Amb. Quinn describes how in the summer of 1987, he is assigned as the Deputy Chief of Mission- the Deputy Ambassador- at the U.S. embassy in Manila, the largest U.S. diplomatic presence in the world. Expecting it would be a relatively peaceful assignment since the newly elected government of President Corazon Aquino was in place, instead Amb. Quinn has to deal with a coup attempt by dissident military elements, and then the worst terrorist campaign anywhere in the world against Americans led by the New People’s Army, a radical communist insurgency and terrorist organization patterned after the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.