January 14, 1974. U.S. military prosecutor Jackson Kan is bound for Korea on a civilian passport - the better to make his way in-country, deep and dark, on the riskiest business imaginable. His destination is Camp Casey, a frigid and decrepit outpost on the brink of the DMZ, within spitting distance of North Korea's Inmingun: the fourth-largest, and definitely the angriest, army in the world.

As for Jackson Kan, he's not angry yet, but there's plenty troubling him. A moment of brutal truth in the Vietnamese jungle seven years before still robs him of all peace, battering his heart with sorrow and guilt. The closest thing to relief he's experienced in those seven years, his relationship with a green-eyed woman named Cara Milano, hangs by a thread back in San Francisco.

And the man he's charged with finding, an American investigator missing for an eternity of six days, is none other than James Thurber Buford - his best friend, the father of his godson, the steadfast witness to his gin-soaked combat fatigue.

Now Kan must match wits with Camp Casey's formidable staff judge advocate, the bizarre Colonel Frederick LeBlanc - a white-haired, Bible-thumping patrician whose corruption seems to know no bounds, and may very well extend to murder. For nine years, for reasons unknown even to the Pentagon, LeBlanc - known locally as the Wizard - has remained out on the border, cultivating an inbred colony of minions and staring down the communists he abhors. Against such an adversary Ken's assets are few.

Then Kan discovers a dire secret that stretches the odds of finding Buford and getting his team out alive. But Jackson Kan is the number-one son, precious steward of his clan line and no stranger to danger. And at last, he may have picked the right fight.