Description:

The Navy's most sophisticated destroyer, the USS Barrett carries a top-secret computer that can pilot an unmanned ship and send it into battle. As the weapons officer charged with its first mission Lieutenant Dan Lenson has a chance to make naval history.

But when the system develops a sinister virus and a sailor takes his own life amid ugly allegations, Lenson finds himself caught in a web of betrayal. Now, on the treacherous Windward Passage between the U.S. and Cuba, he'll undergo the ultimate test of honor and faith-- one that could cost him his career, his ship, and even his life.

From Publishers Weekly

Poyer's powerful fourth adventure featuring U.S. Naval officer Dan Lenson (The Circle, etc.) opens aboard a doomed submarine off Siberia, then focuses on Lenson's new assignment on the newly commissioned USS Barrett, which is bound for Guantanamo Bay for a shakedown and training mission. The Barrett is a troubled ship, not least because of the suspected homosexuality of Commander Thomas Leighty, and her troubles worsen with the loss overboard of a gay crewman whose diary implicates the captain. Meanwhile, Lenson isn't in such good shape himself. With his marriage broken and his career tottering on the brink of disaster (these events are chronicled in previous books), he is emotionally shattered and prone to excessive drinking. When the Barrett is sidetracked on a rescue mission to aid a flotilla of Cuban refugee vessels caught in violent seas, Lenson's path crosses briefly with that of pregnant refugee Graciela Gutierrez. In the book's most dramatic and moving passages, as Gutierrez gives birth during a horrendous storm, Lenson begins to regain his moral compass. The complex main plot, which also involves espionage, isn't resolved until a mutinous confrontation just off the Cuban shore; and even then, most readers of this stirring tale will be sorry to see it end.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

This fourth of Poyer's excellent Dan Lenson novels deals, not unexpectedly, with the naval officer hero's experience aboard a Spruance-class destroyer in the Caribbean. Lenson comes to this ship, a brand-new one with a highly automated weapons system, in the wake of the breakup of his marriage. As if this were not heavy enough baggage to port, he quickly encounters a sailor's suicide, a gay commanding officer, sabotage of the computer systems, being cast adrift in a homemade boat with a refugee Cuban woman giving birth, a rescue by a Russian destroyer, a whole shipload of Cuban refugees, a riot in Miami, and--climactically--mutiny, murder, and confrontation with the same Russian destroyer. Poyer balances hardware description and an extremely well drawn cast of characters with enormous skill. He handles the subplot concerning the voyage of the Cuban refugees particularly well. He makes one hope this is not the last Dan Lenson novel, all the more because the first four together constitute one of the outstanding bodies of nautical fiction in English during the last half-century. Roland Green