At Jean Montoya's funeral in 1988 Shelly meets a colleague (Kavita Ranjan) who is planning a vacation in Egypt. With a little coaxing Shelly decides to tag along. They run into a young student at the Cairo airport (James Greco) who is looking for his missing friend. They join forces and go to Aswan where the police show them a head that had been found floating in the Nile. It is James' friend's head-minus his brain. He has been prepared for embalming but thrown into the Nile as an offering to Sobek the crocodile god. They learn that a cult (Sons of Horus) has been posting hieroglyphic messages; kidnapping and partially embalming tourists; and threatening to take over Egypt. Over the next few days Shelly's team helps the police with the investigation of the remains of a man who was killed by vipers at Karnak, and a woman poisoned with mushrooms by a whirling dervish. James, who is fluent in Arabic, overcomes his anger and becomes acquainted with a young man wearing his friend's T-shirt. He turns out to be the scribe for the Sons of Hours. Shelly invents her own "Cult of Nekhbet and Wadjit" claiming that the two goddesses have reappeared for the rebirth of a great pharaoh and invites Horus leaders to join them at the newly-discovered Birth House next to Temple of Nekhbet. The initial meeting goes well, but the second meeting is botched by police and members of the Cult escape. After murdering the police chief with wormwood and poison from between the toes of the gecko, the Sons of Horus head south to make good on their threat to destroy Egypt posted as a hieroglyphic message on the first pylon at the Karnak Temple. No one takes them seriously-not until Shelly realizes the Cult plans to blow up the Aswan Dam and flood the entire Nile valley with two thousand square miles of water from Lake Nasser.