An army roadblock. An American intelligence agent. A jetlagged afternoon on the Somalian plain. Michael Teak is not afraid of mercenaries. Life here comes at a price and as a CIA operative, Teak is holding the money. On the back seat of his car is a suitcase stuffed with narcotics; in the front, a gun and an envelope of US dollars. And then a bomb explodes. Thirty innocent victims. An entire village of women and children - all dead. And just like that, Michael Teak does not know anything for sure. Was he the target, or the scapegoat for mass murder with an international fallout? Abandoned, perhaps betrayed, by his employer, Teak is in the wind with nowhere to turn. Even his old sources are caught up in the media bloodbath back at his alma mater. These events have to be connected. Someone, somewhere, has all the cards and for a man running right down to the wire, the rules of the game are becoming dangerously blurred.

Nick McDonell was born in 1984 in New York City. A graduate of Harvard University, he is the author of two previous novels, Twelve and The Third Brother.