Chimera

Acknowledgments

I’d like to thank Diana Gill and Will Hinton, as well as everyone at HarperCollins who worked tirelessly getting this book ready for publication.

Russell Galen, my agent, deserves special mention, as this book would not have happened without him. He inspired its immediate creation, and then for years he worked with me, refining and exploring the possibilities of this book, shaping its content, and helping me rein it in when it got out of control. Russ went above and beyond his job description on this one.

Most important, though, I’d like to thank the men and women of the U.S. armed forces. This book was written because as I watched them come home from Afghanistan and Iraq I couldn’t stop thinking that these young people had been given a hellish job to do, that they had done it extraordinarily well, and that they never complained. They worked and fought not for glory but for their country, and every single one of them deserves our gratitude.