THE _NEW YORK TIMES_BESTSELLER NUMA crew leaders Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala must beat the clock to stop the world's most dazzling new technological advance from becoming mankind's last in this action-packed thriller from the #1 _New York Times-_bestselling grand master of adventure. When the most advanced aircraft ever designed vanishes over the South Pacific, Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala are drawn into a deadly contest to locate the fallen machine. Russia and China covet the radical technology, but the United States worries about a darker problem. They know what others don't--that the X-37 is carrying a dangerous secret, a payload of exotic matter, extracted from the upper reaches of the atmosphere and stored