An eccentric billionaire, a best-selling author, and a beautiful, self-destructive woman: three lives linked by the tragic sinking of the Titanic April 11, 1912: The gala sailing out of Southampton of White Star Line's peerless luxury liner, the R.M.S. Titanic/. Among the dazzling, doomed names on the passenger list for this, the Titanic/'s maiden voyage, is Clair August Ryker, the lovely and dissolute wife of billionaire industrialist William Ryker, and her ten-year-old daughter, Eva. Also present is a young couple, obviously newlyweds, the Eddingtons, who are drawn to Clair and her child.
In a nightworld where decomposing corpse-assassins stalk their prey, Marty Strauss, the bodyguard to a famous industrialist, discovers that someone is coming to collect the soul of his employer as payment for an ancient debt.
When Navy SEAL Mack Bedford's fellow officers are brutally killed by Iraqi insurgents using a devastating, new anti-tank Diamondhead missile, Mack avenges their murders by gunning down the then unarmed attackers, ultimately getting himself court-martialed and kicked out of the Navy in the process. To make matters worse, Mack then learns that the Diamondhead missiles were sold illegally by French industrialist and infamous politician Henri Foche. Mack suspects that Foche will succeed in his campaign to become the next French President, and fears that his election will result in the spread of international terrorism.
