The brilliant crime-solving duo of Washington DC's Metro PD and the FBI has a proven operating procedure:

Detective Alex Cross makes his own rules. Detective John Sampson enforces them.

Then a series of military-style attacks erupts. No sooner do Cross and Sampson join the investigation than Alex is brutally sidelined. The threat to Sampson's best friend, his partner, his brother, sends him reeling. The patterns are too random, Alex has told him. Don't trust anyone.

Among Sampson's Army network, some soldiers are called to secret duty assignments. Others are disappearing. As a shadow force advances on the nation's capital, Sampson alone must protect the Cross family, his own young daughter, and every American including the president. The detective has a new enemy. Time.