The Dega: A MIKE Force Novel

by Shaun Darragh

For former Peace Corps volunteer Galen St. Cyr, the MIKE Force is the ultimate military adventure. Having escaped the petty harassment and mindless discipline of the conventional Army, he is now out on his own with a hand-picked team of American, Australian and Vietnamese Special Forces, leading a company of Montagnard paratroops against the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. He has even taken a beautiful Jarai lover. Now if he can just survive the Tet offensive, Vietnamese schemes, a lover who commands assassins and hears voices in her head, a Montagnard revolt and hard combat with an ever growing enemy-he might just live long enough to make it home.
If that's really what he wants.
After all, you don't join the MIKE Force expecting to live forever...

564 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2011

About the author

Shaun Darragh enlisted in the Army in 1962 and served in Vietnam with both an A Team and the II Corps MIKE Force. He retired in 1989, after serving in a variety of Special Operations and conventional assignments, and subsequently served as a DIA Intelligence Specialist in Counterterrorism, Counternarcotics, and Special Operations at Fort Bragg, and in Mexico City, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Korea. He has authored numerous articles on special-operations history and doctrine in service journals and in ARMY and Vietnam magazines. A version of MIKE Force won the first-place prize in the 2010 Florida Writers Association Royal Palm Literary Awards for unpublished historical fiction.

Reviews

[Lee Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Darragh knows his job.
He is one of the few special forces vets that really turned himself into a writer.
The book is long, probably his first work, but if you accept a certain amount of effort in reading it, you won't be disappointed.
Not a book for everyone, but if you really want to know how was Special Forces war beside the Vietnamese, read it.
You will have a very good surprise from this less-known author.