Lawson is well along in satisfying these objectives when he is asked to fly to Saigon to assist the United States Embassys Defense Attach Office in fixing problems with their intelligence systems. In a matter of days, he finds himself drawn into the dark world of CIA operations by a cultured and attractive French-speaking Vietnamese woman, Lan Le Ninh. Finding both her and the nature of the work compelling, Lawson voluntarily abandons his life of leisure in Thailand.
From this point on, its a race to correct the aberrant systems before the North Vietnamese communists launch their long-feared final offensive. In the process, Lawson learns a great deal about Americas long-running secret war in Southeast Asiaand how many Americans died anonymously in carrying it out.
After twenty years of flying heavyweight transports and developing large-scale computer systems in the Air Force, Thomas H. Lee retired as a Lieutenant Colonel. He has since worked as a consultant for Booz, Allen & Hamilton, as director of systems development for the MCI Corporation, and as a founding partner of Cyrillion Technologies.