Africa is fighting its old enemies - naked greed, systemic corruption, and poorly disguised ambition. In Central Africa especially, innocence or guilt of these things can be - and is - decided by the flip of any powerful country's coin. Robert McCann, a disgraced U.S. Marine officer, is not a mercenary soldier through choice. Certainly not in the first instance. He fights for money because global financial interests - when it suits them - require him to do just that. He is hired by the Chinese to overthrow Congo President Aaron Motanga's regime, thereby throwing that country's massive mineral rights up for grabs. And, of course, the Chinese, controlling the agenda, will hope to dictate the outcome to their own advantage. McCann has been hired because not only is he a highly successful mercenary leader, he is also one of few who actually know the precise location, let alone the very existence, of Kanyamifupa, The Place of Bones. Kanjamifupa, originally used as a staging post for the slave trade, its access through the treacherous swamps marked only by an anomaly of vegetation, and deep in the swamplands of the Congo rain forest, is about to justify its name yet again.