About The Descent From Truth
Alex Bryson, wounded in combat and kicked out of U.S. Army Special Forces for punching an officer, seeks solitude, space in which to nurse psychological wounds. His treasured isolation in the vast expanse of a Rocky Mountain land preserve is shattered when he stumbles over a year-old boy and his mother, lost in a snowstorm. The child is the illegitimate offspring of an elderly, multibillionaire Peruvian financier. The financier’s young wife, intent on inheriting her ailing husband’s assets, wants the boy dead. She delegates the murder to Theo Faust, her lover but also her husband’s director of security.
Protecting the boy and his mother, Pia Ulmer, makes Alex a target. They hijack one of Faust’s helicopters and crash in rugged, Rocky Mountain backcountry. The pilot, however, manages to signal Faust’s men. They swoop down while Alex is away foraging for food. Pia hides her son, but the men capture her. Faust tortures her in an attempt to learn her son’s whereabouts.
Arranging for the boy’s death is a distraction for Faust. His primary objective while visiting the United States is a black-market purchase of advanced guidance chips for shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles. With the chips, his rebel allies can control a part of Peru containing deposits of rare earths, a suite of minerals available primarily from China and essential to all high-tech manufacturing.
While searching for Pia, Alex discovers Faust’s plan. He takes the black-market chips away from Faust’s men and substitutes outwardly identical but internally flawed chips that he offers to trade for Pia. Intent on recovering the chips but keeping Pia, Faust pretends to agree. Neither man anticipates the horrific chain of events the ill-fated exchange will trigger.
