Clive Cussler and Dirk Pitt Revealed

by Clive Cussler

  Next, we learn that the president will be taking a cruise on thepresidential yacht Eagle with a congressional leader, the speaker of theHouse and the vice president. Later that night, the Eagle and allaboard disappear, setting the conflict into motion.

  An evil Asian shipping magnate, Min Bougainville, has formed a plan withthe Russians to kidnap the president and implant a mind-controlmicrochip in his brain. In researching the ship containing the nervegas, Pitt traces it back to Bougainville.

  Clive introduces the father of the bank teller as a private detective,Sal Casio, who seems written straight out of a Mickey Spillane novel.

  Loren Smith appears once again, and the interplay between Pitt andGiordino is further developed.

  The element of time is again used to great effect, as is the idea ofcorrupt politicians. Pitt must rescue the vice president and have himsworn into office before the corrupt speaker of the House, Alan Moran,can be sworn in as president.

  The book ends with Casio and Pitt visiting the Bougainville Maritimeoffices. They confront Min Bougainville, who activates a laser thatcuts Casio and kills him. Pitt rolls Min in her wheelchair to anelevator and pushes her down the shaft.

  CyclopsCyclops was Clive's second effort for Simon & Schuster, which he remainswith to this day. Published in hardcover in 1986 and paperback byPocket Books in December of the same year, Cyclops spent fourteen weekson the New York Times best-seller list.

  Here, the tradition Clive started in Deep SLx is continued: theinsertion of excellent artwork and maps designed to help the readerfollow the plot. Clive also begins this novel in the past-a traditionhe began with Raise the Titanic!-with the sinking of a United StatesNavy collier Cyclops.

  The reader is then taken to the present day in Florida, where a richindustrialist, Raymond LeBaron, takes off in a blimp, never to return.

  Very early on, the conflict is locked in place. The president isgolfing when he learns that a group of scientists have built anddeveloped a moon colony. Pitt appears on vacation in Florida and isinvolved in a sailboard race when the missing blimp reappears.

  A missing treasure is introduced, a theme Clive will continue to use infuture novels, and a race is on to find the people who had been on theblimp when it took off from Florida. The Russians enter the pictureearly. They develop information about the moon colony and decide tosend a manned space flight to the moon with the intent of engaging in awar to claim the moon for themselves. And an interesting subplotconcerning Cuba is developed.

  The trio of plot lines-the moon colony, the missing blimp and possibletreasure, the Cuba angle-weave together as the novel progresses. As inRaise the Titanic! Clive has an older lady who helps Pitt understandthe past. In Raise the Titanic! it was the widow of Joshua HaysBrewster; in Cyclops, she's the widow of Hans Kronberg, the formerpartner of Raymond LeBaron, who sheds light on the missing treasure,named LaDorada.

  Cussler places Pitt in a variety of interesting scenes.

  In one, he shows his scorn for pomp and circumstance by arrivingunannounced at an exclusive party. This allows one of Pitt's cars to beshowcased, as well as showing that Pitt, while nice most of the time,does not suffer fools gladly.

  For love interests, we have Jessie LeBaron, the wife of the missingindustrialist, whom Pitt beds in a drain 107 age pipe in Cuba, anunusual twist here, as Jessie is in her fifties and a good fifteen yearsolder than Pitt.

  Foss Gly-the villain of Night Probe!-returns as a torturer. This,however, is his last visit. Pitt kills him with a thumb to the eye andinto the brain. Cyclops marks the second time Hiram Yaeger appears, thefirst having been a brief appearance in Deep Six that proved successful.The tight time line again is used with the Russian cosmonauts due on themoon as well as the plot to explode a series of ship-hidden bombs inHavana Harbor.

  Pitt acquires one of his strangest prizes in his collection in Cyclops,a cast-iron bathtub with an outboard motor aboard with which he escapesfrom Cuba.

  When the battle on the moon is played out, another conflict is created.

  The Russians attempt to divert to Cuba the space shuttle that iscarrying the moon colonists back to earth. 'They are narrowly foiled intheir efforts.

