The life and times of Cuatro Ames, a West Texas rancher and oilman who becomes entwined in a corrupt web of Mexican drug and oil well deals. Faced with prison, he flees to Patagonia, Argentina to find his long lost great uncle who is immersed in a ring of dirty politics among cattlemen, union delegates and a military government. Cuatro falls deeply in love with a radiant young Argentine artist, the daughter of a neighboring landowner. Her abrupt departure for Buenos Aires lures him to the cosmopolitan vortex as Argentina's Dirty War rages. Caught in the cross-current of leftists politics and fascist persecution, Cuatro finds himself alone and bleeding in a bewildering quagmire of paranoia, subversion, and murder. His vicious struggle to regain his sanity, strength, and love is his own personal Armageddon.