Sahara

Dr. Eva Rojas: On a beach near Alexandria two men brutally attacked her. Saved by Dirk Pitt, she realized that she had stumbled upon a terrible secret…

Yves Massarde: Known as the Scorpion, he made clandestine deals to get rid of other countries’ toxic waste— and turned the Western Sahara into a death factory…

General Zateb Kazim: His pact with Massarde made him a multimillionaire in one of the world’s poorest nations. He would do anything— and kill anyone— to protect Massarde’s empire…

Admiral James Sandecker: The Chief of the National Underwater and Marine Agency sent Pitt to find the source of a spreading tide of poison— and gave him a remarkable weapon to do it…

Hala Kamil: With her black eyes and ebony hair, the Egyptian Secretary General of the U.N. was a rare beauty. But a love affair had compromised her— and placed Dirk Pitt in danger…

Sahara By Clive Cussler

THE GAUNTLET

April 2, 1865

Richmond, Virginia

She seemed to float above the ghostly evening mist like a menacing beast rising from the primeval ooze. Her low silhouette stood black and ominous against the backdrop of the trees along the shoreline. Shadowy, phantom-like images of men moved across her decks under the eerie yellow glow of lanterns as moisture trickled down her gray, sloping sides and dripped into the sluggish current of the James River.

The Texas tugged at her dockside mooring line as impatiently as a hound about to be unleashed for the hunt. Thick iron shutters covered her gunports and the 6-inch armor on her casemate showed no markings. Only a white and red battle ensign atop the mast behind her smokestack, hanging limp in the damp atmosphere, signified her as a warship of the Confederate States Navy.

To landsmen she looked squat and ugly, but to sailors there was a character and grace about her that was unmistakable. She was tough, and she was deadly, the last of her peculiar design that set sail on a cruise to extinction after a brief but enduring burst of glory.

Commander Mason Tombs stood on the forward deck, pulled a blue bandana from a pocket, and dabbed at the dampness that seeped inside the collar of his uniform. The loading was going slow, too slow. The Texas would need every minute of available darkness for her escape to the open sea. He watched anxiously as his crew swore and strained while they manhandled wooden crates across a gangplank and down an open hatch on the deck. The crates seemed unusually heavy for containing the written records of the four-year-old government. They came from mule drawn wagons deployed near the dock that were strongly guarded by the battle-weary survivors of a Georgia infantry company.

Tombs turned an uneasy eye toward Richmond, only 2 miles to the north. Grant had broken Lee’s stubborn defense of Petersburg, and now the battered army of the South was retreating toward Appomattox and abandoning the Confederate capital to the advancing Union forces. The evacuation was underway and the city was filled with confusion as riots and pillaging swept the streets. Explosions shook the ground and flames burst into the night as warehouses and arsenals filled with supplies of war were put to the torch.