Sign-In
Cart
Sacred Plunder
Paperback
Publisher Price: $16.99
Publisher: Plan B Publishing Company
Published: Dec 1 2025
Pages: 328
Weight: 0.97
Height: 0.73 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
In 1969, US Navy SEAL Mike McCall arrives in Vietnam for his second tour. During a secret reconnaissance mission in Laos, he and his Vietnamese counterpart, Le, discover a hidden Khmer temple. When a teammate, Cook, is killed in an ambush, Mike falsifies his after-action report to protect the temple's location, an act that defines his moral trajectory. His exceptional skills bring him to the attention of Joe Kane, a former CIA officer who runs Guardian Security, a private firm in Saigon. Discharged from the Navy, Mike accepts Kane's lucrative job offer but is immediately recruited by CIA handler Dani Piedra to work as a double agent and investigate Kane's operations.
Mike quickly confirms that Guardian Security is a front for a large-scale artifact smuggling ring. His first assignment is to provide security for Jane Wade, a determined UPI journalist. Though initially wary of each other, they form an alliance as her investigation into corruption parallels his. Mike also connects with Red Thibodeaux, a jazz musician and ex-MP whose network of informants proves invaluable after his friend dies from a heroin overdose. The investigations reveal that Kane's operation is connected to a heroin trafficking pipeline run by Corsican mobster Henri Rossi, using the artifact shipments on covert Air America flights as cover.
Mike's loyalties are tested during a mission back to Laos to raid the very temple he swore to protect. Kane, suspecting a leak, forces Mike to lead the expedition. There, Mike finds Le, who has been working with local monks to move artifacts to safety secretly. Mike chooses to betray Kane, helping Le thwart the raid and escaping with him into the jungle. Kane's enforcer, Kovak, is left alive to report the betrayal.
After a grueling three-week journey, Mike and Le return to Saigon. Mike learns Kane believes he is dead and begins operating as a 'ghost' with CIA support. Meanwhile, Henri Rossi, feeling pressure from his own organization, betrays Kane by giving Jane photographic evidence of the joint heroin and artifact smuggling operation. Jane, believing Mike is dead, resolves to publish the story. However, before she can, Kane kidnaps her, intending to torture her for information and then stage her death as an overdose.
Learning of Jane's capture, Mike abandons his CIA protocols and storms Kane's villa alone. He neutralizes Kovak and Kane, rescuing Jane just as she is being forcibly overdosed. The CIA, led by Dani Piedra and Station Chief Martin, arrives to manage the aftermath. They orchestrate an official cover-up, blaming the deaths on unknown assailants and erasing all evidence of the heroin and artifact smuggling to protect their sensitive operations, particularly Air America.
In the end, Jane recovers and publishes her exposé in a local Vietnamese paper, a small victory against the official narrative. The National Police, with the information Le provides, begin the process of returning Kane's stolen artifacts to their temples. Deemed liabilities, both Mike and Jane are forced into exile by the US government. They share a final dance at Le Mistral before leaving Vietnam separately, their futures uncertain but their honor intact.
Also from
Daigle, Phillip
Also in
General World History
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
Kendi, Ibram X.
Paperback
Titanic: The Ship Magnificent - Volume Two: Interior Design and Fitting Out
Beveridge, Bruce
Braunschweiger, Art
Hall, Steve
Hardcover
Karl Popper - The Formative Years, 1902 1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna
Hacohen, Malachi Haim
Hardcover
Agents of Chaos: Thomas King Forçade, High Times, and the Paranoid End of the 1970s
Howe, Sean
Hardcover
A Manufactured Wilderness: Summer Camps and the Shaping of American Youth, 1890-1960
Van Slyck, Abigail A.
Hardcover
Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal: A Food Science Nutrition History Book
Bittman, Mark
Hardcover
The Rise of Thomas Cromwell: Power and Politics in the Reign of Henry VIII, 1485-1534
Everett, Michael
Paperback
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II
Purnell, Sonia
Hardcover
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
Loewen, James W.
Paperback
The Allies: Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and the Unlikely Alliance That Won World War II
Groom, Winston
Paperback
Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World
McNeill, J. R.
Paperback
Seafaring Women: Adventures of Pirate Queens, Female Stowaways, and Sailors' Wives
Cordingly, David
Paperback
Dangerous Games: Faces, Incidents, and Casualties of the Cold War
Wise, James E.
