Still reeling from a particularly difficult operation, and having plummeted back into the drug and alcohol addiction that got him kicked out of the military as a result, Joe Brody has just managed to detox at the clinic of a Chinese herbalist when the mob bosses phone: they need Joe to help them swindle a group of opioid dealers (of all things). But these are no typical drug-ferrying gangsters. Little Maria, the head of the Dominican mob, has discovered that her new heroin suppliers belong to an al-Qaeda splinter group, and that they're planning to use their drug funds to back their terrorist agenda. With Joe in command, the mob coalition must pull off an intricate heist that will begin in Manhattan's diamond district.

Joe Brody is a strip club bouncer who has a highly classified military history and whose best friend from Catholic school is head mafioso Gio Caprisi. FBI agent Donna Zamora is a single mother stuck at a desk manning the hotline. Their storylines intersect over a tip from a cokehead that leads to a crackdown on Gio’s strip joint in Queens and Joe’s arrest. Outside the jailhouse, the Fed and the bouncer lock eyes, as Gordon launches them both headlong into a nonstop plot that goes from back-road gun show intervention to high-stakes perfume heist and manages to touch everyone from the CIA to the Flushing Triads. Beneath it all lurks a sinister criminal mastermind whose manipulations could cause chaos on a massively violent scale.