Fidel Castro attends a conference in Monimbo, Nicaragua. It begins with the kidnapping of a U.S. Senator in Puerto Rico by the Puerto Rican separatist movement Los Macheteros. Bob Hockney is now the Miami Bureau chief of the New York World. Hockney and his wife Julia, are caught up in the 1980 Liberty City Riots. The Miami Police Department loses control of the situation in Miami, and Cuban and Nicaraguan communists sabotage the electrical grid and blow up bridges to disable and disrupt the United States. The book incorporates real-world elements such as the Mariel Boat Lift into its conspiracy theory.[1]