"An undercover CIA agent traveling with an archeological team stumbles upon a deposit of the strategic metal hafnium in the ruins of an Inca temple in the Andes mountains. Essential to manufacturing nuclear reactor control rods—it’s every rogue state’s dream come true. While the US State Department rushes to negotiate for control of the mine, word leaks out, and jihadis and black marketeers develop competing plans to seize the mine and sell the hafnium to bad players around the globe. National Defense Agency operatives KD Thorne and Jeffery Blunt track these criminal groups from the US to Europe to South America, where they uncover the details of the conspiracy."