Murder, mayhem, betrayal and conspiracy follow the shooting death in his Capitol Hill residence of sixty year old Carlos Herrera, Puerto Rico's Resident Commissioner, the Commonwealth's representative to the US Congress. He is also a confident and golfing partner of the President. The case is assigned to FBI Inspector Ben Douglas, and by order of the White House, Ana de la Garza, a secret service agent and native Puerto Rican. They discover Herrera's widow, thirty years his junior and daughter of a prominent Puerto Rican politician, is having an affair with the leader of a revived Puerto Rican terrorist group. There follows a series of bombings and murders, including the death of a renegade CIA agent. A former KGB defector who returned to Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union is trading stolen Russian arms to the terrorist for drugs. The action moves from the nation's capitol to New York City, Puerto Rico and culminates on the Caribbean island of St. Martin