Federal investigator Jackson Guild sifts through the rubble after a terrorist attack destroys Washington. Guild—that’s Guild as in wild—gets the call to action, but he’s been rocked by the catastrophe, the casualties, and the horror. He’s drawn between two poles, one from the military and one from the intelligence community. Both threaten to have him quartered.
 
The Pentagon’s CSI-like forensics team at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico lays the blame on Islamo-terrorism. But Langley’s spooks shout foul. They find Vladimir Putin’s fingerprints  all over the sneak attack. 

Guild’s happens upon a third pole, another clue. But it may turn out to be a third rail. He’s learned that the truth about the strike lies along a DNA strand of an imprisoned Wall Street War Lord.  A simple calculation made from his genetic code holds the cipher key that unlocks the actual orders to destroy the US government. 

Guild’s in the chase for the genome, but he’s drinking again and making mistakes, which is too bad, because, he’s about to be kidnapped, shot in the face, and held hostage to a gang of Russian thugs. And they hold the strand of DNA.