Commander Peter Wake, U.S. naval intelligence agent, is in Florida in 1888 culminating an espionage mission to learn Spain's naval readiness in Cuba. He and sidekick Sean Rork are hoping to wrap it up and head home on their annual leave. But a beautiful woman from Wake's past shows up, begging him to find her missing son. He agrees, and thus Honor Bound, Wake sets off across Florida and through the Bahamian islands with a motley band, including a Smithsonian ethnologist, a naval architect, a Bahamian Seminole sailor, Russian spies, British military intelligence, and a Polish-Haitian soldier. The search for the boy leads Wake through an ever-deepening maze of international intrigue—and an ever more passionate relationship with the boy's enticing mother.

After enduring storms, mutiny, and shipwreck, Wake and his group find themselves deep in the jungles of Haiti and the alien world of the Bizango culture and the vodou religion. The trail leads Wake to the hidden lair of an anarchist group, only to learn they are planning to wreak havoc around the world—unless he stops it.