"The White Train" A secret train - carrying nuclear missiles and protected by the most lethal anti-terrorist devices available - has vanished without a trace.
The President receives a fax in the Oval Office, the contents of which carry an impact of icy terror. His efforts to place nuclear warheads in the hands of an unfriendly Third World nation, to achieve a strategic advantage for the United States, has started to unravel.
The fax, signed by a mysterious militant group, has a simple ransom demand - one the President can neither meet nor acknowledge.
The President must rely on a shady cast of unscrupulous advisors and ruthless agents to effect the return of the train to its mission, without going public, alarming the American people or incurring the wrath of the Congress of the United States.
All that stands in the way of this highly illegal and clandestine mission's success is a strange alliance between an Air Force special operative, an investigative reporter for the "Washington Post" and a world-renowned anthropologist.