The year is 2012, the location, the mountains of northern Iraq and Army Ranger Blake Peters, the leader of an elite strike force, has just risked his career by saving a band of Kurdish soldiers from certain slaughter at the hands of the Turks. With the Kurdish soldiers safely on the Iraqi side of the border, Captain Peters stands face to face with Colonel Arslan, the commander of the Turkish patrol, his refusal to turn the rebel Kurds over to his Turkish counterpart an act of betrayal that Colonel Arslan vows one day to avenge.Three years later, Captain Peters is now retired and on a completely unauthorized special ops mission into war torn Syria. An ISIS thug named Saleem al-Ramadi has beheaded someone dear to Blake and Blake has gone there to seek his revenge. When Blake's CIA contact teams him up with a Kurdish guide named Faisal, Blake cannot help but fear the worst. Colonel Arslan's parting threat still rings in his ears. The last thing Blake needs is a Kurd bringing him unwanted attention. Worse still, as a refugee and once college professor, Faisal appears to be totally incapable of using a gun.In what evolves into a touching odd-couple/buddy story and tale of redemption, Blake's mission has long descended into an orgy of blood, death and destruction by the time he learns that Faisal's entire family has also been brutally murdered by Saleem, with his wife and daughter having been used first as chattel by all of Saleem's men. So why isn't Faisal filled with hatred and revenge like me, Blake is left to wonder? From the tragic young woman that Blake vows to rescue back in Istanbul, down through the war torn devastation of Syria and on to the moment when Colonel Arslan believes he will have his revenge, The Twelfth Commandment takes you on a spellbinding journey, with Blake's feverish search to find Saleem stripping him of his own humanity, but with Faisal's long suffering wisdom becoming Blake's touchstone, a thread by which he claws his way back from his personal descent into hell.