  Pitt, back on Cuban soil, attempts to warn Fidel Castro of the plot toexplode Havana in an attempt to discredit the United States. He movesthe ships carrying the explosives a distance from Havana before theyexplode, but it appears Pitt is lost for good. He appears, of course,battered but alive. At the end of the novel, Pitt solves the puzzle ofthe location of the La Dorada treasure and salvages the statues andtreasure for display in a museum.

  TreasurePublished in hardcover by Simon & Schuster in 1987 and in paperback thefollowing year by Pocket Books, 108

  Treasure is the first Pitt novel to crack the five-hundred page barrier.

  From Treasure to the present day, no Pitt book has run shorter in lengththan five hundred pages. It also begins a now-defunct Cussler traditionof giving measurements in metric. Clive finally quit the tradition inShock Wave, much to the delight of his U.S. readers.

  Once again, we have a missing treasure-in this case, the trove ofinformation contained in the Alexandria Library. But, unlike inCyclops, here the treasure is the main plot in the story.

  The prelude is a Cussler tour-deforce, imaginative, written with adetail most writers can never achieve, yet extremely interesting. Weare immediately treated to a dose of archaeology as well as a subplotabout a scheme to kill the secretary-general of the United Nations, HanKamil, a character who will reappear in future novels.

  The Russians are not featured in the book. Instead, for villains wehave an almost mythical messiah who wants to return Mexico to the timeof the Aztecs and is named Topiltzin. Across the ocean in Egypt, hisequally powerful counterpart, named Yazid, wants to develop afundamentalist Islamic state. We learn as the novel progresses that thepair are actually brothers and part of an international crime family.

  For love interests, Pitt beds both Hah Kamil and Lily Sharp, anarchaeologist. For classic cars and chase scenes, Clive writes anexcellent chapter featuring his L-29 Cord and a chase that culminates ona Colorado ski slope. The interplay between Pitt and Giordino is usedto great effect. Their sarcastic banter in the face of grave danger isused throughout the novel.

  Pitt's father, Senator George Pitt of California,109 spends a fair amount of time in the story. While he appeared inprevious works, Treasure marks Senator Pitt's longest appearance beforeor since. As the story unfolds, a summit of nations is convened inUruguay, and a plot to hijack the cruise ship the world leaders areaboard is developed.

  At the same time, Yaeger is hard at work attempting to find the locationwhere the Alexandria Library was hidden. The president feels that ifthe library holds ancient maps of mineral and oil deposits, it might beused to locate a massive oil deposit in Israel-thus solving a multitudeof the region's problems.

  Once Pitt solves the riddle of what happened to the cruise ship full ofpoliticians, named the Lady Flamborough, a U.S. operation is launched torecover the ship and free the hostages. Once the hostages are freed,Pitt sets off for Texas, where NUMA now believes the Alexandria Libraryis buried.

  Before the Alexandria Library can be excavated, however, the Mexicanmessiah, Topiltzin, launches a wave of his Mexican followers across theRio Grande into Texas. His goal is to steal the library and profit fromthe information.

  With Yazid slain by the disgruntled terrorist he had hired to killKamil, all that is left is for Topiltzin to meet his end. He is blownto bits when one of the hills near the location of the AlexandriaLibrary is exploded as a decoy.

  In the final chapter, the president visits the site in Texas where theAlexandria Library is being excavated and catalogued. Pitt is alreadytalking of a future adventure, the search for the golden city of ElDorado.

  Dragon In 1990, Simon & Schuster published the hardcover edition of thetenth Dirk Pitt adventure-Dragon.

  This was followed in 1991 with the paperback edition, once againpublished by Pocket Books. It
featured the rich illustrations that werebecoming a Cussler trademark. In this story, a United States Air Forcecargo plane has a dangerous cargo aboard. The prelude features theflight of a plane called Dennings' Demons as it attempts to deliver apayload over Japan.

  Dragon then concentrates on a Japanese cargo ship that explodes intopieces, a submersible containing a beautiful underwater photographer welater learn is a U.S. intelligence agent named Stacy Fox.

  When the submersible is damaged by the cargo ship explosion, Pittrescues the crew, then is forced to order the evacuation of Soggy Acres,a secret underwater installation that was built for mining which issuffering from underwater earthquakes. In the Philippines, a treasurecave from ' World War II thought to contain Yamashita's Gold isexcavated, only to reveal the Japanese have returned and removed thetreasure.

