Captain Douglas is a BP employee seconded to the Royal Engineers, tasked with overseeing the flow of fuel for the British Eighth Army during the North African Campaign of the Second World War. His role sits at the heart of a risky operation that could sustain or derail the army’s advance. The mission is born out of pressure on the unit’s leadership: Col. Masters commands a special raiding force made up of convicted criminals, and after a string of failures his commander, Brigadier Blore, orders him to mount a dangerous last-chance assault to destroy an Afrika Korps fuel depot or face disbandment.
To fill a regular-ops gap on the team, Masters forces the inclusion of a competent officer and picks Douglas, despite his preference to stay out of such a punitive assignment. The group is further shaped by a select trio and a handful of local assets: the Tunisian demolition expert Sadok, the Greek smuggler Kostos Manov (armorer), Boudesh (communications), the Cypriot transport and supply connector Kafkarides, and Arab guides Hassan and Assin who keep the party moving through the desert wastes. The convoy also includes a German-aspiring disguise element and a nurse who becomes involved in the perilous trek.
They set out across the desert in armed jeeps, coated in the disguise of an Italian Army patrol. The expedition is a quilt of hazards: hostile tribesmen, blinding sandstorms, and a booby-trapped oasis that tests every man’s nerve and resourcefulness. Unknown to Masters, a separate, regular army raiding party under his command is pushed ahead two days later in wheeled trucks, but that contingent is wiped out in a German ambush, turning the mission into a grim test of deception and resilience.
The dynamics inside the escort are tense. Douglas earns little respect from Leech, the convict who is elevated to operational command, and distrust grows within the ranks as mutinous attitudes flare and ruthlessness becomes a tool for survival. The team captures a German ambulance and its German nurse, who is forced to tend to an Arab soldier wounded during a confrontation at a grave site. A moment of danger arises when three men attempt to assault the nurse, but she defends herself and holds her ground, underscoring the harsh morality that threads through the march.
When the group finally reaches the objective, the cruel truth dawns: the fuel depot is a ruse. Leech confesses that Masters has been paying him to return alive and to keep the mission’s participants intact, regardless of the outcome. Faced with this revelation, the men refuse to search for a genuine depot, and Leech shifts the plan toward escape. He leads the party to a German-occupied port city with the aim of stealing a boat, while Douglas believes that destroying the hidden depot could still serve their escape, if they can locate it.
Back at headquarters, Blore confronts Masters with aerial photographs showing the depot’s facade intact, a stark symbol of the mission’s failure. With contact lost to the field team, Masters makes a dangerous choice: he leaks details about the team and its mission to the Germans, hoping to preserve whatever fuel depot the Allies might still capture in the future.
Under cover of night, Leech’s group slips into the port wearing German uniforms and plant explosives, but they are compromised when a loudspeaker announces each man by name, exposing Masters’ betrayal. Leech and Douglas manage to slip away as the charges detonate, while the others are picked off one by one. The wounded man left behind in the ambulance uses his remaining strength to kill the bound German nurse beside him, a brutal reminder of the price paid in this treacherous venture.
As dawn breaks, the Eighth Army rolls toward the port. Douglas and Leech, still dressed in German clothes, attempt to surrender, but a trigger-happy British soldier shoots them before a white flag is noticed. The enemy soldier is chastised by a superior, and the British forces press on, leaving the desert and its shattered plans behind as the war continues.
