David Locke (Jack Nicholson) is a television journalist making a documentary film about post-colonial Africa. In order to finish the film, he is in the Sahara in northern Chad seeking to meet with and interview rebel fighters who are involved in the Chadian Civil War. Struggling to find rebels to interview, he is further frustrated when his Land Rover gets stuck on a sand dune. After a long walk through the desert back to his hotel, a thoroughly dispirited Locke discovers that an Englishman (Robertson), who has also been staying in the same hotel, and with whom he had struck up a friendship, has died overnight at the hotel from a heart condition.