The rain finally stopped, and Sam and Melissa began enjoying the great streams and hills of the famous Texas Hill Country again. After the last adventure they needed the time to decompress, and they took advantage of it! That is until Sam got the cryptic Distress Code message from his old college buddy John Thurston, aka Brew Ha Ha.

It seems that his deckhand for the last 10 years, a man known to everyone only as Horse , has been murdered. The police haven’t been much help, and that’s where Sam and his investigative expertise come into play. Against Melissa’s ill feelings he accepts the case.

Sam discovers a vendetta that dates from the end of the Vietnam War involving a crime syndicate turf war set on the upper Gulf Coast. The investigation takes them from the Upper Texas coast, through the Casinos of Lake Charles, and finally to a life and death battle in the swamps of the South Louisiana Cajun Country. He meets a Vietnamese crime lord who wants to be a Bond Villain, and whose wife is the embodiment of evil on Earth. An old enemy becomes his major Ally, and he escapes with help from an isolated Voodoo Village .

It’s the usual twists and turns that come with Sam’s complicated life, plus one big twist that nobody sees coming…