As if ripped from the headlines, Fuller's fiction feature begins with the alarming note, “In the summer of 1953, it was announced that an atomic bomb of foreign origin had been exploded somewhere outside the United States.” The story of that explosion is this: Commissioned by a group of private citizens, Adam Jones (Richard Widmark) sets out to sea in a submarine to reconnoiter a nuclear arsenal being assembled near the Arctic, most likely by dread Commies. After an underwater duel with a Red Chinese sub, the submerged mercs detect a plot to drop an A-bomb on Korea and pin it on the United States. Conceived just as the Korean debacle was ending, Fuller's red-blooded tract looks at the hysterical vigilantism of the Cold War. His ship of foolhardy anticommunists is steered by a churlish Widmark whose moral compass is, if anything, adrift on a sea of self-interest.