Lt. Colonel Greg Mordant, US Army Signal Corps, Ready Reserves, was being 'drafted' to help NATO strategists address an issue in the Baltic Sea: the Chinese and some Russian-owned commercial ships, were dragging anchors to cut and break undersea cables and pipelines on the Baltic seabed, after turning their ship's transponder off, so they went off the maritime radio-net and would be difficult to detect.
This was a new kind of undeclared war; the economic costs of replacing broken cables, pipelines and the disruption of electrical and communication lines was immense in Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania and Denmark. Germany, Latvia and Poland had yet to be affected, but would be!
He was being asked to use his hovercraft to help identify 'aggressor' ships and board some of them to stop the disruptions. He was concerned that some of what NATO wanted him to help them do might be on the edge of legality. Could he do what NATO wanted and be protected from being treated as a law-breaker?