Ben Williams, a Mexican-American Vietnam veteran working on a drilling rig in Guatemala, has fallen in love with a rebel leader, Ixaak, and has joined the fight for an independent country in the Peten region of the country. He is soon drawn into an investigation into the Spanish Embassy Massacre of 1980 and a plot to assassinate "Coronel Muerte" ("Colonel Death"), the feared head of the Judicial Police. Infighting among the rebel groups and a mole inside the movement threaten to destroy Ben, Ixaak, and the revolution itself, but his fighting skills, ruthlessness, and raw intelligence, paired with the Maya sense of loyalty and dedication that drives Ixaak and his men, may prove a match to the deadly forces of man and jungle arrayed against them.