Stephen Haggerty used to work for the British SAS. He was trained to go into the houses of important men in the Middle East and kill the guards and then the occupants. One day the British government threw Haggerty on the scrap heap and he was reduced to driving trucks for $7 an hour. Three years ago Stephen Haggerty was introduced to an American from Philadelphia and now he has a completely different kind of job for a very secretive organization based in Pennsylvania.

In a small town in Alaska is an ordinary man descended from Russians based in Alaska when it was part of the Russian Empire. Alex Ulyanov grew up in poverty but now he is a rich man and the reason for that is that Ulyanov stole $20 million from a hedge fund called Lithgow-Franzen based out of New York City. The hedge fund knows it will never see that money again and it has taken several years to find the man who stole it. One month ago, James P. McNulty, the CEO of Lithgow-Franzen contracted with a shadowy group out of Philadelphia. If the group is successful then the hacker who stole the money from Lithgow-Franzen will be taken off the board.

James P. McNulty sits in his office in New York. He would like to post the cost of the hit to the "vermin removal" account but he knows that the cost will be far and above the normal expenses posted to that account. As James P. McNulty wonders where to post the cost of the hit, Stephen Haggerty's KLM flight is touching down in Anchorage, Alaska. In three days time Haggerty will drive 147 miles to a town called Soldotna on the Kenai Peninsula. When he arrives there Haggerty plans to snuff out a life but there are things Haggerty doesn't know that will severely complicate his mission.