Political thriller juggernaut Brad Thor teams up with bestselling author Ward Larsen for the first time, and the result is a nerve-wracking, edge-of-your-seat thriller of global intrigue.

COLD ZERO is not part of Thor’s Scot Harvath series, but his collaboration with Larsen may have produced the most harrowing story he has ever written. The stakes have never been higher, with a potential world war looming, while the United States, Russia and China race to gain control of a piece of technology that would completely sway the balance of world power.

"COLD ZERO literally will chill readers with its dangerous premise and subsequently will light a fire inside as the suspense burns brightly from start to finish in this perilous read."

Unfortunately, this technology is aboard Hemisphere Airlines Flight 777 --- the most advanced jetliner ever built --- and it is about to disappear off the radar near the Arctic Circle around the North Pole. The action jumps from country to country amidst different locales, as well as the passengers of the ill-fated flight. Our first introduction of a global superpower is China, specifically their MSS agency (Ministry of State Security), which is tracking a dissident who is fleeing with the technology they so badly seek to possess.

Dr. Chen Li has been extracted from China by CIA operative Kasey Sheridan, and they board Flight 777 on its way to the US. It will not quite make it there. The crew do not suspect anything and are powerless to respond when a hacker from China inserts malware into the plane, which completely shuts it down. The pilot is forced to make a dangerous landing on a sheet of thick ice. It lands hard and breaks up when it strikes an iceberg at the end of a frozen ramp. Several people are killed, and the handful of survivors --- which include an injured Chen, Kasey and First Officer Brett Sharpe --- must attempt to stay sheltered and care for the injured.

Sky Fire is the name of the piece of technology in Chen and Kasey’s possession that is so direly sought after. In addition to China, the USS Cheyenne submarine is in pursuit of the crash site in the Arctic, as well as the Russian sub Aurora. The action bounces between the three countries and the various players involved in the hunt, as well as the plight of the nearly frozen survivors of Flight 777.

As Chen is slowly revived, he shares with Kasey that Sky Fire has the ability to send a distress call, but they do not want to use it and give away the exact location of the device. They eventually are able to receive messages from the US rescue team who urges them to attempt to get to a weather station about nine miles from their current location and await air rescue from there. Of course, a huge storm is coming, and the likelihood of the injured survivors making it across the frozen tundra to any weather station is grim, to say the least.

The race to get to the survivors first drives the narrative forward chapter by chapter. Thor and Larsen steer this story through one pitfall after another, with the threat of world war constantly hovering above the action on the ice. COLD ZERO literally will chill readers with its dangerous premise and subsequently will light a fire inside as the suspense burns brightly from start to finish in this perilous read.