Recruited to help the FBI and the Immigration and Naturalization Service perform the nearly impossible, Lincoln and Amelia manage to track down a cargo ship headed for New York City and carrying two dozen illegal Chinese immigrants, as well as the notorious human smuggler and killer known as "the Ghost." But when the Ghost's capture goes disastrously wrong, Lincoln and Amelia find themselves in a race against time: to stop the Ghost before he can track down and murder the two surviving families who have escaped from the ship and vanished deep into the labyrinthine world of New York City's Chinatown.