March 1990: American-led forces assemble in Saudi Arabia for "Desert Storm", the largest military operation since the Normandy Invasion. Meanwhile, across the globe in Massachusetts, in a former textile mill that's been converted to the home of legendary computer company Digital Microsystems, computer chip designer Todd Griffith is working past dark during a late winter snowstorm, trying to find out why his "Kali" chip keeps randomly messing up. After working without sleep for 3 days, Todd discovers a secret function hidden among the hundreds of thousands of microscopic transistors-- clearly sabotage. He calls his boss in California to report his discovery, then leaves the Mill and walks home through a blizzard. Seven hours later Todd is shot in the head as he lies sleeping in his bed.December, 1995: After a grueling week in the Silicon Valley fast lane, burnt-out bi-coastal software engineer Nick Aubrey boards a "red-eye" flight to Boston and winds up seated next to a very disturbed man who claims to know the secret of Gulf War Disease, a mysterious ailment afflicting thousand of Desert Storm veterans & which the government denies even exists. Over Utah, Nick's chance companion meets his dramatic demise and the police suspect Nick of murder. Soon everybody wants a piece of Nick--from the Salt Lake City Airport police to the CIA, from billionaire venture capitalists and paranoid cybermilitiamen to end-of-the-millennium cultists and exotic foreign beauties. The only person who doesn't want a piece of Nick is his distant wife, a beautiful biologist with a secret or two of her own.In freeing himself from a web of murder, deceit and double-crosses, Nick comes to learn that the key to the secret of Gulf War Syndrome resides in a pharmaceutical laboratory in Basel Switzerland, where scientists are frantically working on submicroscopic machines to rearrange human DNA. When their work is done, the Gulf War will look like child's play. Only Nick can stop them. But first he's going to have to find the Trojan horse hidden in the Kali computer chip. He can't do that without the help of his friend Todd, and Todd's been in a coma for half a dozen years.