Sandstorm

Two days before the ground war. Forty-four men. No armor.

February 1991, northern Saudi Arabia. First Lieutenant Brian Darrell is twenty-four years old, and in forty-eight hours he will lead his scout platoon a hundred kilometers ahead of an entire division - out into open desert, around the flank of the Iraqi Army, as the eyes of every tank behind him.

His is the only scout platoon in the division without armored fighting vehicles. When the Berlin Wall came down, his battalion was slated to leave Germany for good, and the first economy measure was to turn in the Bradleys. What's left is eleven unarmored Humvees, four worn-out personnel carriers built before he was born, and one satellite navigation receiver for forty-four men.

Darrell understands exactly what that means. He is the one person out here who is not permitted to show it.

Then the sandstorm comes.

Visibility drops below two meters. The radio net collapses into static. The navigation set reports a position fourteen kilometers off - and looks entirely convincing doing it.

When the platoon breaks apart into three blind groups, Darrell finds himself sitting with four vehicles in the middle of an Iraqi brigade position. Both sides blind. A few meters apart. And the only thing protecting him is the same storm that is killing him.

What he does next demands the hardest form of courage he has: the courage to do nothing at all.

And what happens after the storm costs him the man who made him an officer - because of a number Darrell called in himself.