Riley Fitzhugh is temporarily made officer in charge of the naval guard on board the SS Carlota, a merchant ship assigned to deliver bombs and aviation fuel to the Sebou River during Operation Torch. The Atlantic crossing was supposed to be in convoy, but Carlota breaks down after surviving a U-boat attack and is forced to limp along alone.

At the mouth of the Sebou River, Riley rejoins the Nameless, an anti–U-boat vessel, which has come down from her refit in Scotland to join the Torch attack. When the Nameless is tasked with delivering a company of Army Rangers to capture the French air force base, she and her crew must force their way through the boom guarding the mouth of the river and pass through the gunfire from the French fort on the hills above. Along the way, Riley runs into an old flame or two—one an enemy agent, the other a war correspondent from Cuba.

Terry Mort is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Michigan, where he received an MA in English and began working on his PhD. After grad school, he served as an officer in the US Navy. Deployed to Southeast Asia, he saw a variety of action there. Mort has written four nonfiction histories that were extensively reviewed in the national press and widely praised. He has also written several novels, one of which, The Monet Murders (McBooks Press), introduces the character of Riley Fitzhugh, Hollywood private investigator.