Lt. Commander Mollie Sanders is a U.S. Navy officer who has striven to be the best even if it earns her enemies. A graduate of the Naval Academy, she's on the Navy's pistol team, she fenced saber in college, and she does t'ai chi for relaxation. She's also an electronic weapons officer and is tasked with coming up with new weapons designs at STORC - Special Tactics and Operations Research Center. Something in her past that she chooses not to reveal may explain why she is so driven. When she gets assigned to an aircraft carrier as a fighter pilot's backseater, a missile attack on her plane leads to a mission to try to save the port of Los Angeles from a suspected terrorist attack. She must channel her overwhelming competitive drive in order to work as a team with other Navy personnel and the Coast Guards to find a needle in a haystack. From there a twist in the mission takes her to Alaska, where the anti-missile defense site may have been compromised. Next she bulldozes her way into being the first female assigned to a sub smaller than a boomer. She wants to be the one to test the new defensive weapons system she designed as the sub undertakes a reconnaissance mission to the hotly contested South China Sea. She is unaware that her past is about to catch up to her present in a bizarre situation she could never have foreseen.