Seconded to a counter-terrorist unit, Captain Lewis Horne of the SAS receives information that an American industrial tycoon is earmarked for assassination at his Mediterranean villa. Horne flies to Nice to team up with US agent David Neal and protect the target, Marshall Cutter, from his mysterious assailants. Unaccountably, a few months later the corpse of one of the perpetrators is discovered many miles away, carrying documents addressed from the Jericho Institute. Jericho is a tiny town in the Arizona mountains. Its silver mines are no longer profitable, yet it seems to prosper-and its mysterious new owner has ringed it with security guards. It is into this private fortress that Horne and Neal must penetrate to find their answers. Meanwhile, in London, Horne's colleagues are concerned about the strange disappearance of a female operative codenamed Skylark...and on either side of the world, commences a race against time to unravel the bizarre secret of Jericho. Molloy's real strength is in his action-packed descriptions a brand of adventure usually only found in Alistair Maclean's best-sellers