Two young officers, one from the eighteenth century and one from the twenty-first century, meet on a cold January day near a small village. The eighteenth-century soldier, having survived the brutal British retreat from Kabul, finds himself among the fifty survivors planning to make a last stand on a small hilltop near the village of Gandamak. The twenty-first-century soldier and his soldiers have survived the crash of their transport helicopter and suddenly find themselves in the midst of an eighteenth-century conflict.

How these two young leaders and their soldiers from two different centuries struggle to survive the brutal Afghan winter and combat the relentless attacks by Afghan tribesmen illustrates the warrior spirit all soldiers possess, regardless of the time and years between them.