In the Last Pelican Lou Malloy having learned that a body found in Key West, Florida with his father's identification papers on the body, is told his father is dead and as a result, he and Hilary Kelly and their new pet, Savage, a two hundred pound Russian Wolf Hound, travel to the area to confirm the information as being true. In the process of conducting their investigation into the matter, they have to face a vindictive C.I.A. agent, named Alexander Nomad, as they try to locate Lou's father in Key West. While traveling to Key West, Lou and Hilary must deal with killers trying prevent them from making contact with his dad who Lou learns has joined forces with a lovely C.I.A. agent assigned to protect a vicious drug dealer named Bobby DeLorenzo, and his wife from a Mexican drug lord seeking to get the return of money he paid DeLorenzo for the delivery of drugs and weapons from an Afghan supplier. As part of a C.I.A. sting operation that went south several months before that sought to capture DeLorenzo as well as the money, drugs and weapons, DeLorenzo escapes and in the process takes the $2 billion payoff from the Mexican drug lord along with a container of drugs and weapons. Lou, being part of Homeland Security, is ordered, in addition to finding his father; find the drugs, weapons and money as well as three suitcase bombs before they can get dropped into the hands of a terrorist group. While driving to the Keys, Lou stops in to visit a friend named Johnnie Everglades with whom he served time with who was now running a bar in a place known as Indiantown. In visiting Johnnie, Lou seeks some information on a gangbanger named Luther Williams and where he can find him. Johnnie tells Lou that Williams works out of a bar in Key West called the Bottoms Up. Traveling to Key West, Lou finds his dad and Francesca or rather they find him and with them are DeLorenzo and his wife. Lou tells his dad to quit messing with these two people and to go home. Throwing DeLorenzo and his wife out of his trailer, Lou's dad gets mad and takes off to go home, but instead Jack Malloy and his lovely friend, Francesca, follow DeLorenzo drawing Lou and Hilary into the chase. Eventually Lou has to get Blue and Crusher to come and help him and enlists Johnnie Everglades to allow him to use his large airboat to take a team composed of Hilary, Blue, Crusher, Bunny and Savage deep into the Everglades in Florida to try and catch DeLorenzo. But DeLorenzo, Lou would later learn, fools everyone and flies the goods to an Island in the Bahamas known as Bloody Bill Cay. In the meantime, Lou learns that Jack Malloy has stowed away on a transport plane flown out of Florida by DeLorenzo. Seeing that nothing could be accomplished by staying in the area, Lou and Hilary head back to their base at Turtle Point to prepare to go to the Bahamas to find Lou's dad. While getting ready to head to the islands, Hilary learns that her brother is in trouble. Bobby Kelly, who is a compulsive gambler, owes a casino over three hundred thousand dollars and Hilary has decided to go to the casino and bail her brother out. While there, Lou travels with her and learns that DeLorenzo, through a straw corporation, actually owns the casino and had set up the scam to kidnap Hilary to use as leverage with the C.I.A. Lou smells a rat and begins the chase to run DeLorenzo to ground. To do that he has to go to the Bahamas on board the Take Away, but before leaving he learns that Homeland Security has canceled his license to kill and dismissed him and the rest of his team for interfering in C.I.A. agent, Alex Nomad's operation. No longer having the license to kill protection of the Federal Government, Lou decides to take what he can get. Hilary, having learned that her brother has been killed shoots down DeLorenzo's plane and Lou and Hilary are wanted for murder and a warrant is issued for their arrest. To escape extradition, Lou and Hilary go to St. Kitts to regroup.