Led by Joe Collier, their former Sergeant in Korea, Joe Woolard and other veterans turn to crime. Bill Crowley and Pepper Anderson investigate when the vets steal M-16 rifles, an anti-tank gun and ammunition from a National Guard armoury, killing a guard in the process. 

Pepper searches for a connection between the deaths of a mechanic, a bookkeeper and a college professor, who were all killed by the same gun, in the same gangland style. She goes undercover to find a leak in a government office.