Summer 1990 in the Persian Gulf: A small band of unidentified Arabs hijacks Prometheus II , flagship supertanker of the Heritage Mariner oiler fleet. Sir William Heritage flies from London to Bahrain and is immediately kidnapped. His daughter Robin and son-in-law Richard Mariner are on the Indian Ocean aboard the experimental multihull ship Kat a pult when they and Katapult’ s two inventors, an Australian and an American, come upon an abandoned, smoking tanker that has been attacked by aircraft. Although the object of many frights and speculations, the fire ship never figures in the story, which follows this small group, eventually expanding to include three more Americans and an Arab, as they wrest Prometheus from the terrorists.