Computer scientist Pamela Sasser leads the quiet life of a professor at Louisiana State University, until her research uncovers a bug in the new Perseus computer chip. The Perseus is at the heart of thousands of commercial and military systems, including the Palo Verde nuclear plant, site of a massive nuclear meltdown that killed tens of thousands and left millions a future filled with radiation illness and cancer. Billionaire Preston Sinclaire, chairman of Microtel Corporation, the manufacturer of the Perseus, is at the pinnacle of his power, about to be elected president of the United States. No one knows that Perseus caused the meltdown. No one, that is, except Pamela Sasser. Harrison Beckett is a professional assassin, contracted to eliminate Sasser. A former Defense Intelligence Agency operative, Beckett has eliminated dozens of targets. But he is not a cold-blooded killer he is a man with a moral code who has only killed those who clearly deserve to die. He has been told that Sasser is a traitor to the United States, a purveyor of computer secrets essential to our national security. But Beckett does not know that he has become the pawn of a shadowy organization known only as the Web - founded during the Vietnam War by an enterprising black-marketer named Preston Sinclaire - with tentacles that reach to the very highest levels of the Pentagon, the source of Beckett's contract. While Beckett draws closer to killing Sasser, who has only begun to suspect the danger that she is in, sudden twists and turns show truths to be lies and reality to be far from what he believes. And, all the while, the bug in Perseus continues to surface, costing the lives of more and more Americans. It is only a matter of time until another disaster occurs in one of the half dozen other nuclear reactors equipped with the chip. When this becomes clear to Beckett, the knowledge becomes his death warrant, and the hunter suddenly finds himself the hunted