In his first in a six-volume series, Kelly focuses on efforts during World War II to refit the most famous luxury liner, the S.S. "Normandie," into a troop ship, and how it was burned by saboteurs. At the same time, Charlie Lucky Luciano, founder of organized crime, was being pulled from prison to work in Naval Intelligence. Luciano is believed to have started the international drug cartel and to have been behind the sinking of the "Normandie."