The reports out of Fort Bragg are detached and to the point: Second Lieutenant Michael Hauck, 82nd Airborne, spent a drunken night at a strip club, went out to his car for his nine-millimeter pistol, put it in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. The U.S. Army's Criminal Investigative Division calls the tragedy a suicide, and tries to close the door on a loaded case. When Hauck's uncle, Major General Flynn, asks Major Mark Isen to informally pick up where the CID left off, Isen takes leave from his desk job at the Pentagon and eagerly returns to the field. But the feeling is hardly mutual as he encounters the paratroopers of the 82nd - "America's Guard of Honor" - who greet the infantry officer with stone-cold silence and outright hostility. Among this elite fraternity, those who don't wear their distinctive maroon beret are not to be trusted; Isen's unofficial investigation threatens to stain the reputation of the 82nd, and his efforts are met with growing antagonism. But their resentment goes deeper still, cutting across lines of loyalty and insider's privileges, to an exclusive code exemplified by the Army's "golden boy," Lt. Col. Harlan Veir.Hailed in the media as the new breed of American warrior, known by others as the "Dark Prince," Veir is the personification of unbridled military power, a man of utter arrogance who lives on the edge because he believes no one can touch him. Beyond the complex dealings behind Hauck's death, the colonel himself is the connection to an off-limits world where nothing is forbidden - and where a high-stakes war with Isen puts Veir's rank and image on the line. Crossing a minefield of deadly conspiratorial forces, Major Mark Isen discovers his battle is bigger than he imagined - as he goes one-on-one with an army icon, a division, and an institution to expose the deadly intentions and the dark side of military pride. Read Less