Colonel Terry Childers is a 30-year Marine veteran: a decorated officer with combat experience in Vietnam, Beirut and Desert Storm - a patriot, a hero. But now, the country he served so well has put him on trial for a rescue mission that went terribly wrong. For his attorney, he has chosen Marine Colonel Hays Hodges, a comrade-in-arms who owes his life to Childers. Hodges is not the best lawyer in the service, but Childers trusts him as a brother Marine who knows what it's like to risk death under fire. Bound by duty and friendship, Hodges reluctantly takes the case, even as he begins to doubt the man who saved his life in Vietnam three decades ago.