Who will stop the American Hiroshima if the finest counterterrorism expert is taken out of the game? Matt Striker is a man without a rudder. He has killed once too often and has suspended himself from duty. In escaping to his childhood haunt of Vermont's Northeast Kingdom he expects to rejuvenate himself, or just quit altogether. To him, the Kingdom is solitude, safety and reflection. But he's wrong. Beset by the town bully and beguiled by the beautiful town widow, Matt's solitude is churned into murky challenges from the get-go. In the background, the tentacles of an unlikely terrorist plot reach out through the Kingdom and Matt is swept up. The backwater town of Big Larch Pond becomes the first battleground of a horrific attack. Will Matt rise to the occasion, or will he implode? Nothing less than New York City hangs in the balance.