On a yacht in the warm blue waters of the Caribbean, a little boy named Alex Hawke, hidden in a secret compartment, witnesses the brutal murder of his parents at the hands of two strange men. The only survivors of the attack, Alex and his father's black parrot, Sniper, are sent back to the island off the coast of England where his family had lived and where generations of Hawkes have called home ever since their pirate forebear, the legendary Blackhawke, was betrayed and hung by the British.

Decades later, the boy, now a grown man and a naval hero, returns to the Caribbean on a special mission for the United States and Great Britain. His task is to find a secret Stealth submarine that has mysteriously disappeared and the men responsible for the theft. Once there, however, Hawke begins to have flashbacks about the night of his parents' murder. He has also brought along with him a piece of paper his father had pressed into his hands before locking him into the compartment--an ancient treasure map.

Hawke begins to puzzle through his own tragic history and the meaning of the map, even as the search for the submarine intensifies. As Hawke nears the end of his search for his parents' killers and the men who stole the submarine, he begins to realize that they are one and the same and that to the victor not only will go unimaginable military power but also one of the greatest treasures in the world.