During the 2020 summer maneuvers near Novorossiysk, the armored personnel carrier of the platoon commander of the marines of the Black Sea Fleet, Senior Lieutenant Stepan Alekseev, suddenly goes deaf and starts sinking. While saving the fighters—and leaving the vehicle last—Stepan almost drowns. Struggling with his last strength, he surfaces and unexpectedly finds himself in icy water among Soviet marines who had been landed under Yuzhnaya Ozerovka on February 4, 1943. Will Senior Lieutenant Alekseev be able to lead the surviving marines out of the encirclement, link up with Major Caesar Kunikov’s landing force, and change the course of the entire Novorossiysk operation? After all, in his home time, he himself witnessed how military archaeologists found among the remains on the bridgehead one of the fallen Soviet fighters… his own penknife…