When Hank Deerfield is told by the military that his son Mike, who only recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq, has gone AWOL he travels to the military base to see if he can make any sense of the young man`s disappearance. Hank is himself a retired military investigator and is frustrated by both the military and the civilian police`s apparent lack of interest in the case. In the end he does manage to get help from Det. Emily Sanders and together they piece together the events that led to Mike`s disappearance. In the end, this is a story of how war dehumanizes individuals to the point where the taking of life makes no sense and has no purpose