Master Gunnery Sergeant Travis Tolbane, USMC (Ret.) served in Vietnam twice. He was an interrogator, and his interpreter, Nguyen Ba had been on several operations.

After one miserable operation during cold and driving monsoon rains Tolbane caught a thief, a Marine Private, attempting to steal merchandise from a mini PX situated in a con-ex box at a military enclave on the combat Base at Chu Lai, Republic of Viet Nam. The thief cursed Tolbane, swearing revenge on him for pushing his face into mud. Tolbane had not the least idea that this thief would be his bane during his after-military life, even costing him his first true love.

Tolbane had settled in a small Tennessee town called Mount Juliet, Tennessee. He found a house there and a job as a mall security manager in Nashville. The thief finding out that his sworn enemy, Travis Tolbane was the mall security manager at a mall, he engineered, along with his secretary and lover, Soapy, havoc that affected Tolbane, his friend, Detective Parnell, who had served with Tolbane in Vietnam, to kidnaping and murder and causing the life of Tolbane's love.