In Jack Carr’s outstanding series of thrillers featuring the fictional former Navy SEAL and intelligence operative James Reece, there are several mentions of and passages about Reece’s father, Thomas Reece, a CIA officer and former Navy SEAL who served in Vietnam.
The latest entry, Cry Havoc, puts Tom Reece front and center in the action of south Vietnam and Laos during 1968. That year was tumultuous, as Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated and the United States was racked with violent antiwar demonstrations and race riots. It was also the bloodiest year of the Vietnam War.
Carr, a former Navy SEAL who rose from an enlisted sniper to SEAL lieutenant commander, serving in Iraq, retired in 2016 after 20 years of service. His thrillers describe combat and firearms with accuracy and verve. Carr’s well-researched novel opens with the taking of the USS Pueblo by the North Koreans in international waters on Jan. 23, 1968. Despite the inability of the spy ship’s crew to destroy its highly classified electronic equipment and limited armament needed to protect the ship and crew, the Pueblo was ordered to sea. North Korean ships fired on the Pueblo, killing one sailor and capturing the whole thing, taking 83 American sailors prisoner in the bargain. Former President Lyndon B. Johnson, bogged down by the Vietnam War, chose not to respond militarily to this blatant act of piracy and the theft of America’s state-of-the-art spy equipment.
Carr then shifts the action to south Vietnam, where Navy SEAL Gunner’s Mate 1st Class Tom Reece is teamed with Green Beret Frank Queen at a forward operating base. Serving as part of a shadowy special operations unit, Tom Reece and Quinn capture a northern Vietnamese intelligence officer with a satchel of intelligence documents. The pair of special operators is then ordered to escort the prisoner to Saigon, where the northern Vietnamese officer will be interrogated by south Vietnam. The special operators and their prisoner are attacked on the streets of Saigon, leading Tom Reece and Quinn to become involved in intelligence operations in Vietnam’s capital.
Tom Reece and Quinn are in Saigon on Jan. 30, 1968, when the Viet Cong and the northern Vietnamese launch their Tet Offensive, which surprises south Vietnam and the Americans. The two special operators engage in a fierce firefight with Viet Cong sappers on a hotel rooftop as Viet Cong sappers attack the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, and south Vietnam and American forces battle the communists across the country.
As Carr notes in the novel, although the 1968 communist Tet Offensive was a shock to the Americans and south Vietnam, the communists were quickly beaten back and severely crushed, effectively destroying the Viet Cong as a fighting force for the rest of the war. Yet, Tet was portrayed by most of the American and world news media as a communist victory and an example of why American forces should exit the war. Even north Vietnam and its Soviet and Chinese benefactors were shocked at the ensuing psychological victory for north Vietnam.
The action shifts again as Tom Reece and Quinn illegally enter neutral Laos, where the northern Vietnamese, also based in Laos illegally, are operating supply lines called “the Ho Chi Minh Trail.” After a deadly battle, Tom Reece escapes back to south Vietnam, where he informs his officers that he believes a spy gave up their operation, which explains why so many American operators were missing in Laos.
Cry Havoc is a war novel and a spy thriller. The action flows from realistic combat in the jungles of south Vietnam and Laos to the Kremlin, where Soviet GRU military intelligence officers execute a plan to transport American POWs from north Vietnam to the Soviet Union for interrogation. The GRU officers also discuss the Pueblo‘s intelligence haul and the American Navy spy John Walker, who provides the Soviets with the keys to the communication equipment.
Back in Saigon, the Viet Cong, northern Vietnamese spies, and American intelligence officers live, operate, and compete. A communist spy ring in Saigon handles an antiwar American official, who provides valuable classified information while routinely being seduced and drugged by an attractive Vietnamese woman spy. Also in the picture is a Soviet GRU intelligence officer, a master at seduction and recruitment of Western spies, who is in Hanoi planning the transfer of American POWs to Moscow. He is aided by a brutal, homicidal GRU Spetsnaz special operator, who later confronts Tom Reece.
In addition to fine fictional characters, Carr also offers cameos of actual legendary historical intelligence figures in Vietnam, from U.S. Air Force Gen. Edward Lansdale to Pham Xuan An, a southern Vietnamese who trained under Lansdale and went on to become a Time magazine correspondent. An was a friend and adviser to many of the American correspondents covering the Vietnam War in Saigon, only to later be uncovered as a northern Vietnamese spy.
Cry Havoc is a seamless blend of historical fact and fine fiction. The novel offers combat action, romance, espionage, exotic intrigue, and unforgettable characters. And it’s a reminder that 1968 was a tumultuous year abroad, not just at home.
Paul Davis, a Navy veteran who served on an aircraft carrier during the Vietnam War, covers crime, espionage, and terrorism.
