Our tale begins with the introduction of both the mysterious mercenary known as Lincoln Griffin, and his even more obscure contact, the old man he calls Gramps, discussing a job they're about to pull. Essentially, Lincoln needed a few good mercs, and despite his recent contract troubles, he thought that Mark Hazzard was the right man for the job, along with several of his pals.

As such, Lincoln sought out Hazzard, and eventually found him and Mal hanging out in an Australian bar known as Waltzin' Matilda's, though hanging out is a misnomer; basically, the duo got drunk and smashed up everybody else in the place. After the dust settled, Lincoln offered Mark and Mal the job of transporting much-needed arms to Afghanistani rebels, though there was a catch.

Basically, Mark and his pilot (who wound up being Ritter) would be the decoys, transporting mere farm implements in from the west, while Lincoln and Mal brought the real deals in from the east. They traveled by ship to Marseilles, and got on a plane shortly thereafter, one loaded up with the farm implements, and though it took Ritter a bit to figure out his cargo heap's controls, he managed to take off on time.

As they departed, Lincoln and Mal arrived in India with the real weapons, and despite a short scuffle with the Indian - Pakistani border patrol, everything was going just fine. Meanwhile, Ritter's flight path inadvertently got him and Mark stuck dead in the center of the Persian Gulf War, at which point their plane was forced to land by several Iranian aircraft, who seemed to be expecting them, somehow.

Meanwhile, in the deserted, rocky wastes of Afghanistan, Mal and Lincoln met up with their contacts in that battle-scarred nation, and delivered the goods to the Mujahedin rebels who were waiting for them. The exchange went off without a hitch, and with their money in tow, Mal and Lincoln made their way back to the States right away, doing so without incident of any significant nature.

Mark and Ritter weren't so lucky, however, in that they were being held by particularly irate Iranians, who had been told by some unknown party that Mark would be there with all kinds of armaments and such. However, Mark stuck to his story that he was only delivering farm implements, and that was absolutely true; there was nothing in Ritter's plane save for farming tools.

During their interrogation, Mark and Ritter tried to make a break for it; however, they were overpowered by sheer numbers, and beaten unconscious. While they were out, the Iranians tied the American mercenaries to execution poles, and prepared a firing squad. Waking them both up, the leader of these soldiers then asked one last time where their armaments were.

Not wanting to get Ritter killed, Mark told the truth, and this only served to enrage the man further - he then had Ritter executed in cold blood! Of course, they didn't kill Mark just yet, because they weren't quite done with him yet. No, the captain of the Iranian forces wanted to make Hazzard pay for the embarrassment he'd caused him, and planned on doing so for quite a while.

Back in America, Lincoln had learned what had happened to Mark and Ritter, and he met up with Mal and the Priestess to tell them what was what. Feeling responsible for this, as he had no clue who'd tipped the Iranians off to Mark's presence, Lincoln offered to lead a rescue team to pick him up before the Iranians disposed of him. Of course, Mal and the Priestess volunteered to help immediately...

At Lincoln Griffin's table, resting within a classy apartment in Brooklyn, a meeting of the minds was taking place, one in which several of Mark Hazzard's good friends were plotting his rescue from an Iranian prison. This prison, in Bandar Abbas, was holding Mark for about a week, in an effort to get some sort of satisfaction from him, before his ultimate execution for various war crimes.

Calling in all their marks and resources, Lincoln Griffin, Mal Rossi, the Sergeant Major, the Priestess, and even Louis 'Treetop' Barrington assembled a plan to spring poor Mark, as they all were quite fond of the gun-toting thug. Once that was done, Lincoln had his pal Gramps check up on Mark's capture; sure, Mark was his decoy, but his capture was almost... too neat - someone knew exactly where he was.

Meanwhile, over in Iran, Mark was busy taunting his captors, mostly by staring down his door guards and making them all uneasy. Of course, his habit of breaking the neck of every rat that intruded on his cell space didn't help any, and by the time he was done, his captors were totally creeped out. However, their captain cared not for this, and had them collect Hazzard for another interrogation.

Having decided to make a grab at the captain in order to avenge Ritter, Mark grappled with the guard who had the keys to his chains, and seized the man before the others could react. His captivity had dulled his reflexes just a little, however, allowing him to be butted into unconsciousness by the other guards' guns a moment before he secured his vengeance. He'd managed to embarrass the captain yet again, however.

