Cucumber Test Step time of execution in Java

If i have Cucumber scenario like this :

Scenario: Correct response should be returned.
    When User sent "xml example" request
    Then Response should have some data "

And for this first step in ma TestStep class :

@When("^User sent \"(.*)\" request")
    public void sendRequest(String requestName) throws Exception
    {
       //code for SOAP request 
    }

If service is not available, test will run for hours. I would like to stop it after some period of time. Any suggestions?