A British financier hires the seasoned mercenary Colonel Faulkner (Richard Burton) to assemble a team and rescue the country’s legitimate president from the clutches of an African dictator. Faulkner enlists his old, trusted comrades Janders (Richard Harris), Finn (Roger Moore), and Koetzi (Hardy Krüger). The operation is a success, but at the very last moment they are betrayed: the client has played a double-cross, and now fifty mercenaries are stranded in the middle of hostile Africa, left to fend for themselves.