American pilot Mike Malloy has learned his lesson: when you join the French Foreign Legion, it’s best not to wipe the floor with two French officers … no matter how richly they deserve it. And it appears he has all the time in the world to think about it. He’s been sentenced to five years in a Moroccan penal battalion—which is French for death sentence.

But Malloy is about to get a reprieve … if he’s willing to fly into the heart of the Sahara and into the teeth of a Berber rebellion.

It’s an offer Malloy can’t refuse. All he has to do is fly two passengers into the desert and return with a book that disappeared 800 years ago. But as he’s a man who doesn’t go by the book, this expedition could turn out to have unexpected benefits. One of his passengers is a young American woman whose eyes are as beautiful and blue as the wild blue yonder.