Like every man on his team, Captain Chris Holt has sworn an oath to defend America against all enemies. From the moment he enters the SADM Program, Holt never considered the possibility of a domestic deployment but now, as he and his Army Special Forces team jump from their C-130 transport into the night time Texas sky armed with a tactical nuclear weapon, he wonders how many of his team will survive the mission to terminate a disgraced, former Army germ-warfare scientist.

Dr. Heinrich Fleischer has big plans as he forms an unholy alliance with a ruthless boss of a Mexican drug cartel, who want to use his stash of a deadly strain of respiratory anthrax against rival drug cartels. Holed up deep inside an abandoned Army laboratory high in the Trans-Pecos Mountains, Fleischer ambushes Holt and his team as soon as are on the ground, capturing Holt, and stealing the tactical nuclear device the team jumped in with and then uses the device to blackmail the U.S. President; telling him that unless his ransom demands are met, he will detonate the device within a major U.S. port - an act which would devastate the world's economy for decades, however, massive bio-terrorism is his real, hidden, agenda.