The launch of the space shuttle Atlantis will make history. Ather triumph for the space program and a political coup: a Russian cosmonaut is scheduled to perform the first spacewalk from an American unit. The checkout fail-safes are all go. The mission is proceeding like clockwork. The team of American and Russian astronauts are strapped in, the mission specialists in Houston see hitches. No one kws the real danger.... For as millions of viewers tune in to watch the countdown, there's thing to indicate that what they're seeing is a prerecorded show. Terrorists have taken over Launch Control at Cape Canaveral and are threatening to blow up the Atlantis in less than three hours unless their demands are met. Only Colonel Iceberg Friese, the mission's former commander, out with a broken foot, kws about the danger to his crew. Unkwn to anyone, he's sneaked into the restricted zone. And w it's up to him to stop the clock before the countdown reaches Ignition.