In the heart of a blistering summer, blackouts in California are causing panic and chaos. People are dying in darkened hospitals. Dangerous convicts are escaping from a Sacramento prison through the powered-down electric fences. In South America, a meeting between an influential Peruvian senator and the managers of a gargantuan natural gas company could change the balance of power in the Western Hemisphere forever. A call from the White House in the dead of night plunges special assistant to the president Tony Ruiz into a dark and hellish nightmare. A new Cold War has dawned--at stake is nothing less than America's survival--as a handful of insiders race to save their country from a ruthless, re-emergent enemy wielding the most devastating weapon of all: "energy."