Silent and lethal, USS Seawolf, the US Navy's most up-to-date stealth submarine, is on an ultra secret mission - to spy on China's brand new, hugely-improved Xia-Class submarine. The Xia is the latest sign of China's burgeoning Naval build-up. With American security under greater threat than ever before, Seawolf's mission becomes increasingly important - and increasingly urgent. But that urgency could be Seawolf's undoing. Moving into ever more dangerous waters, Commander Crocker knows that disaster could be only moments away. And then his Executive Officer, Linus Clarke, oversteps the mark, causing a collision with a Chinese warship. Seawolf's entire crew is taken captive. Zhang Yushu, Commander-in-Chief of the Chinese Navy, all too aware that the American government will try to rescue their sailors, has them moved to a top security prison. In Washington, Admiral Arnold Morgan, furious at the disaster in the South China Sea, is determined to get the crew!back and uses the loss of Seawolf to instigate a pet project - the formation of a new, ultra-secret Hit Squad. Yet, even as the team is put together, led by Navy SEAL commander Major Rick Hunter, the Chinese are making sure they extract as much information as possible from their captives, by whatever means necessary. And, with the SEAL team on its way, Zhang Yushu is close to finding out that among his valuable acquisitions is a prize greater than all the rest put together: the President's son. Linus Clarke's real identity has been carefully hidden from everyone, even his fellow crew-members. But Morgan knows and is one of the few people aware of how desperate the situation really is. The President is determined to get his son back, whatever the cost. And with Clarke about to crack under the pressure, the fall-out could go all the way to the White House itself.