Ground Zero (The X-Files)

A renowned nuclear weapons researcher is not only dead - he's been charred to a radioactive cinder. The incinerated remnants of Dr. Gregory are found curled in the corner of his laboratory at the Edward Teller Nuclear Research Facility near Oakland, California.
Since this is a death on Federal property, Mulder and Scully are hastily called in. As FBI agents who specialize in unexplained phenomena, they are the investigators of the X-Files, strange and inexplicable cases which are also mysteries that the FBI doesn't want solved.
Dr. Gregory's unique death quickly and clearly becomes an X-File. As Mulder and Scully begin their frustrating work, unearthing the top secret project that Dr. Gregory was working on, they confront a tight-lipped Federal bureaucracy whose job it is to stop questions before they are asked. One by one, Mulder and Scully hit dead ends, closed security clearances, and classified documents that no one wants them to see. But that doesn't stop Mulder and Scully from ripping the lid off Dr. Gregory's illegal project - "Bright Anvil" - a new type of flash nuclear explosive that has all the destructive power of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs, but with a new design that leaves virtually no radioactive fallout. The implications for the modern world are deadly, and some radical protest groups will stop at nothing to prevent the test from happening.
When a second victim, completely unrelated to nuclear science or Dr. Gregory is obliterated in the New Mexico desert, and then a third dies the same way in Washington, D.C., Mulder and Scully begin to focus on the frightening dimensions of their task. The bizarre deaths cannot be a coincidence. And as they work to uncover the secret unifying element that unites these deaths, it becomes clear that this twisted puzzle has fatal consequences for the entire world.

Kevin J. Anderson has written twenty-seven national bestsellers and has over 15 million books in print worldwide. He has been nominated for the Nebula Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the SFX Readers Choice Award.