It is the spring of 1991. A young U.S. Army officer is abruptly reassigned from the battlefield of the Gulf War to a small, very secret government research facility on a mountaintop in Pennsylvania. It is uncommon good fortune for the tired and weary soldier - or so he believes. His new boss, a cynical Army colonel, briefs him on why he was uniquely tapped for the job there - and their unusual mission. The government is urgently trying to solve a mystery recently uncovered in Romania: How an ancient Monastery that disappeared a thousand years ago has been reappearing over the centuries since then. Captain Brad Ozera learns that intense Russian research into this phenomenon is what prompted the U.S. interest. But the dissolution of the Soviet empire has now given the vast and powerful U.S. intelligence community an unexpected advantage. Is a new and unknown psychic power responsible? Captain Ozera debriefs the eclectic team of experts working on the project to find out. There's a cocky, self-centered theoretical physicist; a brash psychic-research professor who's eyeing a Nobel Prize; a geneticist who thinks all psychic capability is part of our genetic make-up; a historian; a priest; and the sultry, passionate Doctor, who worked on the Russian research project. The project proceeds under the watchful eyes of an unknown but powerful government agency. And when a breakthrough finally occurs, they close in. The Colonel and co-workers disappear ... and the Captain runs, eventually escaping to Europe, where the mind-numbing conclusion unfolds.