From the days of gunboat diplomacy and trench warfare, nations have fought to impose their will on others. In the 21st century, the fight is for oil, but faced with a public sickened by the brutality of war, governments must find a more acceptable means of securing their share of the world's dwindling energy supplies. For Peter Driscoll, a pilot operating in the Chinese northwest desert, it is the relentless search for oil that costs the life of a colleague and leads him to Natalie Washburn. Hunted down by an organization that is determined to kill him, Driscoll is forced to choose between his own future and the only chance he'll have to prevent an unthinkable escalation in warfare of a kind the world has never seen before.