Sandstorm

Sandstorm is the first book in the Sigma Force series.

Synopsis
From www.jamesrollins.com:

An inexplicable explosion rocks the antiquities collection of a London museum, setting off alarms in clandestine organizations around the world. And now the search for answers is leading Lady Kara Kensington; her friend Safia al-Maaz, the gallery’s brilliant and beautiful curator; and their guide, the international adventurer Omaha Dunn, into a world they never dreamed existed: a lost city buried beneath the Arabian desert. But others are being drawn there as well, some with dark and sinister purposes. And the many perils of a death-defying trek deep into the savage heart of the Arabian Peninsula pale before the nightmare waiting to be unearthed at journey's end: an ageless and awesome power that could create a utopia...or destroy everything humankind has built over countless millennia.

Chapter 1 Fire and Rain

 * November 14 01:33 AM
 * British Museum
 * London, England

It is a stormy night at the British Museum. Harry Masterson works as a security guard in the British Museum. He makes his rounds. As he patrols the night shift, Masterson is shocked at the sight of a glow. As he confronts it, the glow reveals to be, what seems to be, a lightning ball. The lightning ball explodes, killing Harry Masterson.

01:53 AM

Safia Al-Mazz wakes up to the sound of emergency serves. Realizing they head over to the British Library, she reels from shock. Picking up a call, she recieves knowledge from a person called Captain Hogan telling her the museum curator requests to converse with her regarding the issue. 02:13 AM Fort Meade, Maryland Thomas Hardey is hard at work in his effort to solve the Sunday New York Times cross puzzle.

His phone rings.

Realize its his fifth line blinking, he remembers that only few people have access to that line: the president, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the second-in-command at the National Security Agency. He is the Director of the National Security Agency.

He picks up and receives the call from Vice Admiral Thomas Rector, a man associated with the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).