Arch Patton, the slightly aging CIA operative, finds himself assigned to a secret mission, ostensibly to secure the freedom of the son of a portly United States Senator, the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.The action takes place in the Bering Sea and Russia, opening on Little Diomede Island, 2.4 miles from the Russian owned Big Diomede Island.Arch Patton had just returned from a nefarious assignment in Africa and thrust again into intrigue and a possible danger or a fiasco.According to the CIA agent assigning Arch."That 'best man' (Arch Patton) had just come out of West Africa under the bloodiest of circumstances, somehow having improbably accomplished his mission. The skewed manner in which his mission had been conducted would no doubt have the Agency looking like a stone cold, heartless bureaucracy...He'd sent a low-life field agent off to save the drug-dealing nephew of a corrupt scumbag of a senator. This time the mission had not even the remotest possibility of...

This novel is set in the very center of the time of most difficult combat experienced by a United States Marine Corps rifle company.A second lieutenant, only days from training back in the states is ordered, under fire, to assume command of a company of cast off Marines, all out in the brutal bloody jungle because of the either the worst of luck or the most minor of offenses or infringement. The outnumbered and little supported company is at constant war with vicious units of the North Vietnamese Army while at the same time tearing itself apart every night in deadly encounters between its racially mixed elements.The enlisted ranks lack all respect for their untested and inexperienced officers, while the officers fight them right back using supporting fires on the enemy as well as their own warring factions. All the men are ruled by terror and fear of the end they know they are not likely to avoid. They are not going home. They are not going to the rear area. And they are only to...