The dreams of an idle life in the paradise of the Bahamas are shattered when the discovery of a derelict, bullet-ridden yacht brings in the local police and the drug-runners. Nick Breakspear, desperate to escape his famous parentage, invalided out of the Marines, was heading only for peace, but the quixotic impulse makes him take up a challenge - and a lucrative offer - and he allows himself to be hired, for a private war, by a smooth-talking US presidential candidate. And it is the skills drawn from his depised father's world that will enable him to survive.