At the dawn of civilization ...An exotic stranger appears in a Mesopotamian village and is venerated as a goddess ...until she unleashes a horror beyond anything humankind has ever known. At the sunset of civilization ...A mercenary unit in northern Iraq, led by Sergeant Jason Yaeger, has trapped radical Islam's most wanted target in a mysterious cave that sits at the heart of the Genesis story. When a Marine platoon seeks to control the extraction mission, a threat far more ominous is found lurking beneath the mountains. Meanwhile in Boston, Massachusetts, Agent Thomas Flaherty helps archaeologist Brooke Thompson escape assassination by a Las Vegas televangelist intent on using the cave's deepest secret to bring the Middle East to its knees.