The year is 1946 and World War II has ended. But in the aftermath a deadly remnant of the war's hostilities--a stray mine--has washed ashore from the Pacific on a remote desolate beach in Mexico. In this intense story the mine by odd happenstance becomes a catalyst that touches the lives of Manuel Salgado a good Mexican cop Robert Campbell an American drifter who has been operating a boat illegally in Mexican waters two escaped convicts and a young woman who was believed to have died in a car crash. It all climaxes in a twist of irony.