In UXO (Unexploded Ordinance), a Vietnam era B-52 bombardier, Rick Doyle, returns to Laos to unearth his personal demons, as well as find the crash site of the massive bomber that was shot out from under him during Linebacker II, the bombing campaign against Hanoi. The plane's wreckage is also the crypt for the sole crewman who didn't eject on their final, ill-fated sortie. By finally bringing his last crewman home, Doyle hopes to find peace for himself in a civilian world he can't understand. To get in-country to the downed aircraft, Doyle falls in with a U.X.O. Disposal Team which is there to defuse or destroy some of the many thousands of munitions left over from the Vietnam War. Fifteen to thirty percent of the 200 million tons of explosives dropped on Laos (the most heavily bombed country in all of world history) failed to detonate, and they still lie waiting in the earth, growing more unstable, volatile, and deadly every day. On the journey, Rick Doyle discovers that as a U.S. Air Force bombardier, he abandoned something besides a crewman in Laos, and it's been killing an average of twelve innocent people per month long since the war ended. When Doyle falls in love with Souny, a Laotian nurse traveling with the team, he realizes the old, buried munitions are also symbolic of the explosive memories form that last mission still entombed in his own subconscious. Then he meets the man who shot him down.