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?
Jack Ludlow is the pen-name of writer David Donachie, who was born
in Edinburgh in 1944. He has always had an abiding interest in
history: the Roman Republic, Medieval warfare as well as the naval
history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which he has drawn
on for the many historical adventure novels he has set in these
periods. David lives in Deal with his partner, the novelist Sarah Grazebrook.
