Synopsis
The activist daughter of a U.S. senator has been kidnapped, vanishing into the dark heart of a lawless, oil-rich nation. Her fate has become the concern of governments and multinational corporations jockeying for power in the area. But only one American, Lt. Col. Evan Burton, has the courage and the local experience to track down Kelly Trost.
Disillusioned by the cruelty of other men's wars and by the cynicism of his own government, Burton is prepared to hang up his uniform when the fate of one young woman calls him back to duty. It will prove to be the most difficult and brutal mission of his career, as he searches for her amid the chaos of a war-torn country controlled by gangsters, religious zealots, warlords, oil executives, mutinous generals and foreign spies. For an innocent has become a bargaining chip in a cold and ruthless global game.
Library Journal
An American aid worker is kidnapped from a refugee camp in Azerbaijan. Since she is a senator's daughter, many forces with different agendas converge. Lt. Col. Evan Burton, assigned to the embassy in Baku, starts searching for the girl and discovers that there is more at stake than his, or her, life. Among the more enchanting characters are an Azeri general who betrays everyone but his own conscience, a warlord and heroin producer, a beautiful German spy, an honorable American ambassador, and the most revolting collection of Big Oil and diplomatic elite scum ever assembled. In the end, the kidnapping is trivial compared with a billion dollars of oil, but Burton has principles. Peters, a U.S. Army officer and author of seven geopolitical thrillers (e.g., Flames of Heaven, LJ 4/1/93) has an eye for the grubby realities of life in the Third World, and his portraits of desperate men pushed by events beyond their cognizance are more convincing than one finds in most thrillers. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/15/97.]Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Army Combined Arms Research Lib., Fort Leavenworth, Kan.