Medical researcher and sometime spy, Lt. Col. Jonathan Smith--aided by CIA agent Randi Russell, British operative Peter Howell and ultra-secret spymaster Nathaniel Klein--faces a plot to unleash a deadly disease on an unsuspecting populace. Retired from the Army Medical Research Unit for Infectious Diseases, Smith heads to Venice to meet with a Russian scientist. Unfortunately, the scientist is killed by Sicilian mercenaries before he can warn Smith that a sample of smallpox is about to be stolen from a Russian bioresearch facility. Up against a global military-corporate conspiracy, with moles at NASA, the Pentagon and the KGB, Smith follows the smallpox across the Atlantic to Houston Mission Control and beyond, heroically trying to stop the pending devastation.