Back in New York, Lincoln and Mal met up with Gar Bremby, a friend of Mark's and Lincoln's who had lost an arm in the 'Nam, but made up for his inability to function in 'the world' by becoming something of a gun runner. Owing Mark for several saves during the war, Gar offered all kinds of equipment and assistance towards the rescue op, and even went along for the ride, working with the Sergeant Major's team.

Collecting him and his weapons, Mal and Lincoln then went to an old naval air station in the city, and waited for their plane to land (if illegally). While they waited, the Priestess introduced the mercenaries to her aid - one of her best students, and a fellow instructor who goes by the name of Kim Sum. When the plane landed, having been flown in by Treetop, everybody loaded up and took off for Iran!

Upon their arrival, Lincoln's bunch, consisting of Mal Rossi, the Priestess, and her fellow martial artists then seized an Iranian border patrol boat, and while the Sergeant Major and his Wild Geese contacts created a diversion on nearby Karg Island, one involving a lot of explosions and the veritable destruction of an oil refinery, Lincoln and his bunch smashed their way into the prison holding Hazzard.

Once they got to his cell, however, the mercenaries and martial artists found out that Mark had already secured his freedom; the captain of the prison's guards ordered him killed should anything happen there, and when his guard came into his cell to do the dirty deed, Mark had strangled him with the chains that were holding him to the cold stone walls. And he looked real happy about it...

As his friends unlocked the chains that held him to that stone wall in an Iranian political prison (Mark couldn't find the keys on the guard he'd just strangled), Hazzard told them that they weren't leaving just yet - he wasn't about to let the captain of the prison guards get away with killing poor Ritter in cold blood. Though they did so reluctantly, Mal, Lincoln, and the Priestess went along with his mad mission.

While they went to do so, Kim Sum and the Priestess' martial arts student mopped up, taking out all the other guards roaming about the prison, and freeing and arming up all the inmates, in order to a) liberate the political prisoners at long last, b) gain more firepower in the event that reinforcements should arrive, and c) to create a diversion and distraction, should people start shooting at the rescue team.

Eventually finding the man he was looking for, Mark disarmed him, though the captain gloated that, with his American morals, Mark couldn't kill an unarmed man. The look on his face as Hazzard gunned him down was almost comical in its surprise, as the man didn't think any American had it in them to do what he did. You could tell the man hadn't actually met any Americans...

Anyway, once that was dealt with, the rescue team, with Mark in tow, extracted themselves from the prison, while Mal picked up some transportation - namely, the patrol boat they'd commandeered earlier. Once on the sea, however, a military helicopter closed on their position, and would've taken them out if not for some pals of Lincoln's, who flew by in their British air force aircraft and liquidated the opposition.

That next day, everybody loaded up their gear and prepared to make for home - all save for Lincoln and the Sergeant Major, who'd decided to stay on and help the Mujahedin rebels win their home back from the Soviet Union. The decision was part contract and part personal validation, but either way, before Lincoln and Mark parted ways, Lincoln gave him some juicy information that Gramps had collected for him.

Opening the envelope when he got back to New York, Mark was enraged - he'd found out who had told the Iranians where he and Ritter were going to be! That night, he broke into the palatial home of one Henri Graymalkin, after dealing with his security like it wasn't even there, and confronted the Frenchman. After Mark eliminated the guards Henri sicced on him, and shot Henri's hand, Graymalkin talked.

He admitted to being behind the baseball game incident, as well as the whole Iranian mess, but claimed that he didn't do so on his own - which was true. You see, as his pal Gordon whined on and on about his feelings of inadequacy regarding Hazzard, Henri managed to extract choice bits of tactical information from the lawyer, gained via his son-in-law, who Mark told all about his missions.

Leaving Henri in peace, Mark turned his back on the man, who then shot him in retaliation for blasting his hand. Though he would've let the man live otherwise, Mark now had to put Henri down, shooting him clean through the heart. Though he was wounded, Mark wasn't done this night, and he made his way home, as it were, in order to confront Gordon about his role in Ritter's death and his recent troubles.

Waking the man up with a start, Mark made his accusations, to the protestations of his ex-wife. However, Gordon admitted to everything, explaining that he wouldn't feel right with the world until Hazzard wasn't a part of it, and then proceeded to shoot Mark in the chest several times. Though he was fading fast, Mark wasn't about to go alone, and he grabbed Gordon and broke his neck before he collapsed himself...