North Africa. A Jihadist leader has seized a supply of sarin gas left over from the Gaddafi regime and is wreaking havoc on an escalating scale of havoc: a nightclub in Sicily, a Sufi mosque in Algeria. Acting on information, Marine Gunnery Sergeant A.E. Blount, at six-foot-seven a formidable soldier, the grandson of one of the first black Marines, sets out with his strike force to kill or capture the terrorist leader but it is a trap. Many of them are killed, the rest are captured, and the leader promises that unless the forces withdraw, he will execute one prisoner a day. His friends and colleagues Sophia Gold, now with the U.N., and Lieutenant Colonel Michael Parson, working with the United States Africa Command, rush to Libya to help coordinate rescue efforts. But the ordeal has only begun. Soon, they will all be fighting for their lives in the sand and fire of the desert.