David Vale works as a hired gun after serving the CIA. Vale has been hired to guard Dr. Kate Warner, a geneticist whose life is threatened by her work, both by those who want to steal her research and by members of her own family. Her work concerns "Junk DNA" which is the vast majority DNA, DNA which doesn't tell us much, either because we don't understand it or because it doesn't mean anything.
Two of Dr. Warner's patients, both autistic children, have been recently kidnapped. Then there is the Immari, an ancient secret society who views Dr. Warner's genetic research as the missing link, and they believe that the human genome has a secret mode that needs to be activated, a feat only Warner has been able to understand. The Immari group is highly motivated, because they know about a super-race of humans called Atlanteans who have made a home for themselves below the ice of Antarctica. They hope to protect humans from being overthrown by the Atlanteans by murdering all the Atlanteans. Kate and David work to prevent that. They also resist the underground eugenics movement which has erupted in pursuit of the Atlantean gene. (There is some relationship between homo sapiens and the Atlantean humanoids, and the implication is that alien lifeforms were involved).
The Immari are ruthless and persistent, but the two heroes survive each brush with death. They learn that the Immari are tangled up with the force of Evil (which is symbolized in the novel as a literal force). They learn that their resistence to the Immari has connections to Nazi Germany and the Eugenics projects there, and they also learn that the Immari has connections to current day terrorism, even the 9/11 attacks. At the end of the novel, the heroes are up against a horrifying enemy with endless resources and endless power, and they realize that the Immari are willing to destroy anyone who comes between them and the Atlanteans.
