In the badlands of New Mexico, where the heat of a summer day can kill, archaeologist Nicolette Scott is working with her father on what she regards as just another routine dig. Her father, a grand old man of Southwestern archaeology, is excavating a thousand-year-old Anasazi Indian site. Nick and the professor are seeking proof that cannibalism was a way of life among the Anasazi. But then Nick learns of a discovery an old prospector has made in sands not far from their site, and she embarks on a dig of her own. Buried in the desert is a World War II bomber, its mummified crew still on board. Stranger yet, the plane is riddled with bullet holes, as if it had been shot down during combat. When Nick starts asking questions, all hell breaks loose. The more she investigates, the more the mystery of what the plane was doing there and why it crashed deepens, and the fifty-year-old deaths turn out to be the precursors of a peril that is very much alive. Nick has reawakened a monstrous conspiracy half a century old. Violence, betrayal, and murder will dog Nick's every step, until her only hope for survival is her own archaeological expertise.