Tom Chandler has been promoted to the Pentagon as chief on naval operations, leaving the ship command to promoted XO Mike Slattery, on a mission to distribute medicine in Vietnam. The president.delegates legend Chandler to a conference on the crisis, apparently a worse virus mutation, in Asia, where new Chinese president Peng Wu is suspected to abuse the hemorrhagic virus to eliminate all political competition and even neighbor peoples, as by sabotaging the cure for rival Japan. Chandler recruits Wolf for security and Sasha Cooper as medical expert.