When a counterterror agent investigates his commander's assassination, Kirk Magnus discovers the hit men were elite Russian commandos who penetrated his unit's deep cover and struck with surgical precision. Magnus digs deep and identifies the mastermind, a psychotic sheikh who schemes to amass power by directing terror attacks against the United States and profiting from them. After Sheikh al-Masri's strike on the Port of Houston, Magnus battles to interdict the sheikh's assault on a nuclear power plant, but he is impeded by split command with his estranged lover, the hot-blooded leader of the Hostage Rescue Team. Magnus brings extreme measures into play and leads his hunter-killer unit into the Rub' al Khali desert to confront an enemy who has the power to destroy the United States.