Sandbox — David Zimmerman

Operating Base Cornucopia. A three-hundred-year-old fortress in the remote Iraqi desert where a few dozen soldiers wait for their next assignment, among them Private Toby Durrant, a self-described "broke nobody." Then a deadly ambush touches off events that put Durrant in the middle of a far-reaching conspiracy. Insurgents massing in the nearby hills, a secretive member of military intelligence, an abandoned toy factory and a mysterious, half-feral child -- Durrant must figure out the links between them if he's to survive. This blistering look at military life in "the sandbox" of Iraq marks the debut of a major new talent.