1982 is a bad year. Four down and out friends are fighting for a living.
Kyle, an artist, has just finished a painting that grabs the interest of a Guatemalan buyer who reads more into it than Kyle is willing to believe.
His friend Robert buys a secondhand flight jacket with an odd message in one pocket. Nobody thinks twice about it until, one evening, they meet an interesting stranger and commit themselves to something foolish.
But they're too broke and desperate to turn back now. Lured by the promise of easy money in contraband, they end up sailing for Central America in a strange and dangerous year.
Have they been set up as stooges for something they don't understand? Soon they must run from mercenaries, fighting assassins for their lives in the lawless political vacuum of Central America.
Gradually the truth emerges. The stakes of this bloody game are a fabulous hidden treasure foretold by a 1300-year old Mayan prophecy. It will either make them rich or get them killed...