It is 1865. A Confederate ironclad, Texas, fights her way through the Federal blockade and vanishes into the Atlantic as Richmond falls, bearing a secret cargo that could change history... It is 1931. A world-famous Australian aviatrix, Kitty Mannock, vanishes mysteriously in the middle of the Sahara while attempting a record-breaking flight from London to Capetown and is never see again...
It is 1995. Dirk Pitt, on a mission to find the remains of a Pharaoh's funeral barge buried in the bottom of the Nile, rescues an attractive young woman, Dr. Eva Rojas, a biochemist with the UN World Health Organization, from being murdered by thugs on a beach near Alexandria...
... Dirk Pitt and his friends plunge into darkest Africa, battling their way up the Niger to a huge, secret, hazardous waste project, a partnership between Yves Massarde, French billionaire entrepreneur, and General Zateb Kazim, the brutal, despotic, corrupt tyrant who rules the West African nation of Mali. Pitt's epic journey up the Niger River against the gunboat fleets and modern jet fighters of two African nations leads him to the discovery of Kazim and Massarde's secret, only to find himself captured and forced to work as a slave under inhuman condition in a gold mine deep in the desert, along with Dr. Rojas and her team of UN scientists.
As the clock ticks toward the world's destruction, Pitt plots his escape across the Sahara desert. Making his way across the trackless desert to alert the world to the source of the threat, Pitt uncovers in the process the truth about Kitty Mannock's death, as well as the incredible secret behind Lincoln's assassination that lies concealed, in the middle of the Sahara, aboard the old Confederate iron-clad...
As usual, Pitt trashes the bad guys; as always, Pitt gets the girl; as before, the result is an un-put-down-able book, charged with excitement plot twists and bigger-than-life characters, compelling, satisfying reading by the master of the genre.
About the Author
Clive Cussler is the author of over twenty-five internationally bestselling books, including the Dirk Pitt adventure series, the NUMA FILES novels and the Oregon Files Adventures. He grew up in Alhambra, California. He later attended Pasadena City College for two years, but then enlisted in the Air Force during the Korean War where he served as an aircraft mechanic and flight engineer in the Military Air Transport Service. Upon his discharge, he became a copywriter and later creative director for two leading ad agencies.
At that time, he wrote and produced radio and television commercials that won numerous international awards, one at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. Cussler began writing in 1965 and published his first novel featuring Dirk Pitt in 1973. His first non-fiction work, The Sea Hunters, was released in 1996. Because of this work the Board of Governors of the Maritime College, State University of New York considered The Sea Hunters in lieu of a Ph.D. thesis and awarded Cussler a Doctor of Letters degree in May of 1997. It was the first time since the College was founded in 1874 that such a degree was bestowed.
Cussler is the founder the National Underwater & Marine Agency, (NUMA), a non-profit organisation that dedicates itself to American maritime and naval history. In addition to being Chairman of NUMA, Cussler is a fellow in both the Explorers Club of New York and the Royal Geographic Society in London. A noted collector of classic automobiles, Cussler owns 85 of the finest examples of custom coachwork and 50's convertibles to be found anywhere. They are garaged near Golden, Colorado. Today, Cussler divides his time between the mountains of Colorado and the deserts of Arizona.
Industry Reviews
Not since Treasure (1988), when Dirk Pitt discovered Cleopatra's barge in Texas (or was it on the Mississippi Delta?), has Cussler come up with so far-fetched a story as this herein, the tenth Pitt novel. The plot begins with a Confederate ironclad, the Texas, outrunning a Union blockade while carrying on board not only the South's treasury but also the North's kidnapped president. Then, in 1931, world-famed aviatrix Kitty Mannock (an Amelia Earhart clone) vanishes on a flight over the Sahara, her plane or body never seen again. Then comes Dirk Pitt's 1996 search through the Nile bottom (via image-making computerized sonar) for the lost barge of a pharaoh dead some 2500 years. Dirk locates the barge under many meters of silt; but before he can even make the Egyptian authorities aware of the find, he's reassigned by the National Underwater and Marine Agency to investigate the source of poisons that are killing coral and creating a red tide on such a massive scale that the world's oxygen supply will soon shrink to an unlivable level if the horror can't be reversed. Dirk rescues from assassination and falls for beautiful Eva Rojas of the World Health Organization, who is in Africa to find the source of the fatal plague now turning thousands of natives into bands of frenzied cannibals who'll eat anything human and are fearless of gunfire. Whence this malignancy? As Pitt discovers, the country of Mall - backed by a ruthless French industrialist - is in the solar nuclear waste disposal business, but the bad guys have poisoned the water table with their inept methods and befouling of the Niger. How does this tie in with Kitty Mannock's desert crash and her discovery of the Texas buried in the Sahara sands? And whose well-preserved, noble-featured body does Pitt find seated in a rocking chair in the ironclad? His initials are A.L.... For the faithful. (Kirkus Reviews)
