James Clayton Welch

Michael Kintner is on the run. As the sole survivor of the bombing of the Sistine Chapel where the pope and hundreds of others were killed during a disastrous war between Islam and Christianity, Kintner is already plagued with radiation sickness. Now he is being sought for the destruction of the Grand Mosque in Mecca and the murder of tens of thousands of civilians. While Kintner stealthily moves across the desert, he knows that if he does not continue to outsmart his enemies, he will surely die.

The intelligence organizations of France and the United States, along with the conservative Muslim group, the Wahabi, all want, for their own reasons, to apprehend and execute Kintner. But he is not the archetypical war criminalKintner is a Jesuit priest and the head of a new Catholic military order. As he desperately attempts to start a new life with the help of his new friend, eighteen-year-old Maggie Morales, Kintner is not afraid of being caught by his pursuersbut instead by something else more terrible by far.

In this political thriller, a heroic priest must fight for his beliefsand his lifeamid the aftermath of a bloody struggle between a newly-formed Catholic order and the terrorists of the world.