Sheriff Lester P. Morrison is nearing retirement. He loves the peace and quiet of his small hometown where an exciting night might be a teenage speeder, a petty theft at a convenience store, or maybe a drunken family squabble. Never in his wildest imagination did the Sheriff think he would become involved in an al-Qaeda plot to kill the President of the United States, not in Cimarron County, the least populated county in Oklahoma. But that's exactly what happens when a terrorist with a trunk full of explosives crashes his car on any icy road just outside of Boise City. Lester has a bad feeling about the mysterious, dark-skinned stranger with the full black beard, but Deputy Billy Ray Ledbetter shrugs it off as nothing more than a foolish hunch from a suspicious old man...until they find the unconscious owner of the tow truck lying in a pool of blood.