Red Adair-type former Navy Frogman Vic Scott is on vacation in Venezuela when a huge oil fire at a well of his rich friend erupts. While romancing a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, a colleague locates him and persuades him to help put out the blaze, just as theirs is starting up.

More romance than adventure for the first two-thirds of the book, Maracaibo ultimately settles down to dramatic scenes of underwater work to extinguish the fire before a huge storm arrives.

Even so, the action is interrupted from time to time to explore the romantic angle, including scenes between the prostitute and the firefighter, who were lovers only a few years prior - though she is now engaged to the rich oil baron.

Will her past be revealed? Will the New York author get her man? Will Vic Scott put out the fire near Maracaibo before it reaches the city, then finally settle down?