When the commander of the vast NATO Ramstein Air Base in Germany, United States General Abraham Scott, is killed in what appears to be a glider accident, Washington reluctantly assigns its only available investigator, washed-up Special Agent Vincent Cooper, to the case.
When the crash turns out to have been sabotage, Cooper suddenly finds himself immersed in a highly sensitive murder investigation - the general was married to the US Vice President's daughter. Cooper discovers that the apparently fine, upstanding General Scott kept some highly questionable company. And so begins an investigation that takes Cooper and his uncooperative partner, Special Agent Anna Masters, from the biggest air base in Europe to the streets of Baghdad; from the headquarters of a people smuggler in Riga to harrowing Chechen rebel combat operations against the Russians.
Cooper and Masters uncover a plot so monstrous it threatens to engulf the US military-industrial complex in a scandal of explosive proportions - as well as destroy the very fabric of contemporary society.