W. Cooper didn't choose the British Virgin Islands as his CIA post because he hoped it would help further his career in espionage — he chose it for an opportunity to "live slow." So Cooper is not entirely pleased when his routine of debauchery is interrupted by a request from the local chief of police asking for Cooper's unique expertise to help him sell what appears to be millions of dollars in gold artifacts his men have seized from a smuggler. Cooper doesn't see a significant downside — until everyone connected to the artifacts begins dying from causes decidedly unnatural.In Langley, Virginia, brilliant but abrasive CIA analyst Julie Laramie is pulled from her normal duties to attend a clandestine meeting with a legend in the intelligence game. Investigators have discovered the first case of a suicide bombing by an American citizen within the continental United States. The bombing was augmented by the dispersal of a highly contagious bioengineered pathogen, something the government has concealed in an effort to prevent a nationwide panic. Laramie is dispatched to the site of the attack by her mysterious new employers as a "special investigator," but begins to suspect that the "suicide sleeper" isn't merely an isolated incident but a premature attack by one of a legion of similar soldiers.With little time to spare, Laramie is allowed to form her "counterterror unit" working outside the normal channels. For the role of an experienced operations asset Laramie finds she has little choice but to approach her old pal — none other than Cooper.As the suicide sleeper detonation approaches T minus zero, it becomes horrifyingly clear that Amer-ica's newest enemy will be all but impossible to stop — unless, that is, Laramie's puzzle-solving acumen and the aging beach bum of an operative she's recruited to the cause can turn the tables on the "king of the sleepers" and spare America its worst disaster in history.