Dara Barr, a documentary filmmaker, is at the top of her game. She's covered Bosnian women, neo-Nazis, and post-Katrina New Orleans (for which she won an Oscar), but now she's looking for an even bigger challenge. So she and her right-hand-man, a six-foot-six, seventy-two-year-old, African-American man named Xavier, head to Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, to tackle modern-day pirates. Once they start filming, though, they find a whole lot more than they bargained for.

They quickly learn that almost nobody in Djibouti is what he seems. A whole mob of colorful characters patrols the surrounding seas, including a pirate commander who's more like Robin Hood than Captain Hook, a cultured diplomat with dubious connections, a rich playboy who knows more than he lets on, and an American-born terrorist with lofty ambitions. But then there's the recently hijacked LNG (liquid natural gas) tanker: just the thing an aspiring terrorist is looking for. What Dara and Xavier don't know, though, is who's going to be the one to get the prize and what they're going to do for it.