A burned valley has erased the trail, and Sergeant Gresham makes the hardest choice a dog handler can make:
Banner stays behind.
Fire has turned the operational ground into ash, char, scorched roots, and lingering heat that can destroy an already damaged paw. Without his tracking dog, Gresham must rely on Jonah Pate’s eyes and hands, Earl Brubaker’s security, and a scout-dog team from another unit that works by completely different rules.
The enemy is using the burned country as cover.
The tracker team learns to read ash carried onto clean ground, disturbed soil where ordinary scent evidence has vanished, and the places where Duke’s air-scent work can test for enemy occupation. But a dog finding nothing is not proof that nothing is there.
Now an American force needs a route through the valley.
Gresham has to tell commanders what the team knows, what it only suspects, and where the evidence stops—because men will move on his answer.
Ash Trail is Book 5 of the War Dogs series, a Vietnam War novel of burned ground, combat tracking, military working dogs, and the limits disciplined soldiers refuse to cross even when lives depend on the answer.
Genre: Thriller
Banner stays behind.
Fire has turned the operational ground into ash, char, scorched roots, and lingering heat that can destroy an already damaged paw. Without his tracking dog, Gresham must rely on Jonah Pate’s eyes and hands, Earl Brubaker’s security, and a scout-dog team from another unit that works by completely different rules.
The enemy is using the burned country as cover.
The tracker team learns to read ash carried onto clean ground, disturbed soil where ordinary scent evidence has vanished, and the places where Duke’s air-scent work can test for enemy occupation. But a dog finding nothing is not proof that nothing is there.
Now an American force needs a route through the valley.
Gresham has to tell commanders what the team knows, what it only suspects, and where the evidence stops—because men will move on his answer.
Ash Trail is Book 5 of the War Dogs series, a Vietnam War novel of burned ground, combat tracking, military working dogs, and the limits disciplined soldiers refuse to cross even when lives depend on the answer.
Genre: Thriller
Used availability for David Lee Corley's Ash Trail