March 2006. The United States has deployed military trainers to the newly independent nation of East Timor to help build its defenses against anti-separatist Indonesian guerrilla militias. The most formidable of these groups is the Darah Dan Doa — Blood and Prayer — led by the charismatic Suhadi Sadono, who was once CIA-trained to fight communism in the region. Sadono has turned that expertise against the hand that supplied it, bitter over American support for East Timorese independence. He orchestrates a suicide bombing and follow-up assault on the U.S. embassy in Dili, taking several military and diplomatic personnel hostage — among them Douglas Shetland, a longtime friend and former comrade of Sam Fisher.