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In the middle of the Indian Ocean, a NUMA research vessel is taking water samples at sunset, when a crew member spots a sheen of black oil ahead of them. But it is not oil. Like a horde of army ants, a swarm of black particles suddenly attacks the ship, killing everyone aboard, while the ship itself goes up in flames.
A few hours later, Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala are on their way to the Indian Ocean. What they will find there on the smoldering hulk of the ship will eventually lead them to the discovery of the most audacious scheme they have ever known: a plan to permanently alter the weather on a global scale. It will kill millions . . . and it has already begun.
About the Authors
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.
Graham Brown is the author of Black Rain and Black Sun. A pilot and an attorney, he lives in Arizona.
Publishers Weekly
Global climate change poses a threat in bestseller Cussler’s exciting 10th thriller featuring Kurt Austin and the gang from the National Underwater and Marine Agency (after 2011’s Devil’s Gate, also coauthored with Brown). When everyone aboard a NUMA research vessel dies after their catamaran runs into a mysterious black oily substance in the Indian Ocean, where they were investigating water temperature anomalies, Kurt and partner Joe Zavala rush to find out what happened. Wealthy Yemeni Jinn al-Khaif, who’s behind the killings, has dumped billions of microbots into the sea to cool it and create weather patterns that will deliver rain to certain areas and prevent rain from falling in others. Jinn plans to become even richer by selling these weather patterns to governments. Kurt and Joe are out to stop him, and, as always, the fate of the world rests in their hands. A clever twist at the end shows Cussler still plotting at the top of his game. Agent: Peter Lampack, the Peter Lampack Agency. (June)
Kirkus Reviews
Cussler (Devil's Gate, 2011, etc.), with co-author Brown, dips into the NUMA Files for another Kurt Austin action-on-the-sea escapade. Austin and his friend Joe Zavala, are National Underwater and Marine Agency Special Assignments Team troubleshooters. Dirk Pitt, head of NUMA, dispatches the pair to uncover the fate of the three-person crew missing from a NUMA research vessel found adrift in the Indian Ocean. Austin and Zavala link up with Paul and Gamay Trout, husband and wife NUMA techie team, in the Maldives, and the group's examination of the vessel reveals the missing NUMA scientists were victims of "microbots"--"A hundred could fit on the head of a pin." There in the Maldives, Austin also rescues Leilani Tanner, sister of one of the dead scientists, from a kidnapping, and she tags along. The microbot trail soon leads to Yemen and Jinn al-Khalif, a Bedouin camel trader's son grown immensely wealthy through ruthless, bloody ambition. Jinn hired scientists to modify the microbots, the not-quite-ready invention of circuit-board-genius Elwood Marchetti, meant to consume ocean pollution. The microbots now not only eat organic matter, but also self-replicate into the trillions. Programmed to blanket the Indian Ocean, the nefarious plan is to alter the world's climate by lowering water temperatures. That means more rain in dry places, which will create immense profits for Jinn and his financial backers, assorted Chinese, Pakistani and Egyptian evildoers. The narrative ricochets from the Maldives, to Yemen, to Egypt (the Aswan Dam is in peril because Jinn didn't get his money from a corrupt general), and finally to Marchetti's gargantuan movable man-made island, Aqua-Terra, for a shoot-'em-and-explode-what's-left ending. That the microbots can consume human beings like so many oceangoing piranha makes for more than one hairs-breadth escape, but that Leilani is actually Zarrina, double agent for Jinn, nearly stymies Austin and Zavala. Classic Cussler: testosterone-driven action, over-the-horizon technical wizardry, beautiful and talented women and exotic locations.
ISBN: 9780718159115
ISBN-10: 071815911X
Audience:
General
Format:
Hardcover
Language:
English
Number Of Pages: 420
Published: 21st May 2012
Weight (kg): 23.2
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