Laid off at work and hard up for money, news photog Maggie Trout lands a sketchy freelance assignment–a job drawing her into a dark rivalry between two former spies looking for a missing warhead.

Maggie also befriends a flying mermaid, who is battling local Mayor Hope Stinger over the rights to the story and a gold mine of souvenir swag.

But thieves steal the newly unearthed mystery weapon, and a misfiring Coast Guard officer leadws his crew into a clumsy skirmish in the California wine country’s heart of darkness.