When the great Library of Alexandria was ordered sacked in A.D. 391, could some of its fabulous art treasures and volumes from its magnificent library have escaped the flames and been ferried across the Atlantic? It's an improbable if intriguing notion, but probability is not the strong suit of this wild charade of a novel that features the greatest treasure hunt of all timesome 1600 years after the fabulous riches disappeared.
Dirk Pitt proved invincible in Raise the Titanic! Now, with the future of virtually every person in the world at stake, he is enlisted to spearhead his most daring mission yet—the rescue of a vital document for the United States. To an energy-starved, economically devastated America, possession of this document is worth billions. But to Great Britain, it’s worth a war.
1954. Vixen 03 is down. The plane, bound for the Pacific carrying thirty-six Doomsday bombs -- canisters armed with quick-death germs of unbelievable potency -- vanishes. Vixen has in fact crashed into an ice-covered lake in Colorado. 1988. Dirk Pitt, who heroically raised the Titanic, discovers the wreckage of Vixen 03. But two deadly canisters are missing. They're in the hands of a terrorist group. Their lethal mission: to sail a battleship seventy-five miles up the Potomac and blast Washington, D.C., to kingdom come. Only Dirk can stop them.
The President's secret task force develops the ultimate defensive weapon. At its core: byzanium, a radioactive element so rare sufficient quantities have never been found. But a frozen American corpse on a desolate Soviet mountainside, a bizarre mining accident in Colorado, and a madman's dying message lead DlRK PITT~ to a secret cache of byzanium. Now he begins his most thrilling, daunting mission -- to raise from its watery grave the shipwreck of the century!
Dirk Pitt rides a tidal wave of intrigue in this classic Cussler. On an isolated Greek island, a World War I fighter plane attacks a modern U.S. Air Force base--a mysterious saboteur preys on an American scientific expedition--and Dirk Pitt plays a deadly game of hunter and hunted with the elusive head of an international smuggling ring.