Baron, Scott
Hardcover
Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
Green, John
Hardcover
The Wreck of the Mentor: A True Story of Death, Despair, and Deliverance in the Age of Sail
Dolin, Eric Jay
Hardcover
1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World
Ahamed, Liaquat
Hardcover
Obstinate Daughters: The Rebels, Writers, and Renegade Women Who Ignited the American Revolution
Kiernan, Denise
Hardcover
The Secret War Against Hate: American Resistance to Antisemitism and White Supremacy
Ross, Steven J.
Hardcover
100 Bible Verses That Made America: Defining Moments That Shaped Our Enduring Foundation of Faith
Morgan, Robert J.
Paperback
The Sea Captain's Wife: A True Story of Mutiny, Love, and Adventure at the Bottom of the World
Mazzeo, Tilar J.
Hardcover
True Color: The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color--From Azure to Zinc Pink
Stamper, Kory
Hardcover
The Housewives Underground: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the JFK Assassination Our Most Enduring Mystery
Tiffany, Kaitlyn
Hardcover
1,000 Days in America: An Illustrated History of the Moments That Defined a Nation
National Geographic
Hardcover
How to Kill a Language: Power, Resistance, and the Race to Save Our Words
Galer, Sophia Smith
Hardcover
Two Ships: Jamestown 1619, Plymouth 1620, and the Struggle for the Soul of America
Reynolds, David S.
Hardcover
The Zorg: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery
Kara, Siddharth
Hardcover
Lightning Beneath the Sea: The Race to Wire the World and the Dawn of the Information Age
Tabor, James M.
Hardcover
American Pope: Leo XIV's Road from the South Side of Chicago to Vatican City
Detrow, Scott
Burke, Daniel
Hardcover
The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook
Sides, Hampton
Paperback
The Conjuring of America: Mojos, Mermaids, Medicine, and 400 Years of Black Women's Magic
Stewart, Lindsey
Hardcover
Liberation Summer: The Moment That Changed the Women's Movement and the Future of American Politics
McElya, Micki
Hardcover
A Brief History of the World in 47 Borders: Surprising Stories Behind the Lines on Our Maps
Elledge, Jonn
Paperback
The Nord Stream Conspiracy: The Inside Story of the Explosions That Shook the World
Pancevski, Bojan
Hardcover
No One's Coming: The Rogue Heroes Our Government Turns to When There's Nowhere Else to Turn
Hazzard, Kevin
Hardcover
Socialism: The Real History from Plato to the Present: How the Deep State Capitalizes on Crises to Consolidate Control [With Paperback Book]
Federer, William J.
Paperback
How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women
Venditozzi, Zoe
Mitchell, Claire
Paperback
Captain's Dinner: A Shipwreck, an Act of Cannibalism, and a Murder Trial That Changed Legal History
Cohen, Adam
Hardcover
The Summer of Death: The Great Heat Wave of 1936 and the Making of Modern-Day America
Williams, Geoff
Hardcover
Exceptional Hatred: Antisemitism and the Fight Over Free Speech in Modern America
Loeffler, James
Hardcover
Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The Past, Present, and Future of the Self-Provisioning City
Brown, Kate
Hardcover
The Phantom: The Untold Story of the American Marine the Nazis Could Not Kill
Drury, Bob
Clavin, Tom
Hardcover
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II
Purnell, Sonia
Paperback
A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them
Egan, Timothy
Paperback
The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism Within Us Slave Culture
Woodard, Vincent
Paperback
The Long Run: Steve Prefontaine, Frank Shorter, Joan Benoit, Grete Waitz, and the Decade That Made the Marathon Cool
Dugard, Martin
Hardcover
King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation
Anderson, Scott
Hardcover
How to Build a Haunted House: The History of a Cultural Obsession
Blackwell Baines, Caitlin
Hardcover
Freedom's Daughters: How a Generation of Black Women Resisted Oppression Through Literacy and Education
Headlee, Celeste
Hardcover
The Women's History of the Modern World: How Radicals, Rebels, and Everywomen Revolutionized the Last 200 Years
Miles, Rosalind
Paperback
Radical Duke: How One Aristocrat-And the American Revolution-Transformed Britain
Allen, Danielle
Hardcover