In Palmerston, Pennsylvania, two men in long coats walk calmly into a crowded fast food restaurant-then, slowly and methodically, gun down sixty-eight people. They take time to reload.

On the Promenade of Santa Monica, California, a teenaged girl gives sightseeing tips to a distinguished English tourist. She won't be going home tonight.

In Dyersburg, Montana, a grief-stricken son tries to make sense of the accident that killed his parents-then finds a note stuffed in his father's favorite chair. It says, "We're not dead."

Three seemingly unrelated events, these are the first signs of an unimaginable network of fear that will lead one unlikely hero to a chilling confrontation with The Straw Men. No one knows who they are-or why they kill. But they must be stopped.