Alan Craik, a rare breed as both an intelligence officer and a pilot, returns from sea duty and lands behind a desk at the Pentagon. When he learns his best friend and colleague Harry O'Neill, a new CIA agent, has been kidnapped in central Africa, he presses his superiors to let him run a rescue mission. Rose, Alan's wife, works on a Top Secret project directing the launch of a high tech surveillance satellite ("Peacemaker"). George Shreed (a shadowy CIA figure and someone Alan has had suspicions about since his father's death) has ties to Peacemaker and may have his own motives for its deployment. As Alan joins a U.S. fleet off the African coast and flies into war-torn Rwanda in search of Harry, Rose prepares for the Mediterranean launch of Peacemaker and a possible skirmish at sea with a Russian sub and Lybian gunboats.