A top nuclear scientist turns homicidal, taking an innocent family hostage at gunpoint. Gideon Crew, a colleague of his at Los Alamos, is called in to talk the man down. But the standoff ends in an explosion of violence. When the authorities discover the scientist's body is intensely radioactive, and that he had recently embraced Islamic extremism, all hell breaks loose. Gideon finds himself charged with a desperate assignment to track down a rogue nuclear device... or something even worse.