This is Hickam's second novel featuring Capt. Josh Thurlow of the Coast Guard and his quirky crew from the Outer Banks coast of North Carolina. Instead of fighting U-boats on the American coast, Josh is now on a fact-finding mission for Secretary of War Henry Knox in the
Pacific poker theater.
That makes Josh and the boys the perfect choice for a top-secret mission to David Armistead, a cousin of President Roosevelt and son of an American ambassador, who has gone missing. The problem is Armstead seems to have headed north toward enemy territory on his own, and no one knows whether he's gone native, gone traitor or gone crazy.
The mission for the boys from Kilkakeet, N.C., is to bring Armistead back - or kill him - before he can become a propaganda coup for the Japanese.
For the mission, Thurlow recruits the brooding son of another ambassador, who is recovering from injuries sustained when his boat, PT-109, was run over by a Japanese destroyer.
Things go wrong almost from the beginning, and Josh is stranded on an island crawling with Japanese soldiers and head-hunting natives that is ruled by renegade American bandit. His guide is a warrior princess forcibly married to the American renegade, who falls for Josh in a big way.
Meanwhile, John F. Kennedy and the crew are trying to mount a rescue mission to recover Josh so they can get on with their primary task. This is made more difficult by the fact that their mission is off the books, and Kennedy is awaiting court-martial for his last voyage.
To scrounge supplies, Kennedy must play poker
