Showing results by author "Gene Masters" in All Categories

The year is 1941. Shortly after the United States declares war on Japan in response to Pearl Harbor, Japan’s Tripartite Treaty allies, Germany and Italy, declare war on America. The United States finds itself in a two-theater war. President Franklin Roosevelt sets as America’s first priority the defeat of Nazi Germany, electing to wage a more-or-less holding war in the Pacific. In the beginning, the only force opposing the Japanese onslaught in the Pacific is the U.S. Submarine Service.

Six Christian missionaries are kidnapped by the Iranian government, and become unwitting pawns in a high stakes gambit to embarrass a hated US sitting president and ruin his chances of reelection. With the help of Israel’s vaunted intelligence agency Mossad, the prisoners are located in an ancient fortified prison just outside the southeastern Iranian port of Kanarak, a resort city off the Gulf of Oman.

It’s mid-September 1942. A German U-boat, U-156, sinks a converted British ocean liner, HMT Laconia, with just two torpedoes. The captain of the sub is horrified to discover that the troop transport he has just sunk was carrying 1,800 Italian POWs, along with British and Polish passengers and crew. Why the sub captain chooses to launch an operation to rescue his surviving Italian allies is perfectly understandable. But why he also chooses to rescue the British and Polish survivors is truly a mystery.