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Singapore, November, 1941 . . . They called it the "Gibraltar of the Far East" - a British rock that could not be taken. But suddenly, in a lightning blow, Singapore may be defeated. Call it incompetence or call it false pride. It doesn''t really matter. Just as the warplanes of the Rising Sun take command of the skies. Lt. Ralph Trewin, who was a proud recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross, arrives at Singapore as second-in-command of the gun boat HMS Porcupine. Is it too late to overcome the ignorance and blind optimism he finds in Singapore?

The orders from the Admiralty to the Captain were explicit. He was to take his ship to the small island of Santu, which lay under threat of invasion from the Communist mainland of China, and evacuate the British colony there. The ship, however, was the flat-bottomed, antiquated River gunboat H. M. S. Wagtail, waiting in a Hong Kong harbor for the disgrace of the breaker''s hammer to overtake her. Her captain, Justin Rolfe, embittered by the verdict of a court-martial, knew that the assignment offered more than escape from misery and humiliation-it was a reprieve for himself and his ship.

Hong Kong, 1960s: The old submarine-chaser USS Hibiscus, refitting in a Hong Kong dockyard before being handed over to the Nationalist Chinese, is suddenly ordered to the desolate island group of Payenhau. For Captain Mark Gunnar, who is driven by the memory of his torture at the hands of Viet Cong guerillas, the new command is a chance to even the score against a ruthless, unrelenting enemy. But Payenhau is very different from his expectations, and as the weather worsens, a crisis develops that Gunnar must face alone.