The Devil's Garden — Ralph Peters

Relief worker Kelly Trost, the headstrong daughter of a prominent U.S. senator, came to a forgotten corner of the earth to make a difference. But now she has vanished into the dark heart of a lawless, oil-rich nation struggling through a violent rebirth.

Only one American, It. Colonel Evan Burton, has the courage and the local expertise to track the missing young woman down. But it will be the most brutal and difficult mission he has ever undertaken--a desperate search that will plunge the disillusioned career soldier into the lethal chaos of a war-torn country controlled by gangsters, religious zealots, warlords, oil executives, mutinous generals, and foreign spies. For an innocent has become a bargaining chip in a cold and ruthless global game in which the fate of nations comes down to the fate of two human beings.