The story has Nancy Nagle as a protagonist and the narrator. It opens up with the explosion of Atlas as lightning strikes a stack of H104 12" MRLS 6-pack rocket pods, which fire into a bunker containing hundreds of them. The resulting explosion is measured in the megatons and takes place of 38 seconds. Artillery shells from another bunker are thrown upwards and rain down on the site with MRLS bomblets and FASCAM mines.

Nagle gets the few female troops uprange ready to receive casualties and heads downrange into the dust cloud hell. There she discovers the majority of the 40 people who were present at Atlas are just gone. More than a few were basically atomized by the explosion. Wreckage, burning foliage, and body parts are everywhere. She manages to save a few people, including Foster, who's truck was flipped end over end over a dozen times before slamming down onto the ground.

The book will show Nancy barely holding onto her sanity by bleeding fingertips as she heads further and further into the ground zero of the explosion. Aine is presumed dead, as she was patrolling the 1K Zone wire when the blast happened. Visibility is almost nothing, the rain not helping clear the dust. When she discovers Bomber and Stillwater alive, she nearly breaks down, but heads back uprange.

She heads uprange to the helipad to check the status of the pads when she sees the medivac and rescue coming in. To her horror she realizes that the heavy artillery rounds, designed to destroy bunkers and hardened positions, have penetrated the massive fuel tanks and that the air is full of av-gas vapors. She tries to wave the helicopters off, but they come in anyway, pull fuel vapor into their engines, and explode, killing the crews and rescue teams.

Upon heading back she finds Little-Bit, who has somehow survived. She carries her back, and then assists Cromwell and a Soviet doctor in surgery to save the most critically injured of the wounded while Foster tries to get ahold of authorities to tell them that some of them are still alive.

At the end, when Bomber leads a SAR to find Stillwater who is engaged in combat downrange with Soviet elements, the Soviet doctor attempts to take control of The Fort with the intention of forcing everyone to stand down so the Soviet Union can grab data and nuclear rounds. Cromwell shoots and kills the doctor but is shot in return.

Nagle and Cromwell embrace. Nagle is going into shock as she succumbs to explosive crush syndrome and Cromwell is suffocating from a punctured lung.

Bomber arrives as the medivac arrives, carrying Nagle to the medivac personally. As the medivac flies away, Bomber, who will be on the next helicopters as his injuries are not as severe, waves to her and she finally admits that she's crying.

The book ends with Nagle being helped to her cot in The Fort so she can rest. She reaches out and grabs Cromwell's hand before drifting off to sleep.