From the beginning homicide detective Billy Wolfe knew that Mark Skidmore, head of Sterling-Skidmore Oil, had been killed by professionals. He learns that Skidmore(QS(Bs business partner is California Senator Paul Sterling and, that on the same day of the murder, their foreman Frank Shannon had died of a heart attack in Trinidad. Convinced Shannon(QS(Bs heart attack and the Skidmore homicide are related, Wolfe sets out to prove it. He meets Beth, Shannon(QS(Bs wife, at the Airport when she brings her husband(QS(Bs body home for burial and finds out she is being followed. Some very bad men think she has their diamonds. The diamonds were mined by children in West Africa for would-be dictators, who need guns for their child armies and drugs to give their kid soldiers courage. Sterling-Skidmore, run by the Russian Mafia, has been supplying the weapons, trading them for the diamonds. The Russian Mafia thinks Beth knows where the diamonds are and she does, only she doesn(QS(Bt know it. But she better find out before she is next on their hit list.