Kill Zone， a taut and suspenseful thriller by the author of Assumption of Risk， features a serial sniper bent on avenging his father s murder during the last days of the Vietnam War. His targets are the men guilty of， but never prosecuted for， the murder.It begins in 1970. Nixon had just announced the massive withdrawal of troops from Vietnam. For the men and women in-country， getting out alive suddenly superseded merely surviving the war. But some， bound by duty and honor and patriotic pride， still continued doing the job. Such was the case with Major Ralph Longbaugh， the senior battalion operations officer within a brigade of the Fourth Division. Just months to go before he and his men would be returning to the World， he was preparing orders sending them back one last time into VC Valley， infamous as one of the most dreaded and dangerous places in the Central Highlands. But for squad leader John Linet， the war was already over.Linet and his men are tired of the killing， of the blood， of worrying who s next to die. It s time to go home and no one had better get in their way. And the only way to stop Major Longbaugh is to kill him. The murder is executed in the guise of a Viet Cong ambush; despite the confession by a squad member， the facts of the murder are lost in a muddle of circumstantial evidence. Captains Jim Manos and Tony Husta of the Army s Criminal Investigation Division are told there won t be any prosecution. The guilty squad members are sent home as free men. Longbaugh s family is told the major died in action， and the case is closed. But Manos and Husta， convinced that the confession is valid and the men are guilty， vow to reveal the truth some day.Time has a way of tempering the fury and vengeance of the past， and ten years later， Manos has all but forgotten his promise. That is， until he meets Aaron Longbaugh， the son of the long-dead major， now in the Army himself. He has been trained as a sniper， and is uncannily skilled and utterly ruthless at his craft. Manos grasps the opportunity to set things right and tells Aaron the truth about his father s death. Thus a tireless， years-long journey of revenge inadvertently is set in motion， as Aaron systematically and methodically hunts down and kills off each of the surviving members of the murderous squad.Meanwhile， a carjacker turned hostage-taker is killed by a police SWAT-team sniper. Vanessa Tau of Transpatriot Insurance begins investigating the wrongful death claim filed by the family of the suspect. Business and pleasure mix when she meets Sgt. Nathan Samm， the handsome but reserved African-American officer from the Hostage Rescue Team. It s an attraction that Vanessa， a Vietnamese refugee， can neither imagine nor deny， and she soon finds herself falling in love with a man she barely knows anything about. And who intends on keeping it that way.Combining the aftershocks of the Vietnam War with a killer hell-bent on avenging his father s brutal murder， Kill Zone expertly combines action， romance， and revenge.