After being fired for drinking on duty, former California detective Kenny Marquette takes a job as a uniformed security guard at Grafton-Keating, a local defense plant. His life is suddenly turned upside-down when he finds a broken lock while making his rounds. Shot and nearly killed after going inside to investigate, he later learns that the man who broke into the plant's "think-tank" was after the blueprints for a laser device designed for the U.S. military and capable of tracking movement in the mountains of Afghanistan as well as deeply underground. In the hospital, after vowing to find the man who shot him, he meets Albert Livingston, a private investigator who was hired to find the kidnapped daughter of high-powered California attorney Malcolm Smoake. The pair take on the Mexican mafia and the Al Qaeda when Livingston convinces Kenny they are after the same man.