This ?gripping? and suspenseful novel of the Iraq War ?will keep you turning the pages? (The New York Times). Operating Base Cornucopia is a three-hundred-year-old fortress in the remote Iraqi desert where a few dozen soldiers wait for their next assignment, among them Pvt. Toby Durrant, a self-described ?broke nobody.? Then a deadly ambush touches off events that put Durrant in the middle of a far-reaching conspiracy. Insurgents massing in the nearby hills, a secretive member of military intelligence, an abandoned toy factory, and a mysterious, half-feral child?Durrant must figure out the links between them if he?s to survive. This blistering look at military life in ?the sandbox? of Iraq is both a compelling mystery and a vivid evocation of an ?isolated moonscape?a place as liable to produce hallucinations and heat exhaustion as it is to churn up sandstorms that last for days? (Los Angeles Times).