burnham's uncle, has just left the US Army and is looking for adventure. He ends up in French Indochina working as a loadmaster on planes dropping supplies to the embattled garrison of Dien Bien Phu. He is shot down on his 45th mission and his bloody adventure really begins. The fortress falls 21 days later, but Dan is among the few who escape. French Commandos find Dan and eventually return him to Saigon. The war is now over but Saigon is simmering with intrigue. French colons helped by the soon departing French Army fight to keep their power at all cost. Opium is king and criminals run the police. The fledgling government Ngo Dinh Diem is trying to gain stability while the seeds of American involvement are sown. Dan Burnham joins a team of American covert operatives seeking to help the weak Diem regime resist the many enemies at the gate. Battles erupt in the streets of Saigon and the real carnage intensifies. Dan is in the middle of it all, doing what has to be done, getting blood on his hands. Some called it murder.

The battle for Saigon is won. Dan takes a beautiful bride and settles down to a more mundane life. The years pass and he becomes a successful businessman and rubber plantation owner. But true peace has been elusive and by 1967 the American war is in full swing. Indochina, now called South Vietnam, is once more soaked in blood.

One night while Dan and his rubber plantation manager are having a beer, a plane loaded with opium and gold crashes into a nearby shallow lake. The repercussions from that event and an older one from his past brings danger and death back into his life. Dan must revert back into the old Dan to confront this new threat. But now there's another Burnham in Vietnam - his nephew Frank . Young Frank Burnham tastes combat for the first time, survives some horrific battles and evolves into a killing machine every bit as merciless as Dan had been.

Dan goes to Laos to confront who is trying to do him harm, but is kidnapped. But who has Dan and why do they want him? Is it French Intelligence seeking retribution for Dan's bloody actions back in 1955? Is it Corsican opium and gold smugglers looking for answers about that crashed plane carrying their missing contraband? Is it someone simply seeking revenge? There's also the stench of possible CIA involvement. Soon Frank Burnham and other hard men are in pursuit of Dan's captors in Laos where enemies are numerous and ruthless. There will be blood.