In a stunning David v. Goliath debut thriller, John Watson pits the antiquated brute force of an old Soviet World War II battleship fresh out of mothballs against the cutting edge technology of the American war machine. A bunch of pirates want to buy The Stalin, the biggest battleship ever built and now lying redundant in a Russian port. Yakov Zof, formerly one of the Soviet navy's brightest stars and down and out since the collapse of the Union, embarks on a new career as pirate and steers the great ship onto open seas. But then he discovers his fellow pirates are not quite what he thought they were and a great sea battle commences culminating in an extraordinary finale.