Tulsa Torrent, America's biggest lumber company, is stumped when a couple of its key scientists are axed. Seems the deceased were part of a team developing an oil-producing tree, and a lot of interested parties have been looking to grease their palms.

Before anyone else is pulped, Remo and Chiun are planted to see the project out of the woods. But danger sprouts at every turn, and when the environmentalist High Sierra Society enters the picture, determined to make Tulsa Torrent take a hike, the project rests on pines and needles.

Somebody's barking up the wrong tree, and Remo and Chiun must get to the root of the matter before the unknown hatchet man mulches America's energy future into one big compost heap...