Publisher's Synopsis
It has been nine years since Fat Man and Little Boy, the two atomic bombs developed by the United States, destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki and forced Japan to surrender. The most powerful weapons ever invented triggered a frantic race between the US and Russia. It was the race to build the first Hydrogen Bomb, which would be much smaller but 10 times more powerful than Fat Man and Little Boy.
The US and Russia, former allies during WWII, were now bitter enemies. Whoever won the race would be unbeatable if the Cold War went hot.
Now that the terrible effects of atomic radiation are known, the United States requires a remote testing ground far from the US, far from densely populated areas. Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands offers the perfect location. It sits in the vast Pacific Ocean at least 1,000 miles from large populations.
Bikini Atoll has only 160 inhabitants that can be easily evacuated to a distant island East of Bikini. The people can return to Bikini soon after the poison radiation cloud disperses to the north of Bikini on prevailing winds.
The sheltering Islanders will be unharmed as long as the nuclear blast doesn't exceed five megatons and the wind direction holds steady in the Northern direction. But the unpredictable forces of nature have other plans.
The US military and scientists on the Bikini, facing intense political pressure to detonate the bomb on schedule although the prevailing wind has started veering from North to East. The scientists and military personnel on the island will be protected from the blast and radiation by massive, radiation-proof concrete bunkers.
Father Vincent, a Catholic Priest, Sister Veronica, a Catholic Nun, and a beautiful, but desperate, 16-year-old girl named Leilani Frangipani did not evacuate. Now they must find shelter quickly or they will die.
