After undergoing many weeks of training during the harsh winter months in the frozen north, Jesse McDermitt and Rusty Thurman are ready for some time off, their last leave period in their first year in the Marine Corps.
Only this time, it's not palm trees and sunny tropical beaches they'll be unwinding at, but diving in the frigid and treacherous coastal waters off the Outer Banks of North Carolina, the famed Graveyard of the Atlantic, thought to hold great wealth in the cold embrace of her murky depths.
The perilous banks, with their constantly shifting cuts, both far offshore, and in Pamlico Sound, have been the stronghold of piracy for centuries and thousands of ships lay in their watery graves there. Modern pirates don't plunder merchant vessels for gold, sugar, and silks, but instead preyed on all sorts of boaters around the Sound, even drug traffickers.
When Jesse and Rusty, along with another Marine, run up against the pirates, an unlikely partner joins in the fight to tip the odds.
The OBX has a history as deep and dark as the ocean that surrounds it. And all too often, man-made storms cause just as much havoc as the hurricanes which have lashed her shores.
