At the time of publication, Reilly hinted at the possibility of a sequel starring the same protagonist, Professor William Race, but the release of such a book has never been officially confirmed.

The main focus of the former story is the journey of a monk named Alberto Santiago who becomes a traitor to his country after witnessing Spanish atrocities among the Incan civilisation.

Aiding an Incan Prince named Renco Capac to escape, Santiago begins a quest to protect a special Idol - 'The Spirit of the People', an idol carved from black stone with purple veins running through it, actually carved from a meteorite that fell on earth, from the invading Spaniards.

Four hundred years later, a group of German armed militia known as the Stormtroopers raid the monastery, executing all but one of the Jesuit monks living there, recovering the Santiago manuscript.

Meanwhile, another party raids DARPA (The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency) headquarters in order to capture a new superweapon known as the Supernova.

DARPA sends Colonel Frank Nash to Peru with the aid of NYU linguistics professor William Race to recover the idol before anyone else can retrieve it.

Their mission: to retrieve 'the Spirit of the People' (as the natives call it), carved out of Thyrium-261, a nuclear material from a binary star system that came to Earth via a meteorite.

Thyrium has the potential to provide virtually limitless clean energy, which can fuel the Supernova, a next-generation weapon of mass destruction with the power to decimate a third of the Earth's surface and bring about Doomsday.

Professor William Race is a young linguist, working for NYU is approached by a retired Col. Frank Nash, a physicist from the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, to translate a manuscript written in ancient Latin, to find an ancient Incan idol in the South American jungles.

En route to Peru, Nash provides Race with photocopied pages of a copy of the Santiago Manuscript, which describes the adventures of Alberto Santiago, a Spanish missionary in ancient Peru, whilst also holding the key to the final resting place of a legendary Incan idol, allegedly made of thyrium-261, an element that, when combined with the mass destruction weapon called Supernova, would destroy a third of the Earth's mass throwing it off from its orbit and effectively killing the planet.

Race, translating the copy of the manuscript that Frank Nash's team had acquired prior to the flight to Peru, discovers that Santiago and his expedition ended up in Vilcafor, an Incan town deep in the Amazon.

This led them to a finger of rock in the middle of a canyon, on which sat an ancient temple, which Lopez and Chambers deduced to be pre-Incan.

Nash's team, separated, had to take drastic option to avoid their own deaths, but were able to survive with only the loss of Walt Chambers to the caimans, crocodilians lurking in the river next to Vilcafor.

Race attempted to recover it, but almost fell off the top of the rock, using the grappling hook on his M-16 assault rifle to avoid being shot by the Stormtroopers.

Race, Van Lewen, Doogie, Schroeder, Renee and Molke, using an Incan royal escape route under Vilcafor's citadel, give chase to the neo-Nazi Stormtroopers, including Heinrich Anistaze, second in command to Odilo Ehrhardt.

Renee and Race are captured by Ehrhardt and Van Lewen and Doogie Kennedy manage to escape with the use of a Nazi seaplane.

However, they were saved by Uli Peck, a BKA undercover agent who had infiltrated the Nazis and allowed Renee's German team to acquire their manuscript.

Race managed to stop Ehrhardt and disarm the Nazi Supernova with only two seconds to spare before detonation, after the U.S. Government failed to come up with the ransom money.

He had deduced that the weapon's creator, Dr. Fritz Weber, a Nazi scientist who had been killed by Ehrhardt, had used his supposed execution date as the disarm code.

Race also discovers that the idol is a fake, as it didn't resonate when doused in water when the sprinkler system inside the room that the Nazi Supernova was housed had been triggered.

Race returns to Vilcafor to join the others, and proves that the idol is indeed in an Incan village past the rock, which is where the NRI scan had actually pointed, not at the temple like the team had first assumed.

Nash began executing the Navy civilians, Van Lewen, Renee and Race helpless as they were held at gunpoint by Troy Copeland.

Race places the fake idol near the entrance to fool any potential future temple raiders, and notices the bodies left by the Incan natives as sacrifice to the rapas among them including the Navy and Army teams, and sees the treasure of Solon so long sought by explorers over history, but is not tempted and leaves it behind.

Santiago's manuscript appears several times in the story, with Professor Race reading and translating it, providing his comrades with crucial information to reach the idol.

Much of Santiago's story details his journey with Renco and a criminal named Bassario from Cuzco to the citadel at Vilcafor as they attempt to defend a sacred Incan idol from pursuing conquistadors, led by the wicked Spanish leader Hernando.

The trio travel day in and night out and finally make it to Vilcafor with the idol, where they hope to hide it before Hernando can find them.

He brought along Chambers, Lopez and Race to aid him, and Copeland and Lauren to steal the idol from its rightful owner, the Incan people.

Later merged with the Oklahoma Freedom Fighters and a Japanese doomsday group in order to acquire a Supernova and use it to destroy the world.

Initially leaves Renco and Santiago to their deaths at the hands of the Spanish conquistadors, but returns in the nick of time to save their lives, proving he was still an honourable man.

Hernando Pizarro The brother of the Spanish conqueror's governor, Francisco, a brutal man who revelled in killing the Incans and stopped at nothing to possess the idol.