In the Summer of 1943, the Allies were poised to invade Sicily. Yet the price would be high in blood and time – unless the island people rose in revolt against their Nazi oppressors. But only the Mafia could command an uprising, and Mafia supremo Antonia Luca hated everything American. Someone very persuasive indeed was needed to change his mind. And they didn’t come any more persuasive than the man known as Lucky Luciano.

Seven years ago, Sean Rogan’s dedication to the Irish Republican Army landed him in a high-security prison. When the organization needs his help again, Rogan stages a daring jailbreak, determined to intercept an armored truck and deliver its payload to IRA leader Colum O’More. But the IRA of years past is long gone, replaced by an organization rife with betrayal and manipulation.

Locals call it the Rio das Mortes - the treacherous Brazilian river where the Huna tribe is known to kill all who trespass. Despite the river’s deadly reputation, pilot Neil Mallory agrees to fly supplies to outposts there in hopes of making enough money to buy his passage back to England. But when he and fellow pilot Sam Hannah discover a field of massacred missionaries shot through with the Huna’s arrows, they decide to strike out along the River of Death to stage a daring rescue of the two nuns who are missing.

It’s August 1944 and as the Allied forces gain momentum in Europe, a group of loyal German expatriates trapped in Brazil hatch a desperate plan to return to the Motherland. Twenty-seven of them crowd aboard a 19th century, three-mast schooner, the Deutschland in a desperate journey to return home. They must cross five thousand miles of rough sea, and slip past both the American and British navies.

Mark Hagen’s streak of bad luck left him broke, despondent, and barely able to eke out a living smuggling guns in Macao. But things begin to look up when Hagen gets a lead on a bounty of gold, lying untouched at the bottom of a lagoon in the marshes of southern China. Unfortunately for Hagen, he’s not the only one after the sunken treasure, and the race to the gold quickly escalates into a bloody struggle for survival on the treacherous waters of the South China Sea.