Ruses Are Red — James Mullaney

SPLAT IS WHERE IT'S AT!A trendy new drug nicknamed Splat has come out of nowhere and is suddenly sweeping the nation. The designer narcotic boasts that it will get kids higher than they've ever been before. But coming back down is murder.With a body count rocketing up from coast to coast, MIC Director Simon Kirk decides to send in the cure for what ails America's youth. Enter Podge Becket and Dr. Thaddeus Wainwright, the most lethal therapeutic MIC can prescribe. Their mission: find out who's behind this synthetic drug and give them a dose of their own medicine. The permanent kind.Except, as usual, nothing is exactly as it seems.Splat is just the opening gambit in a much larger game. Unknown to Podge and Dr. Wainwright, all the pieces are in place for a fatal final match involving the underground drug scene, the Soviets, and a couple of old enemies of the Red Menace eager to prove themselves.What goes up must come down, but the bad guys soon find out the masked man with the target on his back won't crash so easily. Before this trip is over the psychedelic seventies drug scene will find out the hard way what it's like to O.D...on Red!