From New England to the West Indies to Baja, whether as mate or master mechanic, Neal Donahoe had made a career of the sea. He has cultivated a gift for communing with his nautical surroundings, while focusing his keenest attention on the immediate task at hand. As an officer of Santa Barbara's Harbor Patrol, he'll find this talent indispensable. For the three-man crew of the DEA chase boat Blue Thunder has just met a mysterious and violent end on what was suppose to be a routine bust. Then, in a burst of midnight terror, Neal's lover becomes a human inferno when a bomb hidden aboard her luxury yacht explodes. Suddenly elevated to both chief sleuth and leading suspect, Neal joins forces with Coast Guard Lt. Tory Lennox in a partnership that will test the limits of police professionalism and civilian passion. Together Neal and Tory will track leads from the scuzziest wharf rats to southern California's most glittering elite. They'll be shanghaied into a rendezvous between the Blue Thunder killers and a drug smuggling cabal that stops at nothing. The battle lines will be drawn by the assembled firepower of the DEA, Coast Guard, and U.S. Customs. But the war will be won or lost by Neal and Tory, aboard a solitary thirty-foot sailboat, on open and deadly water.