Anybody need a hero?

The most spectacular weapon displayed in the first Gulf War, launched by the first George Bush, was the Patriot missile. Military brass and Raytheon spokesmen gushed about this new defense system that could intercept Iraq's Scuds in flight. A congressional investigation later revealed that the Patriot was actually better at striking the public imagination than Scud missiles, but the illusion of perfect timing was enough to secure its success.

The same may be true in publishing. Launching a Gulf War book this month is like hitting a bullet with a bullet. No author could choose a more opportune moment, but it's extraordinarily difficult to synchronize a long-term project like a book with the fits and starts of geopolitical conflict. Two titles that might have passed relatively unnoticed at other times are being lit up brightly by the rockets' red glare. "Jarhead," a memoir by ex-marine sniper Anthony Swofford, has already climbed onto the bestseller list (review at right). Amazon.com is pairing it with a debut novel from Tom Paine, which makes common sense, because "The Pearl of Kuwait" is a kind of fictional counterpoint to Swofford's raw realism.

"The Pearl of Kuwait" opens in 1990, just before America's air bombardment of Baghdad. Private Cody "Cowboy" Carmichael is stationed on the USS Inchon with 800 marines in the Persian Gulf. He's a long way from the southern California beach where he grew up on wicked cool waves and developed his like awesomely stoked narrative style. His best friend is Tommy Trang, another 19-year-old marine, who's "just totally confident about his warrior skills." In fact, Cody says, "more than any other marine in my experience, Trang was hungry for trigger time so he could perform some heroics."

As the child of a Vietnamese woman raped by a US marine, Trang has grown up fiercely determined to redeem the image of the noble warrior. He does not smoke or swear, complain or tire. He is the very model of a modern major hero. He's always good to go, completely entranced by ancient legends of bravery and courage, with "his arms wide open to his golden future."

But of course, there's nothing to do. As Cody explains, "That was the whole problem with the official Persian Gulf War for Trang and me: from start to finish it was generally boring." The United States has developed weapon systems to protect almost all its combatants from active combat. And an effete public insists that the military exercise extreme "cultural sensitivity" toward the enemy.

What a strange lament runs under this funny novel. The kind of romantic, hubristic bravery that Trang radiates seems a poignant irrelevancy in a world where soldiers must snatch heroism from the robotic fist of automated victory. Drawn by visions of sacrifice and glory through months of arduous training, these young recruits are finally told, "This is a new kind of war, and with any luck, we won't need your services."

Driven to distraction by all his unutilized heroic energy, Trang enlists Cody to help him commandeer a helicopter so they can check out some ancient pearl beds nearby - if they can't play mythic soldiers, they'll play mythic pirates. They don't find any pearls, of course, but they do interrupt a suicide attempt by the Princess of Kuwait, a hot babe named Lulu (which means "pearl" in Arabic). Rescuing her saves them from a certain court-martial but also ignites a series of zany adventures through the Middle East.

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