The Dragon in the Delta

The Mekong Delta, Vietnam, 1968. A single night aboard PBR-27, a U.S. Navy Patrol Boat Riverine. Four men on thirty-one feet of fiberglass in the dark. During a routine night patrol, the crew comes under fire from an enemy vessel; their gunner is seriously wounded in the exchange. As the firefight ends and the enemy boat burns on the water, a man is seen alive in the river. The chief pulls him out before asking who he is. He is a Lieutenant Colonel in the People’s Army of Vietnam, educated at Columbia University, fluent in English, and a physician who left his practice to fight a war he chose with full knowledge. As the long dark unfolds, five men who had every reason not to understand each other look across the war and see something they cannot unsee.