After a heartbreaking divorce and the death of his father in Texas, Dante Salvaggio sails a sailboat to Italy to visit relatives. Upon his arrival, in Italy, he is drawn into a love affair with a beautiful doctor, caught up in an earthquake, and is entangled in a terrorist-virus mishap that wipes out his family and the town of San Guiallino de Pulgia. Being a C.I.A. Operative, Dante is called on to retrieve missing vials of the virus, and to bring the terrorist to justice. The chase begins in Campobasso, Moline, and takes the reader on a blazing high energy tour of southern Italy.