Juan Cabrillo and his motley crew aboard the clandestine spy ship Oregon have made a very comfortable and very dangerous living from working for high-powered Western interests. But their newest clients have come from the east - the Far East - to ask for Cabrillo's special brand of assistance. They are a consortium of Japanese shipping magnates, and their fortunes are being threatened by brutal pirates trawling the waters of Southeast Asia. Normally, such attacks on the high seas are limited to smaller ships and foreign-owned yachts - easy targets on the open ocean. Now, however, giant commercial freighters are disappearing. Cabrillo suspects that the pirates have joined forces to take down the bigger ships. But when the Oregon confronts the enemy, he learns that the pirates' predations hide a deadly international conspiracy - a scheme of death and slavery that Juan Cabrillo is going to blow out of the water.