Tyler Pierce, a newly admitted attorney, visits his father's Maui ranch for the first time and falls in love with Hawaii. He decides to start his solo practice right there in paradise. But he is determined to champion the underdog rather than be a flashy international lawyer like his father had been. However having lost his law license, his father wants Tyler to work with him, enabling him to return to his former business by using Tyler as the attorney of record for his deals. Tyler resists. He has been estranged from his alcoholic, domineering, disgraced and disbarred father since he ran over his best friend. Tyler doubts working with him is advisable or even feasible.
Then Lei, a Chinese woman from Amsterdam, walks into Tyler's modest office above a surf shop needing counsel for her brother who has been arrested for using a false passport. This seeming minor matter balloons into a major one when Tyler learns the feds suspect Lei's brother is a notorious arms dealer they have wanted to catch for years because Lei's brother was carrying business documents that concerned the wanted arms dealer. Lei insists Tyler go to Amsterdam with her for a few days to gather documents proving her brother is not the arms dealer- all expenses paid and with a very big fee. Tyler needs the money to get his practice off the ground and prove to his father he can make it on his own.
Lei's family has known the arms dealer's family for decades. In WW II the families' patriarchs had smuggled arms for the Dutch Resistance. After the war Lei's family built a dry cleaning empire while his once-partner dealt in surplus arms. When 9-11 made arms dealing too dangerous, the arms dealer's family asked to resume their partnership with Lei's family. When they turned the arms dealer's family down, the infuriated criminals vowed to bankrupt them.
Desperate for dirt to use for leverage to fend off the arms dealers' attack, Lei's brother had gotten some of their business documents in Hong Kong and flown to Hawaii to follow up some leads. He used the false passport because he was wanted by Interpol for charges from a bar fight. So Tyler flies off with Lei to Amsterdam still treating the case as a mistaken identity case. He doesn't like that the trip is the jet set kind of thing his father did, but it was still a lot of money for a few days' work. Tyler expects his father to be impressed with him getting such a big fee. But his father goes ballistic and orders him to get on the next plane home. Tyler hangs up on him. It's Tyler's decision to make, and Tyler's life to live.
Just as they are landing at Schiphol, Amsterdam's airport, Lei asks Tyler to help her track down the principal arms dealer. Tyler turns her down flat. He feels she has manipulated him, pulling off a bait-and switch. He had agreed to prove Lei's brother's identity, not find any arms dealers. But the feds could easily suspect her brother is complicit even if he isn't the arms dealer himself. So Lei convinces Tyler the only way to free her brother is to feed the feds the wanted arms dealer's exact, real time location. Through their Chinese expat community connections Lei's family finds the arms dealer is presently in the hash-farming region of Morocco- a no-man's land that even the police give a wide berth. And Tyler agrees to go with Lei to find the arms dealer, get photos of him and provide the feds his exact present location. Nothing more.
Betrayed by Lei's evil uncle, they are hunted by the arm dealer's henchmen from the minute they land in Morocco. They are armed with only luck, guile and a WW II pistol. The ensuing chase from Tangier's old city through the Rif Mountains down to the Mediterranean coast ensnares them in a swap with Islamic terrorists of two tons of hash for a dozen Chinese shoulder-fired missiles. Captured and escaping several times, Tyler faces heartrending decisions and surprising twists revealing the cryptic meaning of the I Ching's hexagram 61, In
