1935: Cal Jardine is a soldier of fortune. Forced to leave Hamburg, he is recruited by a secretive British committee to smuggle guns to Abyssinia. But first Jardine must procure the weapons from Romania. Taken to the Horn of Africa, the arms are then transported over a harsh landscape into the hands of the Ethiopian Army. On his travels Jardine acquires more baggage than he anticipated, including a beautiful, but difficult American female in search of her archaeologist mother, a determined reporter and a daredevil French flyer, while missing out on a painful death by sheer good fortune. But the Ethiopians are ill-equipped to a face a modern Italian army using tanks, bombers, and poison gas. Trained for war, can Jardine simply walk away? (web)