Chicago Sun-Times journalist Elle Larsen is in Sofia writing a piece about Bulgaria's support to NATO on the twenty-year anniversary of the conflict. When a thunderous explosion in a nearby suburb piques Larsen's interest, she discovers at the blast site remnants of a pipeline intended to ferry natural gas from Azerbaijan to Western Europe.
Russia seems the most likely saboteur, as the pipeline threatens Moscow's monopoly on European natural gas imports, but when Larsen meets CIA Agent Matt O'Connor, she realizes it wasn't the Russians who destroyed the pipeline, and that the trouble is much closer to home.