After 22 years in the Army, there was nothing Craig Jackson (CJ) didn't
know about the deadly craft of bomb detection and disposal. He was the
go-to guy for clearing an area of explosives. So when he left the
military, there was really no choice: his expertise was rare, sought
after, and potentially very lucrative. He'd long ago learnt to put the
danger to one side; now he loved the adrenaline rush - the
exhilaration - of the job, staying cool in the face of death,
outsmarting the murderous and wily bomb-makers.
Craig establishes his own landmine-clearance company, and is soon
catapulted into the thick of the war in Iraq, tasked with disposing of
Saddam Hussein's massive array of bombs, ammunition and weapons. This is
Craig's dream job: getting to play with hundreds of thousands of tons of
explosive ordnance, while also doing a bit of good on the side.
Everything is going smoothly until a typical convoy sortie in the Iraqi
desert turns Craig's world into a nightmare. Ambushed by a large,
well-armed and organised enemy force, Craig and his colleagues are taken
prisoner by Saddam's henchmen. Thrust into a nether world of pain and
brutality, all of his thoughts and efforts become focussed on one thing:
staying alive. Disarming a bomb would soon come to seem like child's
play, as Craig has to draw on every shred of his mental and physical
strength to endure the horrific daily torture at the hands of his
captors.
He constantly dreams of escape, but will they break him first?
