Deep Six (novel)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Deep Six

Hardcover 1st Edition
Author Clive Cussler
Cover artist Paul Bacon
Country United States
Language English
Series Dirk Pitt Novels
Genre(s) Adventure; Techno-thriller
Publisher Simon & Schuster
Publication date May 1984
Media type Print (Hardcover)
Pages 432 (Hardcover edition)
ISBN ISBN 0-671-50373-1
Preceded by Pacific Vortex!
Followed by Cyclops

Deep Six is an action-adventure novel by Clive Cussler published in the United States by Simon & Schuster in 1984. This is the 7th book featuring the author’s primary protagonist, Dirk Pitt.

Contents

[edit] Plot introduction

When a mysterious and extremely deadly poison spreads through the waters off the coast of Alaska killing everything it comes in contact with, including several scientists and members of the crew of a Coast Guard cutter, Dirk Pitt and his NUMA team are dispatched an attempt to find the source of the poison. When a member of his team dies a horrible death Pitt vows to take revenge on whoever was behind the poisoning. The trail leads him to a powerful and extremely wealthy Korean shipping company matriarch and while pursuing her Pitt uncovers a plot that could lead to the fall of the government of the United States.

[edit] Plot summary

Deep Six opens in 1966 aboard the refitted liberty ship The San Marino on its way from San Francisco to Auckland, New Zealand. The ship is carrying more than eight million dollars worth of titanium ingots as well as a mysterious passenger who goes by the name of Estelle Wallace. Wallace is in fact Arta Casilighio, a former bank teller at the Beverly-Wilshire bank who embezzled more than $120,000 and is making her getaway. Unfortunately for her and the rest of the crew a group of Korean seamen who came aboard as last-minute crew replacements have designs on the ship and her cargo and conveniently dispose of Wallace and the crew by dropping them over the side into the depths of the ocean.

The story flashes forward twenty-three years to the waters off of Augustine Island, Alaska where an extremely deadly poison is moving through the waters killing everything it comes in contact with. The poison comes to the notice of the authorities when the Coast Guard cutter Catawaba intercepts a derelict crab boat. When the men sent aboard discover that the entire crew has died horribly, bleeding from every orifice and their skin turning black, they attempt to flee the death ship and are themselves killed by the poison before they are successful.

It is later revealed that the symptoms of the mysterious poison are strikingly similar to those of a deadly biological weapon, called Nerve Agent S, developed by the Rocky Mountain Arsenal outside of Colorado as the ideal weapon for use on troops wearing gas masks and protective clothing. The agent clings to everything and is absorbed through the skin resulting in almost immediate death. The weapon was eventually discontinued by the Army because it was as deadly to the troops deploying it as it was to the enemy. While en route to be buried in the Nevada desert an entire boxcar carrying more than 1000 gallons of Nerve Agent S disappeared.

Dirk Pitt and his friend and Assistant Project Director Al Giordino are called away from their current project to assist the Environmental Protection Agency's Dr. Julie Mendoza in an effort to find the source of the poison in what is assumed must be a sunken ship. Pitt discovers that the liberty ship Pilottown is embedded into the shore of the island with only her stern exposed to the elements. They board her and discover the containers of the nerve agent but while they are attempting to recover the barrels the volcano on the island erupts causing the barrels to shift and inadvertently killing Dr. Mendoza when her biohazard suit is punctured and she's exposed to the poison. Pitt vows to get to the bottom of who was responsible for the poison being on the ship and to take his revenge for the death of Dr. Mendoza.

Pitt discovers information on the wreck that leads them to the Alhambra Iron and Boiler Company and from there turns to NUMA team members Hiram Yeager and St. Julien Perlmutter in his attempts to trace the Pilottown. They discover that the Pilottown has been part of a complicated web of insurance scams and piracy which saw her name changed several times from San Marino to Belle Chase and finally to Pilottown as her ownership changed several times through a number of bogus holding companies. Eventually they tie the ship to Bougainville Maritime Lines a powerful company owned by the ruthless and mysterious Madame Min Koryo Bougainville.

Bougainville and her grandson Lee Tong have entered into an audacious plan with the Soviet Union to engineer the kidnapping of the President of the United States, the Vice President, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the United States Senate, the next three men in the line of succession to the presidency, as part of a project code-named Huckleberry Finn. It is revealed that the Soviet economy is in ruins, a famine is spreading amongst the Eastern Bloc nations and the whole Eastern Bloc may be on the verge of collapse. The Soviets have devised a plan that calls for the President to undergo a top-secret Soviet mind control procedure, termed mind intervention, which uses a combination of an implanted microchip as well as injected memories from a brainwashed Soviet dissident and allow the Soviet government to control the President's thoughts without his knowledge. The other three men are kept in reserve as the procedure only has about a 60% success rate. In return for carrying out the abduction the Bougainvilles are too receive one billion dollars in gold which the Soviets intend to cheat them out of while unaware that the Bougainvilles intend to double-cross them as well.