  At the same time, Pitt is inside a deep-sea mining vehicle named BigJohiL After being buried in the shocks from the earthquakes, he escapesand drives Big John toward a high point in the ocean and is rescued byGiordino in a submersible.

  The reader is now introduced to the villain, Hideki Suma. Suma hasdevised a plan to place atomic bombs smuggled inside Japanese carsthroughout the world in an effort to achieve worldwide domination.

  Loren Smith returns, along with a senator from New Mexico named MikeDiaz. Both favor sanctions against Japanese investment in the UnitedStates as well as embargoes on imported Japanese products, and Sumalater kidnaps both. For Pitt love interests, we have both Fox andSmith.

  A task force is created to find and neutralize the car bombs. Pittattends a classic car race, where he races his creator, Clive Cussler.

  Clive wrote the scene as much as a farce as anything, believing that theeditors would ask him to remove it. When they didn't and Clive foundout the readers enjoyed seeing the author inside the novel, the scenewhere Pitt meets Cussler has become a staple of the series. At therace, Smith is kidnapped.

  A subplot evolves when a farmer in Germany locates an underground Naziaircraft hangar. Pitt travels to Germany and dives on the undergroundaircraft hangar and finds the planes and a trove of artwork stolen bythe Nazis.

  One of the paintings shows the island where Edo City, Suma's nucleardetonation center, is located. A plot is hatched to attack theinstallation, free Diaz and Smith and neutralize Suma's control center.

  Next, Clive writes a scene reminiscent of The Most Dangerous Game, theclassic story of a hunter whose prey is humans. Ingeniously, Pitt foilsthe hunter. With the freed hostages and a kidnapped Suma, he makes hisway to a U.S. Navy ship. When the attack on Edo City is unsuccessful,Pitt volunteers for a suicide mission. Dropped from the air in adeep-sea mining vehicle, he takes the warhead from the wreck ofDennings' Demons, carries it to a fault line that runs to Edo City, rigsit to detonate, then tries to escape.

  'the book ends with an obituary for Dirk Pitt anda tearful lunch with the two women in the book who had shared his love,Stacy Fox and Loren Smith. The final scene has Pitt in the deep-seamining vehicle reappearing on the shores of a remote island in the SouthPacific.

  SaharaOnce again, Clive makes the stakes high with a tale set in Africa. InSahara, published in 1992 in hardcover and July 1993 in paperback byPocket Books, the menace is an environmental catastrophe that could wipeout all life in the ocean and perhaps even on land.

  Clive begins the novel in the past. Near the end of the Civil War, aConfederate ironclad named the Texas leaves Richmond carrying part ofthe Confederate treasury and the kidnapped Union president, AbrahamLincoln. Next, we have a pioneer female aviator, Kitty Mannock, whocrashes her plane in Africa. Her disappearance remains one ofaviation's great mysteries.

  Traveling to the current time, a tourist safari in Africa is attacked byvillagers who we later learn have been exposed to chemicals in theirwater that make them mad. The entire group of tourists is killed andcannabalized. Pitt's love interest, Eva Rojas, is a scientist with theWorld Health Organization who is searching for the source of toxicpoison in Africa. Pitt rescues her from an attempted rape and murder bykilling the attackers.

  Sandecker then assigns Pitt, Giordino and Gunn to find the source of thepoisons. To aid them in theirtask, they are given the use of a high-tech boat named the Calliope andsent up the Niger River.

  We learn that the villains of the novel, Yves Massarde, a Frenchindustrialist, and Zateb Kazim, an evil general and the true head of thecountry of Mali, are partners in a hazardous-waste treatment facility inthe Sahara Desert. On the Calliope, Gunn escapes with the water samplesto the airport in Mali, while Pitt and Giordino rig the Calliope toexplode and swim to Massarde's houseboat, where they are captured.

  Next, the UN World Health Organization scientists assigned to locate thepoisons are captured and taken to a gold mine named Tebezza. AtTebezza, the gold is mined by convicts and slaves. Pitt and Giordinoescape from Massarde's houseboat by stealing a helicopter, then ditchingthe helicopter in the Niger River near a town named Bourem.

