Computers increase the flow of natural gas to the San Antonio, Texas, distribution center increasing the pressure, triggering multiple leaks which result in massive explosions. The death toll is in the thousands, ten times the number of injured and homeless.Tom Graham has spent twenty years as America's top counterterrorist operative. But this attack was something neither Graham nor America were prepared for. An attack via computer, and suddenly a new word enters the American mainstream, cyberterror. Enlisting the aid of the FBI's Karen Frost, a special agent who has never played by the rules, and Michael Patrick Ryan, Stanford computer whiz, Graham tracks one of the hackers to an address in Florida. The new government Agency, the Counter Cyberterrorism Team, kicks in the door, only to find the booby-trapped corpse of a computer science professor.