It was supposed to be a simple job, security for a business meeting, but in Afghanistan nothing is ever straightforward. John Lawrence never knew exactly what started the shooting, and in the end it didn't matter. Good people got dead along with the bad, and John had to get out of the country fast. Killing the client is bad for your health as well as being bad for business. Now he is trying to build a new life in Sydney and trying to do the right thing for his ageing mother. Betty Lawrence was a photojournalist. She survived Vietnam and Lebanon, but now she is bitter and resentful that old age and a broken leg have brought her back to Australia. Other, more deadly, baggage follows her. A long forgotten suitcase, loaded with money and automatic weapons, arrives from France. A suitcase that got John's father killed. John and Betty are caught in deadly crossfire between rival gangs when a gun smuggler finds out about the weapons. John has to fight to keep them both alive while he tries to find out the truth about his mother's past and his father's death.