"Somebody has to make the sacrifices," Warrant Officer Kevin Harrey's young wife Carlie told him when he left home to fly Army helicopter gunships in Vietnam. Though highly decorated as a combat hero, he came home in disgrace for smoking marijuana. Eddie Padilla was his mother's sacrifice, but all he wanted was to impress his buddy Big Roger Stanton. Battle-scarred Major Jake Csynes needed the war professionally and personally, and he expected his gun-packing Daggers to back him up all the way, and beyond. Though fictional, the combat action is thrillingly authentic, and the postwar drama of those who went, those who died, and those who waited for them, is moving and provocative even after so much has been written, and so long has passed.