Sahara

Cussler's ( Raise the Titanic ) durable hero Dirk Pitt returns with Al Giordino, his amiable hulk of a sidekick, to save mankind from a greedy industrialist in cahoots with a despot and to solve a few historical riddles along the way. Dirk meets beautiful Eva Rojas, a World Health Organization team member inspecting a mysterious epidemic that has struck in the Sahara, when he interrupts an attempt on her life. Then the National Underwater and Marine Agency sends Pitt and Giordino up the Niger on a gunboat to find the source of a toxin that causes red tide organisms to reproduce out of control, threatening to poison the oceans and deplete the earth's oxygen supply.