Daniel Parker's life begins to unravel when his older brother is killed by a shark during a fishing expedition. A resident of Cape May, New Jersey all of his life, the disillusioned 14 year old runs away from home and stows away on a U.S. Coast Guard cutter headed for New York. He has no way of knowing that the "Taney May" is about to intercept a container ship carrying weapons of mass destruction into New York Harbor. Daniel ultimately becomes trapped aboard the sinking freighter and is the only person that can defuse the ticking WMD.