As radical groups vie for control of the shattered Gulf, the region, barely underpinned by a shaky East-West alliance, descends once again into a maelstrom of terrorism and counterterrorism. A group of U.S. diplomats is hijacked; then, an English journalist is snatched from the streets of Cairo. Two Westerners, an American colonel under covert orders from the National Security Council, and a British foreign correspondent, converge in their struggle to trace the violence to its source. What they discover is a force known as the Angels of Judgment, a group whose power, and agenda, is different in quality and degree from anything the region has ever known.