John Hardin is the WITSEC identity of a pilot who runs a shoestring aerial photography business flying his Cessna out of Asheville, North Carolina. He's restoring a log home on a ridge overlooking the Great Smokies village of Maggie Valley, and does house repairs to augment his income. He shares his place with an octogenarian couple, Hattie and Hank Gaskill, escapees from a depressing rest home, and he has an independent Cherokee girlfriend, Kitty Birdsong, who rides her own motorcycle. A burly biker friend of theirs, Brandon Doyle, runs afoul of a drug lord who controls a large network selling synthetic analogs of cocaine, heroin, and ecstasy. John and Kitty try to help Doyle, and all three suddenly find themselves in a mortal struggle against the drug kingpin and his legendary hit man named after those executioners of centuries past, the professional traveling beheaders and hangmen known as the deathsmen.