Adventure

Naples, FL 2023 - #6 - fast-paced adventure with these 4 undersea warriors.....I always include a Cusssler book in my vacation book pile......always fun, occasionally gripping with tension (small manned submersibles in jeopardy underwater!!). This time, an ocean floor anomaly sparks scientific interest, with the NUMA team right in the thick of things. And modern technology has finally crept into this series.....cell phones,, touch screens & the like! Kurt Austin maneuvers out of scrape after scrape, saves the pretty lady, and manages to cloud over evil plans of an arch-enemy & a despot. Slightly better than some! Glad for the ride! ( )

SPOILERS

There is not a lot of history in this book. It's mostly about Technology, Weapons of Mass Destruction and the like.

South of the Azore islands is a graveyard where many ships and planes have foundered and gone down in the ocean, and noone quite knows why.

Kurt is on board a NUMA boat heading to the Azores in order to particpate in a special race with high stakes for the winner. The object of this race is to test out a new submarine.

Kurt spots some smoke on the horizon - usually a sign of a ship going down - and the NUMA boat races to the rescue. Once at the sinking ship, he and some NUMA sailors must use guns to chase off some pirates and Kurt rescues the only survivor of the cargo ship that went down. The woman he rescued was the Captains wife. The captain and most of the crew died by being burnt from the inside out. Kurt wonders how that happened, and more importantly, why did it happen. The rest of the crew were killed by the pirates. Kurt recognizes the leader of the Pirates - a man named Andras - a man whom he had defeated about 10 to 12 years ago.

During the submarine race Joe and Kurt hear from another submarine that gets into trouble - it is being pulled towards a large cliff by unknown forces (Later found to be magnetism). The NUMA men go to the rescue and in doing so, they discover the underwater graveyard of ships and planes. They also find a cliff of stone with some very unusual properties.

When news of this magnetic anamoly gets out, the scientific world comes flooding in - as do the scientists.

NUMA takes charge of this science mission, but squabbles start breaking out between countries.

Kurt meets a new scientist - Katarina from Russia. They go on a date in the Azores, and while they are on their date, they are chased and shot at. They have to send their car over a cliff to get away from whomever is chasing them. While Kurt and Katarina are evading their wannabe killers, the scientists over the graveyard are kidnapped and abducted. Katarina is also eventually captured by the pirates.

The NUMA ship sails back to the Azores to find Kurt. Once Kurt is back on board the NUMA vessel, he discovers that his team members, Paul and Gamay Trout, were underwater in a submersible investigating the cargo ship that went down back at the beginning of the book. The one where the crew were cooked from the inside out. Their submersible is shot at by torpedos and the submersible is damaged. Paul and Gamay do eventually escape from the submersible but Paul has trouble and is found unconcious and when he is rescued, he is in a coma for several days. Someone does not want anyone to discover why the cargo ship was destroyed and sunk.

Kurt and Gamay and Dirk Pitt eventually come up with the idea of a laser of some kind that cooks humans from the inside out - someone is using a laser of enormous power. The cargo from the cargo ships was stolen but Dirk discovers from the ships owners that the cargo was something called YCBO - a man-made superconductor technology used in lasers and atom colliders (like the large one at CERN).

The YCBO was loaded into the Cargo ship at Freetown in Sierra Leone. Perhaps a place to start looking.

Djemma Garand the current dictator of Sierra Leone (one of the poorest nations in Africa and the world) decides that his country can no longer afford to keep paying the insurmountable debt that his country owes to the IMF, so he arbitrarily stops paying it.

He has hired a pirate named Andras. Andras arranges for 36 scientists to be gathered at a particular spot and then abducts them and takes them to Sierra Leone where they are put to work to help make the new weapon work. They are threatened with death if they do not do what they are told. One man who does resist is summarily shot and executed - just to prove the point.

Kurt and Joe are now on a deadline to find Andras before this new weapon/laser can be brought online. They eventually track Andras down to a ship called the Onyx (registered in Liberia - right next door to Sierra Leone).

The one thing about these new lasers is that they only work on line of sight and cannot follow the curve of the Earth. The higher up the emitter is, the longer the event horizon is.

BUT there is one way to bend a laser beam - by having another superconductor and magnets located exactly halfway between the emitter and the target. These magnets can pull the laser beam back down, so that it effectively turns a corner.

The race is then on to stop the weapons discharge before it hits its first target. The message leaks out that the first target will be Washington DC.

The ONYX ship (registered in Liberia) was found dead centre in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean - and away from all the major shipping routes. This ship can bend the Laser beam and DC can be burned and the people in DC can be burned and cooked from the inside out.

Kurt Austin has just a few hours to sneak aboard the ONYX and stop the magnet from bending the beam.

The US Navy is sent to Sierra Leone to try and bring down the weapon. Under the guise of ships and navy planes attacking on the surface, Paul and Gamay Trout are sent under water in their submersible to lay a bomb at the foot of the of the huge (and fake) oil rigs that holds up the emitter.

Their mission is successful - as is Kurt's mission to the Onyx - and this laser weapon is destroyed with just minutes to spare.

Despite all the techno-babble (as Jack O'Neill - from Stargate) calls it, I really enjoyed this novel. ( )

Cussler couldn't resist putting his heroes into a James Bond situation where the penultimate UBG over-thinks executing them, leading to an improbable escape that naturally dooms him in the end. The rest of the story is equally absurd, but fun...just like in Bond, a super villain crafts a weapon of inconceivable power that can wipe out entire cities.

I wish my library had more of this series on audiobook, I'd get them all. ( )

A ship sinks due to pirates and Kurt interviews. But this was no ordinary pirates since they sink the whole ship in such a short period. Normally they take the goods and run, but instead these methodically sink the ship as fast a possible. Then Kurt and Joe are in the middle of a underwater race when some sort of disturbance threatens to crash them into a large tower of rock, making a new discovery in the process. Yet, someone is watching Kurt's every move waiting for the right moment to strike. Someone Kurt has had previous dealings with long ago.

As usual the humor between Joe and Kurt is wonderful as is the other character interactions. I didn't like this particular story-line as much as other books I have read in the NUMA series. The ending felt too short. I can't put my finger on it, but it felt like something was missing. Regardless, I still enjoyed the book and it is a worthy addition to the "NUMA Files". ( )