  There they steal Kazim's classic car and take off into the desert.

  Clive makes his appearance as a prospector named "The Kid," who issearching for the Texas, which he believes is hidden somewhere in thedesert. After that, Pitt and Giordmo make their way to Massarde'shazardous-waste facility, named Fort Foureau, where they are captured.

  After Maswde questions them, they are banished to Tebezza. They escapeTebezza, vowing to return and save the others, and set off across thedesert on foot. Near death from dehydration, they stumble upon thewreckage of Mannock's plane and fashion a land yacht they ride untilthey are rescued by a truck driver who gives them a ride to the nearesttown.

  Returning with a special UN force, Pitt liberates Tebezza. LeavingTebezza, Pitt and Giordino make their way to Fort Foureau and an oldFrench ForeignLegion outpost. There they fight off Massarde's security forces untilGiordino returns with a U.S. Special Forces team. Kazim is killed inthe fight. After Fort Fourcau is secured, Massarde is staked out in thedesert sun and in a fit of thirst consumes poisonous water.

  He later dies a horrible death. In the end, Pitt returns and leads acrash team to Mannock's plane. Then, along with Giordino andPerhnutter, Pitt locates the Texas. The novel ends with an explanationthat the assassination of Lincoln was a hoax. Pitt travels toCalifornia to locate Eva Rojas and take her away for a romantic trip toMexico.

  Inca GoldAnother effort for Simon & Schuster, Inca Gold was introduced inhardcover in 1994 and paperback in March 1995. Starting with Dragon,the back book jackets of the hardcovers feature full-page four-colorphotographs of Clive with one of Pitt's cars. In the case of Inca Gold,the photograph is of Pitt's 1936

  Pierce-Arrow with a matching Travelodge travel trailer.

  Clive is still using the metric system of measurement, with mostmeasurements converted to English in the novel.

  The plot is different from most Pitt novels. Instead of an event thatmight affect the world, or Russian vs.

  American mtngue, we have a tale of artifact smuggling.

  Starting with an Inca vessel burying a treasure in 1578 in anundisclosed location, Clive follows with a pirate chapter featuring SirFrancis Drake and a tsunami wave that carries a ship far inland.

  Next, a university archaeological team is trapped in a limestonesinkhole. Pitt and Giordino appear to launch a rescue effort. Theysucceed in the rescue, but when the archaeologists, including ShannonKelsey, one of Pitt's love interests, and Giordino are taken prisonersby rebels, Pitt is left to claw his way out.

  Free from the sinkhole, Pitt finds the rotor blade of his helicoptershattered and sets off tracking the rebels and their prisoners on foot.

  After being taken to a stone fortress in the mountain by one of thevillains, Tupac Amaru, the hostages are rescued by Pitt and escape in ahelicopter owned by the rebels. Making its way out to sea with the ideaof landing on a NUMA research ship offshore, Pitt's helicopter isattacked by a Peruvian military chopper which they fend off.

  St. Julien Perlmutter has a large role in Inca Gold.

  He help
s Pitt in his search to find Drake's vessel, as well as advisinghim on artifact smuggling.

  The primary villains of the tale, the Zolar family, are introduced andtheir profiteering from stolen historical artifacts explored. HiramYaeger is featured, using the NUMA computer center to steer Pitt andGiordino to locating the Conception, the ship carried away in the tidalwave.

  Using a helicopter-mounted magnetometer, Pitt is successful in findingthe Conception and locating a box that contains the Drake Quipu, aseries of ancient Inca records recorded on knotted ropes. Yaeger, usinghis computer, deciphers the Drake Quipu and discovers that the losttreasure of Huascar is probably buried in northern Mexico. The chase ison to locate the treasure before the Zolars.

  As a cover for searching for the location of Huas 116 car's treasure,Pitt and Loren Smith, Pitt's other love interest in the book, set off ona cross-country auto tour aboard Pitt's Pierce-Arrow. They stumble uponthe Box Car Cafe, owned by a former prospector named Cussler. As usual,Pitt forgets the name when he tries to recall it.