As Congress leaves for its annual summer recess, the nation is rocked by a series of high-level assassinations so devastating that the magnitude is hidden from public view. With the Federal Government in disarray, counter-terrorism agent Blake Carver begins piecing together an ominous set of clues that predate the assassinations: a murdered soldier, encrypted cell phone transmissions, a dozen stolen Stinger missiles and satellite photos of a revolutionary new desalination plant in Iran. If only Carver's job was as simple as hunting down a group of foreign extremists. But this war isn't about religion, foreign policy or oil. It's up to Carver to stop a group of powerful insiders battling over control of the planet's most precious resource: water.