Seventy years ago, Chester Bowie, a genius driven to madness, unlocked the mystery of how a weapon of unimaginable lethality allowed one man and his small army to conquer so much of the ancient world. The secret, however, died with Bowie in a fiery disaster that was no accident. Yet a series of cryptic clues were left behind, clues that geologist, and sometime government operative, Philip Mercer must follow if he is to prevent terrorists from unleashing the weapon on today's world.On the front lines of an African civil war, a chance meeting between Mercer and Cali Stowe, a researcher for the Centers for Disease Control, propels the two of them into the epicenter of the greatest act of terrorism ever conceived. With a group of savage rebels backed by a one-eyed mercenary bearing down on an isolated village, Mercer and Cali discover a long-abandoned mine that had first been excavated millennia ago and that was worked again around the time of the Second World War. What mineral was wrenched from the earth and by whom? What is the significance behind the stone pillar erected in the middle of the village? And who is the enigmatic man with the scholar's mind and the killer's skills who rescues them at the last minute only to kidnap Cali upon her return home? Read Less