John Tait finds his wife and son missing when he returns from a business trip to his home in a peaceful Northumberland village. Anxiety turns to fear and dread when he receives a late-night phone call, one that re-awakens memories of terrible events ten years earlier in Slovakia and Ukraine. On a stormy November night, he sets out across the hills to find and save his family. Meanwhile, in Washington DC, new intelligence brings George Riley out of retirement. It sends him to Northumberland; to confirm and avenge the death of a colleague murdered ten years earlier in Central Europe. Lying in wait is Yugov, a Russian-speaking Ukrainian arms dealer, who knows that John Tait's wife holds the key to something he wants very badly. A deadly pursuit ensues across the hills of Northumberland, and across a very different landscape in Ukraine. One man seeks to save his family, another to avenge a colleague, and a third to obtain control of weapons that no man should ever hold.