<DIV>It is the greatest advance in American defense technology in decades?an attack submarine capable of incredible underwater speeds. There is only one problem: A key element of the prototype is missing?and the man who developed it is dead.<br><br> At the same time, ships have started vanishing mid-ocean, usually never to be found again, but when they are, sometimes bodies are found aboard?burned to a crisp. What is going on? And what does it have to do with an Italian submarine that vanished in 1943? Or did it?<br><br> It is up to NUMA director Dirk Pitt and his team, aided by a beautiful NCIS agent and by Pitt’s children, Dirk, Jr., and Summer, to go on a desperate international chase to find the truth. But what they discover is a much, much greater threat than even they imagined?</div>