It's dark. It's twenty below freezing. And CIA operative Lazlo Kovic is on the North Korea border leading a joint US-Chinese mission that is going straight to hell. The US team are massacred and the Chinese guides flee. Kovic is the only survivor. On his return to base in Shanghai, his superiors in the CIA are suspicious of his miraculous return. But Kovic is looking for payback. He lost a lot of friends on that mission. So he puts together a crack team from the Chinese underworld - a hacker, an expert thief and a former-Olympic sniper - and begins to unravel a conspiracy that reaches up to the highest levels of government, both Chinese and American. Here he discovers a deadly plot, one that will plunge the world into war ...