Fully armed and with all hands onboard, the nuclear submarine Starbuck sailed into the calm Pacific Ocean for sea trials - and vanished. No wreckage, no signals, no survivors: nothing...until ace maritime troubleshooter Dirk Pitt finds a single chilling clue in the shark-torn surf off Hawaii - the log of the Starbuck. 'Do not search for us, it can only end in vain....' A crazed journal of madness and death is all that remains.

On a NUMA training mission in the Caribbean, Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala catch a distress call from a nearby freighter. Leaping into action, they locate a damaged vessel and a dead captain clutching a shotgun. While searching the freighter for clues, Kurt and Joe are ambushed by crew members who seem terrified and disoriented, almost brainwashed. The trawler they were hauling has vanished, taken—the men say—by baffling lights that circled the ship.

When the most advanced aircraft ever designed vanishes over the South Pacific, Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala are drawn into a deadly contest to locate the fallen machine. Russia and China covet the radical technology, but the United States worries about a darker problem. They know what others don't - that the X-37 is carrying a dangerous secret, a payload of exotic matter extracted from the upper reaches of the atmosphere and stored at a temperature near absolute zero.

Kurt Austin and his crew are back to slake their thirst for action as they attempt to drown an eco-extortionist's plan to control the world's freshwater supply. From deep within the Venezuelan rain forest emanates the legend of a white goddess and a mysterious tribe with startling technical accomplishments. Few believe the tribe exists, and even fewer suspect its deity can change the course of history.

September 1858: An Antarctic whaler stumbles across an aged wreck, her frozen crew guarding a priceless treasure.