Alpha team was gone, dead to a man. A few crewmen from Bravo team had been blown overboard. Stark reentered the pilothouse and checked the radio hoping to get out one last mayday, but the radio, like the crew, was dead.Connor Stark was a pariah, a man without a country, a former naval officer whose career came to an unceremonious end after a court-martial resulted in a dishonorable discharge. At home and at peace in Scotland, he was determined to leave his past behind until murder, politics, and Middle East instability prompted his unexpected recall to active duty. . Set against a background of modern piracy in the Gulf of Aden, the story begins as the new American ambassador to Yemen, C. J. Sumner, is assigned to negotiate access to the oil fields off the island of Socotra and enlists Starks help countering pirates who are capturing ships at will off the Horn of Africa. Meeting with resistance to her diplomatic overtures, Sumner recruits Stark, who has become a mercenary after being dishonorably discharged, as her defense attach, because he knows the region. When Stark sets up a meeting with the owner of a Yemeni shipping company and the ruling