In a bold and devastating move against the United States, terrorists have hijacked Project Darpa Alpha, classified advanced technology that can transform rifle rounds into tank crushers. The White House is stunned at the magnitude of the assault. General Douglas Freeman has already tried and failed to stop the enemy from transporting Darpa Alpha off U.S. soil. Now he's about to get his second - and last - chance.

U.S. intelligence has traced the theft to a terrifying military state-within-a-state on the Sino-Russian border. Moscow is willing to turn a blind eye to a retaliatory U.S. assault, and the president has the perfect hero - or the perfect scapegoat - in Freeman. With 1,400 marines on the edge of an eerie, forbidding landscape, Freeman has a career to redeem and an enemy to defeat. But the bad guys have the means and motivation to turn Freeman's lightning strike into an icy swamp of death - with a terrible new world order waiting on the other side of war.