After taking an assignment as a supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, agent Lucinda Schroeder felt chafed by the restrictions of her desk job. She'd spent her career making cases against wildlife poachers, smugglers, and people who exploited wildlife for huge sums of money. As a supervisor she wasn’t allowed to carry a case load. Her responsibility was to oversee the work of five other agents as they investigated wildlife crimes. But she wanted to be in the middle of the action.

Finally, she went undercover again, working to investigate a parrot-smuggling operation - only to narrowly escape disaster after several of her colleagues inadvertently blew her cover. Though she worried that she was losing her gift for undercover work, when she learned of the illegal trade in Native American artifacts and the hunting of eagles for their feathers, she set up another sting operation and called it "Operation Monster Slayer" after the Navajo deity that protected the Navajo from harm only to betrayed once again - this time intentionally.

Plunder of the Ancients tells the story of the dangerous life of an undercover agent - and her persistence that led to the recovery of nearly a million dollars’ worth of sacred Indian artifacts sold on the black market in Santa Fe in 1996.