RAID ON TRUMAN

A handful of American sailors fight to keep North Korean soldiers from hijacking their aircraft carrier on the high seas. Ah, the fabled patience of the Orient. Forty years have passed since an American bomber accidentally dropped its load on the family of young Kang Chung Kwon, but Kang, now a general in the army of North Korea, has neither forgiven nor forgotten. And though he has been able to send teams of crafty assassins to the US to track down and execute every member of the crew of that cursed aircraft, it is not enough. Kang wants total humiliation of the US. To that end he has wiped out his own country's dictator, seized the reins of power, assembled a task force of a thousand helicopter-borne soldiers, and sent them over the sea to seize the U.S.S. Harry S. Truman, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. The troops are preceded by airplanes spraying immobilizing gas on the carrier and its escorting task force. The gas works; the sailors drop in their tracks; and the masked Koreans start dropping onto the flight deck, ready to take over. But there is a glitch. A few sailors and an officer in an unventilated machine room missed out on the gas. They are wide awake and have absolutely no desire to go to North Korea. There are also some angry pilots buzzing around. Odds begin to even out as helos explode, and the spunky officer decides not to give up the ship. Far-fetched but entertaining swashbuckling in the modern vein.