The friendship of three cadets of the Rocket Forces Academy coincided with the events of the Cold War: the Perimeter missile system, ensuring a retaliatory strike against a possible aggressor, enters service; an international treaty requires its liquidation, but one missile—known in the West as “Satan”—is left on combat duty in automatic mode. A chain of coincidences and an авиационная disaster put “Satan” out of control: the people who knew of its existence passed away, and everyone forgot about the “hidden” missile. The cadets’ fates turned out differently, but above all their friendship ended because of a false denunciation, and their paths in life diverged. Only thirty years later, when a plane carrying documentation that had crashed in the taiga was found, did the destinies of a general, a lieutenant colonel, and a former captain become entwined in a tragic knot around the “Satan” missile preparing to launch…