Six American moon launches in a row from Cape Canaveral have ended in disaster in the destroy button needing to be deployed in each case as the rockets were going off course, the cost of the destroyed hardware of the rockets alone being $2 million apiece. Dr. Rooney, part of the scientific team behind the launches, believes it is sabotage in having detected radiation signals coming from below the water's surface in the vicinity of the cape that is most-likely the cause of the rockets' change of trajectory. When Rooney himself goes missing in his investigation of the radiation source, the FSIC (Federal Security Investigation Commission) gets involved in knowing indeed that it is sabotage. Operation Lightning Bolt, the operation to discover the mastermind behind the sabotage and find a hopefully still alive Dr. Rooney, is led by FSIC Section S's Captain Patricia Flanagan - also known as Agent 36-22-36 - with her lead operative being Lieutenant Harry Sennitt. While Flanagan prefers to use more traditional methods of brawn including firearms in her work, Sennitt prefers to use the government's proverbial checkbook, the reason he is so enamored with his undercover role in this operation as a wealthy playboy. Their different working styles also often places them at odds with each other. If they can discover what is going on, they will uncover a plot more nefarious in its intent than the want to destroy the rockets, for those rockets not to make it to the moon, and/or to ruin the American space program.