Admiral Chegwidden and Clayton Webb make an unlikely team when they join forces to save a C.I.A. agent from Italian terrorists. Webb already tried once unsuccessfully to liberate the C.I.A. agent, who was his mentor, and knows he needs backup in order to retry the mission. He approaches the Admiral, with whom he has a tenuous relationship, but who he knows credits the agent with saving his life in Vietnam. Together, Webb and Chegwidden go to Italy and put into motion a dangerous trap for the terrorists that, if it backfires, willhug all involved. Meanwhile, Harm suffers an identity crisis when his classic Corvette is stolen.
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.