Tanner Stone is enjoying a wire-free vacation with his family in Mesa Verde National Park when an FBI helicopter lands, scattering their picnic supplies. They are looking for him. The Vice President has been murdered and the FBI needs Tanner's help to decode a note found at the crime scene. When Tanner discovers that the note is written in an ancient language that traces back to the Native Guatemalans, the FBI sends Tanner to Guatemala along with his in-laws, who had served their mission there, in order to find a hermit cipher.

The drug cartel lord, who is a mastermind behind the attack, has connections everywhere, and they quickly find out the motives behind Tanner and his family's spontaneous trip. As they get closer to finding the cipher, Tanner finds the suspicious behavior around him more life threatening. Cipher in tow, they escape back to the US only to find that the nation's highest leaders are disappearing and being killed off faster than anyone can figure out who to trust or where to hide. When Tanner starts to crack the coded document, he finds that this is more of an inside job than he could have imagined, and a motive to dessolve the US constitution.