Russian mobster Terek Murad has declared open season on the Russian militia and the FBI over the shooting of his brother in a Moscow nightclub. He hires the Jackal, a nasty assassin whom nobody has even seen, to kill the Director of the FBI. With nowhere else to turn (except a woman who used to work with the Basque separatists, who is now in the USA but whose exact whereabouts in unknown to all save Mulqueen), FBI Deputy Director Carter Preston (who was present at the Moscow shooting) and Major Valentina Koslova of the Russian milita (who pulled the trigger in that shooting) enlist the reluctant services of Declan Mulqueen, an imprisoned IRA sniper, to track the Jackal down, for Declan is the only other person who can positively identify the Jackal.