Dexter hunts down his daughter's killers in Panama and executes them, then returns home only to discover that his beloved wife couldn't deal with the death of their only child and has committed suicide during his absence.

Intertwined into the backstory of Calvin Dexter is the narrative of a young American volunteer from a very privileged family who was killed while delivering aid in Bosnia during the Bosnian War.

As the second act kicks into gear, the boy's grandfather, Stephen Edmonds, a Canadian billionaire and veteran of the Battle of Britain, hires a tracker to discover the identity of his sole grandson's killer and eventually learns him to be Zoran Žilić, a sadistic hitman for Slobodan Milošević's government.

It is then revealed that a secret section in the CIA, headed by Paul Devereaux III, a dedicated patriot, has been working with Žilić in recent months with plans to use him as bait to eliminate another terrorist danger — Osama bin Laden himself.

From the CIA’s point of view, Žilić, despite his horrific crimes, had been marginalised as a result of the end of hostilities in Bosnia and could be used to neutralise a much larger threat to the American way of life.