Zack McClintock, a Vietnam veteran and desk-bound security consultant, has spent the past years trying to put his professional and personal failures behind him - relying on Chivas and antidepressants to get through the day. But when his son-in-law Paul Fletcher, a plant pathologist on temporary assignment in Central Asia, is kidnapped, Zack decides, for his daughter's sake, to leave his cozy suburban life and search for Fletcher.Confronted by two ransom notes - the first demanding $1 million, the second offering to free Fletcher in exchange for a medical airlift to the United States for a mysterious feral boy - Zack wades into an anarchic world where law has collapsed, the local currency has no value, drug lords and Islamic fundamentalists jostle for power, and reality is as shifting and frightening as the graffiti on every wall. When he encounters the wolf-child, and his caretaker, an attractive American woman, Zack has difficulty knowing whether they represent a second chance at redemption or his final, fatal mistake. Read Less