1935: Cal Jardine is a soldier of fortune. Forced to flee Hamburg after helping Jews escape Nazi Germany, he is recruited by a secretive British committee to smuggle guns from Rumania into Abyssinia. Taken to the Horn of Africa, the guns are transported over the harsh landscape, a slave traders’ route full of danger, into the hands of the Ethiopian army. On his travels, Jardine acquires more baggage than he cares for, including a beautiful, but difficult, American woman in search of her archaeologist mother, a determined British reporter and a daredevil French flyer.

But the Ethiopians are ill-equipped to face a modern army using tanks, bombers, and poison gas. Trained for war, can Jardine just walk away? Or will he be drawn into a bloody conflict against massive odds, and still save those who now depend on him?