In the War on Terror, it is often difficult to tell who the enemy is. Sometimes your fiercest opponent isn’t an insurgent or a fanatic bent on making a statement in blood, but a chain of command that is pursuing goals and objectives that have nothing to do with your unit’s stated mission. Nathan Dixon finds out just how true this is when a new battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Delmont, convinces his superiors that he has an all but foolproof plan for defeating Islamic terrorists in the Philippines—a plan that will ensure Delmont’s promotion to full colonel and beyond.
But the 3rd Regiment of the 75th Ranger battalion is pitted against no fool. Determined to create a fundamental Islamic state in Southeast Asia, a charismatic terrorist by the name of Hamdani Summirat unites the various Islamic factions into a confederation. Their aim is to drag the United States into a protracted war of attrition that the Americans cannot win. Summirat’s factions play out a deadly game of cat and mouse, drawing the American forces into ambushes and small, bloody encounters with a small but highly trained core of Islamic fighters.
