Dirk Pitt faces his most formidable foe yet... Tracking a notorious Chinese smuggler's activities leads Dirk Pitt to Seattle where he finds a mass grave containing hundreds of Chinese immigrants. Discovering some of the trafficked captives still alive, Pitt is determined to track down his prey. The trail continues with a race to find the site of the mysterious treasure-filled shipwreck from 1949, which included the legendary boxes containing the bones of Peking Man that had vanished at the beginning of the First World War. As Pitt prepares for a final showdown, he is in a race against time to prevent an enormous ecological catastrophe...