The Tempest Toss

July 9, 1962. A Thor missile carrying a 1.45-megaton warhead detonates 250 miles above Johnston Island in the South Pacific. The test — code-named Starfish Prime — is meant to study high-altitude nuclear effects. What it reveals is something far more dangerous: a single detonation can kill every unshielded circuit within line of sight.

Sixty years later, the science perfected in secret becomes a nightmare made real. A coordinated terrorist attack erupts across the Port of Tampa during the Gasparilla festival — fuel terminals detonated, a tanker ship destroyed, a cruise liner with 3,500 passengers caught in the blast radius. Six thousand dead in minutes.

Navy SEAL Commander John Hunter — fifteen years of special operations, stationed at USSOCOM headquarters, MacDill Air Force Base — is caught in the attack with his family on the Crosstown Expressway. What begins as survival becomes a hunt, as Hunter discovers the port strike was only the opening move in something far larger: a weapon system hidden not in a warhead, but in the infrastructure itself.

The Dark Territory Protocol. Pre-positioned. Patient. And already inside the wire.