The plot revolves around CIA Agent Benjamin Keynes recalling the time when he led a Special Forces team through the mountains of Afghanistan in search of an Afghan cleric, only to encounter strange paranormal incidents.

In Ghazni Province, Afghanistan, a U.S. Army Special Forces team consisting of team leader Chief Warrant Officer Wally Hamer, Master-Sergeant Kenny Tanner, and Sergeants Vince Degetau, Joe Trinoski, Tim Cole, and Pete Sadler meets CIA Agent Benjamin Keynes, who indicates that their mission is to find a very important Afghan cleric by the name of Mohammed Aban.

After being inserted, the team finds a local guide, Abdul, in a village in Southern Afghanistan, where Aban is from.

As they continue on foot with their mission in the rocky and barren landscape, fatigue, frustration and confusion take their toll on the members of the team and they come across a cave.

Sergeant Sadler notices that under the man's robes, he appears to be wearing a nineteenth-century British army uniform.

The next morning, Abdul warns Keynes that they are dealing with something that is beyond human conception; he then commits suicide by stepping off a cliff.

The whole time, Keynes has been recording with his special thermal camera and sending the images to Langley via an advanced laser aimed at CIA satellites.

Keynes theorizes that this object originates from an ancient Indian mythology called 'Vimanas', a sort of UFO-related phenomenon that occurred when Alexander the Great rode through this area of land as he was conquering, and the bright lights and the ghostly gunmen are associated with it.

Running out of ammunition, water and food, the team wanders further into the desert where they finally encounter the vimanas at what appears to be the location that the British regiment was destroyed.

As it touches his forehead, he sees visions and hallucinations of various objects and landscapes from his previous encounters, causing him to go into a trance.

He is shown floating several inches above a bed with a talisman he took from Aban's home in his hand, inside a hospital room, where doctors and a military colonel are watching him through a glass window.