In military terminology, a backazimuth is a compass direction taken back to a starting point, guiding a soldier home. For Major Bill Slade, a second-rate army officer and inveterate drinker, an unsettling chain of events tied to his past will push him to the point of no return, from which no backazimuth can bring him home...In 1991, Slade is stationed in Saudi Arabia as part of Operation Desert Storm. As his comrades prepare for the ground invasion,...