Tracking a notorious Chinese smuggler's activities leads Dirk Pitt from Washington State to Louisiana, where his quarry is constructing a huge shipping port in the middle of nowhere. Why has he chosen this unlikely location?

The trail then leads to the race to find the site of the mysterious sinking of the ship that Chiang Kai-shek filled with treasure when he fled China in 1949, including the legendary boxes containing the bones of Peking Man that had vanished at the beginning of World War I. As Pitt prepares for a final showdown, he is faced with the most formidable foe he has ever encountered...