Lying in a Hong Kong dockyard, the HMS Wagtail awaits her last summons to the breakers' yard.

Commander Justin Rolfe is also seemingly at the end of his useful naval life, an embittered man, brooding and angry from a court-martial verdict. Then, the offshore island of Santu is threatened with invasion from the Chinese mainland.

The small British community must be brought out, and Commander Rolfe and the Wagtail are ordered to the island. The job is regarded with sullen resentment by his crew, but to Rolfe, and even the ship, it is a job that offers the chance of a reprieve and a restoration of self-respect.
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A thrilling tale of naval warfare from Douglas Reeman, the all-time bestselling master of naval fiction, who served with the Royal Navy on convoy duty in the Atlantic, the Arctic and the North Sea. He has written dozens of naval books under his own name and the pseudonym Alexander Kent, including the famous Richard Bolitho books set during the Napoleonic Wars.