When the granddaughter of an elderly outlaw asks Philip Habib to find the source of her grandfather's money, he encounters the legend of the Lost Adams Diggings. His request for help from Sarah Johnson, a ranger intern, at the Malpais National Monument in the lava beds of New Mexico leads to more than information. Their growing intimacy is observed by Derek Gruber, a skin head biker, whose paranoia grows when Philip begins speaking Arabic with an old friend. Gruber discovers that Habib is an Arab American private investigator and that his friend, Ross McIntyre, is an alcoholic geologist who spent years in Saudi Arabia. He becomes convinced that they are members of a terrorist cell who are looking for nuclear materials for a dirty bomb in the uranium country in Cibola County. As Gruber follows their search, his misplaced patriotism escalates into violence. He traps Philip and Ross in a zigzag canyon where they face a choice between a sniper rifle and a flash flood. Craig Nettleton was born and raised in northern Minnesota. In his junior year of college, he studied at the American University of Beirut and traveled in the Middle East. Arriving in New Mexico in 1971, he lived in the foothills of the Zuni Mountains where he first encountered the legend of the Lost Adams' Diggings. He obtained his doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of New Mexico. After searching central New Mexico for the lost gold mine, his explorations became the basis for his first novel.