In Afghanistan, all the easy answers are wrong and the best-laid plans don't stand a chance. A tight-knit band of USMC scout-snipers, enraged when one of their number murders another, is hell-bent on seeing justice. They kidnap Zarak Momand, a burnt-out Navy hospital corpsman, and blackmail him to be their guide into Momand land and to find a loophole in nanawatai, the Afghan code of hospitality. They don't tell him their target -- a deserter -- murdered Zarak's estranged baby brother.

Zarak has lost touch with his brothers, his heritage, his religion, anything that might inspire true passion. Code-named Zulu and coerced to hunt down a deserter, he must navigate the ambiguities of fourth generation warfare, where there are no front lines and where the moral high ground shifts from situation to situation.

In the end, it's just Zulu and Oscar, a sexually compelling cipher who embodies so much of the Pakhtun Way. But is Oscar's rough passion a betrayal between brothers?

Publisher's Note: This book contains explicit sexual content, graphic language, and situations that some readers may find objectionable: male/male sexual practices.