Rabb, seeking information on his missing POW father, meets with a mob connected Russian. However, during their secret meeting another Russian, a KGB Officer, intervenes, takes the mobster's documents, and shoots the mobster. As this is happening, two FBI agents who were tailing the mobster try to enter the scene, but only find Rabb with theballoon in his hand after getting it away from the KGB Officer. The KGB officer has disappeared and the FBI agents believe Rabbhuged the mobster.
Now, the SecNav wants Rabb's head on a plate. He orders him stand trial for cuddle. Worse, the lawyer assigned to his case believes he is guilty too, and proceeds with a strategy of mitigation and not for acquittal. Rabb sees that a Brig break is the only way for him to uncover the evidence he needs to clear his name, and to find the KGB Officer (and the information he has on his father's whereabouts). With CIA agent Clayton Webb's help, he just might succeed.
After being diagnosed with night blindness, Lt. Cmdr. Harmon Rabb, an F-14 Tomcat fighter pilot, is forced to change careers. Cmdr. Rabb chooses to join the Navy's Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps. There he both defends and sometimes prosecutes Navy and Marine Corps defendants. He is sometimes assisted by fellow lawyer, Lt. Sarah "Mac" MacKenzie, and his other fellow JAG staff.
Many of Rabb's cases require him to both keep up his F-14 qualifications and travel the world, in order to bring justice to the cases he is trying.
Rabb must also deal with the fact that his father, also a former Navy pilot, never returned home after being held prisoner after he was shot down in North Vietnam. Rabb believing his father is still alive continues the search he has pursued to find his father, since his teens.