It is the year 2020. Ibrahim al-Zardani, an Afghan whose devotion to Allah is matched only by his capacity for deadly violence, has fiercely waged jihad against the West for three decades. Finally, he succeeds in his most ambitious plot yet, the acquisition of a nuclear warhead. In the United States, it is election year. The Republican Party, out of power since 2008, is desperate to regain the White House. Senator Richard Matthews is the clear favorite to be the Republican nominee. The six-term Washington insider, known for his moderate views, appears poised to achieve his life-long ambition of becoming President. However, top Party officials argue that, in order to draw the necessary votes from an increasingly conservative constituency, California Governor Blake Sampson, a born-again Christian, must be added to the ticket as Vice-Presidential nominee. Matthews, fearing Sampson's openly professed devotion to the most conservative of fundamentalist religious doctrines, adamantly opposes the idea. Is it possible that, by a series of coincidences (or perhaps fate, an opinion offered by Blake Sampson's long-time pastor), the lives of Al-Zardani and Sampson, so different and yet so alike, could cross with literally apocalyptic consequences?