Photos of clandestine activity in 1962 in the Soviet Union and Cuba disturb US super spy Edgar Kelly, codenamed the Sheriff, and his Posse. He fears the Cold War, the struggle between democracy and autocracy, has taken a perilous and unpredictable turn. To find out what is unfolding, he needs eyes on the ground. He's frustrated because the KGB has Cuba and the USSR locked down. In desperation, he takes a calculated risk and is able to slip spies into Havana and Leningrad. The spies face danger and capture, but discover that the Soviets are secretly and recklessly shipping and installing nuclear missiles in Cuba, only ninety miles away from the US. The Sheriff relays the discovery to President Kennedy and his advisers.
On October 22, JFK responds to the emerging threat with a naval quarantine of Cuba, a plan to invade Cuba and attack the USSR with nuclear missiles, and an order for Kelly and the Posse to go to the USSR to find a way out of the crisis. Kelly and the Posse enter a byzantine and unpredictable world that pits acting KGB director and neo-Stalinist Yuri Volkhov, who wants nuclear war because he believes communist autocracy is inevitable and invincible, against Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who realizes he erred in placing missiles Cuba and wants to deescalate and asks Kelly, who he thinks is a well-connected academic, to help.
With the end of civilization on the line, Kelly and the Posse maneuver desperately to block the KGB and boost Khrushchev by trying to tamp down the mounting confrontation between the US and USSR and by enlisting Pope John XXIII to intercede, only to find that Volkhov has secret plans to kill Kelly and the Pope, down an American U-2 spy plane over Cuba, and start a nuclear war by ordering Soviet submarines to shoot nuclear-armed torpedoes, each one with the explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb, at the US fleet in the Caribbean. The action and thrills are relentless as Kelly and the Posse work to stop Volkhov, avoid Armageddon, and find an unexpected and climatic solution to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The story is based on real events and provides readers with an entertaining and informative story about the Cuban missile crisis and shows freedom and democracy are under constant threat from men and movements who have lost touch with history, tradition, and virtue, and favor fratricidal war and dictatorship.
