Jacket Bride, a fatherless thirteen-year-old boy trying to help his mother support the household, is out fishing one moonlit night in the Caribbean surf of Bleak Cay. From out of nowhere, a small plane sputters overhead and crashes on the beach. Jacket investigates, leaving footprints around the site, only to find a dead pilot and a large cargo of cocaine, which he buries in a panic. The next day a suspicious older boy sets out across the island to see what the guilty-looking Jacket is trying to keep quiet. Sometime later this boy is found, the victim of a grisly fate, and the canny island police chief, Skelley, feels compelled to rouse Trent, a laconic ex-British Intelligence agent living in seclusion, to aid in his investigation of the disturbing incident. As the clock ticks, it becomes clear to Skelley and Trent that they are up against a ring of ruthless international drug-runners, who will stop at nothing to keep their secrets safe - including hunting down the thirteen-year-old child who holds the key to the mystery.