In the mid-fifties, a transport plane codenamed “Fox-03” took off from a military airfield in Colorado. He did not arrive at his destination. Everything would not be so scary if there were not bacteriological weapons on board: thirty-six warheads, each of which is capable of turning a metropolis into a necropolis in a matter of hours. Thirty years later, the wreckage of Fox-03 was discovered by the tireless hydrologist Dirk Pitt. A terrible cargo sleeps peacefully at the bottom of an icy lake - only someone has already been here: eight warheads have disappeared without a trace. The "Quick Death" strain has fallen into the hands of terrorists - and if they are not stopped immediately, the death toll will go into the millions...