The truly gut-wrenching piracy action of the last fifty years has been in the heavily-trafficked waters off the shores of Hong Kong, Malaysia, Macao, Taiwan, the Philippines, Viet Nam -- the South China Sea. When modern pirate Finn Morrison hooks up with the Red Chinese to hijack a cargo ship loaded with gold - and highly explosive ammonium nitrate - all hell breaks loose. Double-crossed by the Chinese and left for dead, Morrison works out a deal with the U.S. Navy to recover the stolen ship and the gold. But it's an uneasy truce: Morrison is forced to work with his hated half-brother, Jake Donovan, a Hong Kong-based insurance investigator whose current recovery job has landed him in the middle of Morrison's schemes. With the Navy preoccupied with a renegade Chinese gunboat, Morrison, Donovan, and the remaining pirates storm the cargo ship, battle heavily-armed commandos determined to get the gold to Chinese waters, and eventually secure the ship, only to make deadly discovery: a fanatical terrorist's sabotage has turned the vessel into an explosives-packed, out-of-control juggernaut steaming toward Hong Kong harbor. Can it be stopped before an unprecedented disaster occurs? With high seas piracy now a serious global issue, South China Sea - comprehensively researched, suspenseful and action-packed from beginning to end - is utterly right for the times.