It is from the Biblical saying the Harold Coyle has taken the title of his new novel, God's Children . Yet peacekeeping is not child's play. A tale of high-tech warfare set in near-future Solvakia, God's Children is the story of the 3rd Platoon, Company, 2nd Battalion of the 13th Infantry, and two young officers who try to keep a peace that is falling apart before their very eyes. Simultaneously an action-filled adventure and a study of contemporary issues facing today's soldier, this novel displays Coyle's vast knowledge of military affairs through thrilling yet realistic scenes. Proving once again that Coyle is a master of military fiction, God's Children is as timeless as war itself. "Harold Coyle is the best natural storyteller I know."--Tom Clancy "Harold Coyle, rightfully acclaimed the Tim Clancy of ground warfare, has crafted not only a superb technothriller, but also a classic tale of men at war. God's Children is the best tale of a small unit of desperate men trapped behind enemy lines I've read in years."--W.E.B. Grifiin, author of the bestselling Brotherhood of War series "Coyle is a master at high-tech suspense. He spins his story with such power that you're swept along to the climatic finish. God's Children is his best."--Clive Cussler, New York Times bestseller author Harold Coyle graduated from the Virginia Military Institute and spent fourteen years on active duty with the US Army. He is the New York Times bestselling author of nine novels, including The Ten Thousand, Team Yankee, God's Children and Dead Hand . He lives in Leavenworth, Kansas. GOD'S CHILDREN 1WEST OF FORT APACHE BASE CAMP FOR 2ND OF THE 13TH INFANTRY SOUTHWESTERN SLOVAKIA MORNING, FEBRUARY 4The coming of dawn brought little warmth to the cold, desolate countryside. Turning his face toward the east, First Lieutenant Nathan Dixon sat on the hood of the battalion S-3's Humvee. With his feet planted firmly on the vehicle's front bumper and his arms held tightly across his chest, he watched as the pale sun grudgingly began its ascent into the eastern sky. Like everything else in this part of the world, Nathan thought, even the sun is dragging its tail.With a sigh, the young officer closed his eyes, leaned his head back, and slowly rotated it in an effort to get the kinks out of his neck. The day had hardly begun and yet he had been up and on the road for better than three hours. Breakfast, and Fort Apache, his unit's basecamp, was still an hour away. Opening his eyes, the young battalion staff officer looked out over the abandoned farm fields that surrounded them. These liaison trips back to brigade, he decided, were no longer much of a diversion from the daily grind that had come to dominate his life. They were six months into their deployment with nothing to look forward to but another six months of doing the exact same thing, day in, day out. He, and the rest of the 2nd Brigade, would have to go through the motions of performing a mission that no longer made sense, using rules of engagement that kept them from having any effect, in a country no one much cared about, while living among a people who weren't particularly interested in having them there.Assigned to the 2nd Battalion of the 13th Infantry just as it was in the throes of deploying to the Slovak Republic, Nathan Dixon was sent to the place where all surplus combat arms officers are dumped, the unit's S-3 shop. Chiefly responsible for planning the operations of a unit, S-3 sections are notorious for being the home of an eclectic collection of officers and NCOs. In just about any unit's operations section, you'll find one or two stallions, primarily officers, waiting for a chance, any chance, to charge off to a new, more challenging assignment somewhere else. Working side by side with these are the nags of a unit, officers and NCOs who had not quite measured up to the demands of their last duty position, but were not bad enough to warrant elimination. Holding this mismatched assortment of personalities together is the primary function of the operations sergeant. This man, by necessity, is something akin to a miracle worker, expected to do anything and everything, with absolutely nothing, by yesterday. If stress, frustration, overwork, and too many demands put forth by too many people were the primary cause of baldness, the head of every operations sergeant in the United States Army would be as smooth as a cue ball.At first Nathan didn't much mind being thrown intothis mix of professional fast movers and has-beens. Having just left an airborne unit, the young first lieutenant was somewhat out of his element in a mechanized infantry battalion. Distances that had required his footborne parachute infantrymen the better part of a day to march were covered in less than an hour by soldiers mounted in Bradley fighting vehicles. Even the sharpest young officer required a bit of time for his view of the world, and in particular the battlefield, to make thi