Marine Gunner Shake Davis, his best buddy Mike, and their families are in a semi-tropical paradise fishing and soaking up the sun. The vacation in Belize is apparently a freebie, a relaxing interlude funded by persons unknown. And it provides a chance to reunite with some friends from the Middle East who have been reassigned to Central American missions. Of course, nothing in Shake's life is ever as simple as it seemsand before long they are shanghai'ed into another high-stakes intrigue. This time it involves gang-bangers running drugs by land and sea through covert pipelines into Mexico and eventually into the U.S. As they investigate, operating under cover for the mysterious man who calls himself Bayer, they slog through the jungle with Gurkha troops, operate at sea against dopers using submersibles, and discover the tragedy of human-trafficking that runs rampant in parts of Central America.