On the streets of Washington, D.C., a brilliant scientist in the high-tech military industry, the brains behind a revolutionary fighter aircraft prototype in development by the Pentagon, is snatched by masked thugs—along with his wife and children—and disappears without a trace.

Now, five years later, an elderly professor at Cambridge University has been murdered, a victim of bizarre, ancient Chinese torture methods. Alex Hawke teams up with former chief inspector Ambrose Congreve, his Scotland Yard colleague and friend, to find the killer, but this death is merely the opening gambit in a tense and lethal game of geopolitical brinkmanship.

In the United States, the president's behavior makes many question his fitness for leadership. Is his mental health deteriorating—or is there something far more sinister at work? The answer is crucial, for hostilities are rapidly escalating among China, North Korea, and the United States. At a somber state funeral in Arlington Cemetery, an unmanned drone twice the size of a twin-engine Cessna dives out of the sky and wreaks chaos on a shocked crowd of military and civilian dignitaries. In the East China Sea, a North Korean patrol crew murders four sailors aboard a U.S. Navy vessel. Then China launches vastly advanced fighter jets and a megasubmarine far more sophisticated than any seen before—military technology that might leapfrog everything the U.S. and Great Britain now possess.

With the situation edging closer and closer to the yawning abyss, Hawke faces a female Chinese mastermind and assassin named Chyna Moon. He must pull off his most daring mission yet: infiltrate enemy territory and neutralize their advantage . . . or risk the outbreak of World War III.