Toxic Effect
It was hot and damp inside the African hut. Maria´s face contorted with pain as another contraction swept over her and racked her body. Outside, her husband, Patrick, waited anxiously for the birth of the child he so desperately wanted. The old woman bent to catch the child, but as she caught sight of it her smile turned to horror. Meanwhile across the Atlantic, Steve Woodman, a CIA official working for the United States Department of Agriculture, is gathering information about the illegal manufacture and use of Agent Orange, a defoliant used during the Vietnam War to destroy jungle growth and reveal enemy troops. His investigations lead him to Africa and Clive Hyde. Steves supects that Hyde´s chemical plant provides the crop spraying "fertilizer" used by the sugar cane farmers "to make their crop grow taller". The same sugar cane fields where Patrick works.and when he discovers Patrick and Maria´s disfigured child he sets out to crush Hyde´s illicit operation, finding himself moving inexorably into a nightmare of hate, violence and murder - a nightmare from which it seems he can never awaken.