For Morgan Buckner, guard duty at Abu Ghraib prison turns deadly during the fall of 2003 when his only friend is murdered during a prison riot. The young soldier exacts his revenge in a manner that elicits valuable information from the murderous prisoner but violates the Geneva Conventions. When the information pays dividends that save American lives, General Robert Tannerbeck must decide whether to put the welfare of his men ahead of international law and his own personal honor. But when U.S. Marines capture an American journalist embedded with Sunni terrorists, the resulting chain of events leads to corruption at the highest levels of the military, within Congress, and at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Throughout it all, General Tannerbeck fights a losing battle to retain his honor, while Buckner comes to embrace the concepts of Duty, Honor, and Country.