It is 1965, and America is putting more boots on the ground to fight the communists who have sent their powerful People’s Army of Vietnam, the PAVN, south. Their aim is to defeat the South Vietnamese Army, the ARVN, and impose the iron fist of communist rule on the democratic South. Walker knows nothing of politics or military strategy and tactics. A single obsession rules his life: to become a major league baseball pitcher.

US Army Warrant Officer Carl Yeager, on his second tour of Vietnam, reaches Khe Sanh in late January 1968. His mission is to arrest an ARVN officer, guilty of murder and selling stolen weapons to the Vietcong. Things start to go wrong when the aircraft on which is due to fly back with the prisoner to Tan Son Nhut, outside Saigon, is destroyed by enemy shellfire. The shells do more than damage the aircraft. They uncover the body of an American officer in a hastily dug grave.

SEAL Petty Officer Rod Cooper is the youngest son of a retired Navy hero, Master Chief Larry Cooper. His brother Daniel is a scholar and an academic, and to the horror and dismay of his family, he converts to Islam. To make things worse, he travels to Afghanistan to teach in a madrassah, the religious schools that are a production line for Taliban terrorists. The new mission handed to Rod Cooper’s Team is tough. A better word to describe it would be "suicide". Their brief, to go behind enemy lines and locate and pinpoint a new and powerful Taliban combined arms warband.

The day after the infamous attack on Pearl Harbor, Murphy joins the US 1st Infantry Division, the Big Red One, and soon volunteers for the newly formed US Rangers. He takes part in the bloody attack on the French Channel port of Dieppe. The furious German defense results in hundreds of Allied deaths, yet Murphy makes it back to continue training for the invasion of France, codenamed Operation Overlord. Their orders are to land at Omaha Beach, scale the cliffs, and destroy the gun batteries at Pointe du Hoc.

Vietnam, 1968—United States Air Force reconnaissance photos appear to show a newly built POW camp close to the DMZ. Special Forces Captain Mack Gerber and Master Sergeant Anthony B. Fetterman are sent into the jungles of North Vietnam to take a closer look. Instead of a POW compound, they discover a Soviet-run training camp for the NVA. American military officials believe a Russian presence could severely undermine the US war effort in Vietnam. The only option is to launch a raid into North Vietnam. Gerber's men now have a new mission: go in with guns blazing . . . and get out alive.