A blacklisted Delta Force operator turned private military contractor takes what's supposed to be a simple cash job extracting a journalist from wartime Kyiv - only to discover mid-firefight that he himself is "Paladin Seven," one of nine legendary solo killers secretly run under a joint CIA-FSB-MSS protocol that has been quietly deleting generals, oligarchs, and politicians who threaten to start World War III. Now every major agency on Earth has activated their most lethal units to erase the Paladins before the program is exposed and the fragile "managed peace" collapses into open war.