When the disappearance of the President and the next three in the line of succession is discovered Secretary of State Douglas Oates, now the acting president, orders a cover-up of the disappearance while a massive search is under way to find the kidnapped men. Congresswoman Loren Smith, the on again, off again, lover of Dirk Pitt, who is on a fact-finding mission aboard a Soviet cruise liner off the coast of the United States inadvertently sees Speaker of the House Moran as he is being secreted aboard the cruise liner by a KGB agent. When the Soviets discover that she knows that Moran is aboard they kidnap her as well. Pitt discovers that Loren is missing and he and Giordino race to her aid but lose her when the Bougainvilles sink the Soviet liner as part of their double-cross.

Meanwhile, the President, now under control of the Soviets, returns to the White House and announces that while he was gone he was negotiating a secret disarmament agreement with the Soviet President and has agreed to loan them billions of dollars in hard currency which they may use to purchase food and previously banned American high-technology products. When he further announces his intention to pull the United States out of NATO and bring home all troops and missiles in Europe without the consent of Congress they announce their intention to meet to impeach him from office. The president sends in the Army to keep the Congress from meeting and it appears that the United States now has what the founding fathers feared worse, a dictator in the White House.

Using the data he obtained from Hiram Yeager and St. Julien Perlmutter Pitt determines that the secret lab where the Bougainvilles are hiding the President and the other captives is on a barge along the Mississippi River near New Orleans He and Giordino embark on unauthorized rescue mission with the aid of the local office of the FBI. When the agents are ambushed by Bougainville's security guards is up to Pitt and Giordino to rescue Loren, the Vice President, and the others. In a last-ditch effort to intercept the barge before it can be sunk at sea, Pitt commandeers the riverboat Stonewall Jackson and enlists the help of 40 members of the Sixth Louisiana Regiment of Confederate re-enactors. He hopes that these forty men and their smooth bore muskets as well as two Napoleon Canon firing improvised charges will be able to defeat the Bougainville's crew of stone cold killers armed with automatic weapons while he attempts a rescue.

RB

[edit] Characters in "Deep Six"

  • President Georgi Antonov - Soviet President and Communist Party Chairman who authorizes Project Huckleberry Finn.
  • Captain Melvin Belcheron - Captain of the riverboat Stonewall Jackson for more than 30 years.
  • Oskar Belkaya - Soviet dissident and artist whose brainwashed memories are transplanted into the brain of the President.
  • George Blackowl - Acting supervisor and advance agent for the president's movements. Blackowl was in charge on a night when the president was abducted.
  • Madame Min Koryo Bougainville - Matriarch of the Bougainville shipping dynasty she's eighty-nine years old weighs about 89 pounds and is confined to a wheelchair. When she was twelve her father sold her to a Frenchman who operated a small shipping line named René Bougainville. She bore him three sons but all three sons and her husband were killed during the Second World War leaving only her and one grandson to run the company. She is driven by a mad need for revenge against the Americans who killed her husband and her three sons during World War II.
  • Martin Brogan - Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
  • Sal Cassio - Private investigator who is attempting to find out what happened to Arta Casilighio/Estelle Wallace who was his daughter. He found out that she disappeared on the San Marino and he lets Pitt know that the money she stole finally showed up more than 20 years later in dribs and drabs at foreign banks. Casio joins forces with Pitt and attempt to kill Madame Bougainville.
  • Lt. Commander Amos Dover - Captain of the Coast Guard cutter Catawaba.
  • Dr. Raymond Edgeley - Head of Project Fathom the CIA program for mind intervention who uses his methods and project equipment to intercept the Soviet control over the President and feed them false data.
  • Sam Emmett - Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
  • Daniel Fossett - Presidential Chief of Staff.
  • Albert Giordino - Assistant Special Projects Director for the National Underwater and Marine Agency.
  • Lt. Ulysses S. Grant - Pilot of a four engine Navy reconnaissance plane who provides television coverage and commentary of the attempt to save the Vice President and Congresswoman Smith.
  • Ben Greenwald - Director of the Secret Service. Greenwald is killed when while rushing to a meeting following the abduction of the President he broadsides a street sweeper that was making a U-turn in front of his car.
  • Senator Marcus Larimer - President Pro Tem of the Senate. Larimer escapes with Congressman Moran and a KGB agent from the Bougainville laboratory but dies while trying to save people after the Russian cruise ship sinks.
  • Major Leroy LaRoche - travel agent, loving husband and father by day and commanding officer of the Sixth Louisiana Regiment of the Confederate States Army on the weekends.
  • Lt. Marty Lawrence - Catawaba officer in Amie Marie boarding party who dies mysteriously.
  • Oscar Lucas - Special Agent in charge of the Presidential Protection Division of the Secret Service.
  • Dr. Aleksei Lugovoy - Soviet representative to World Health Assembly, he is in fact a psychologist who specializes in the art of brainwashing. He is part of a plot between Madame Bougainville and the Soviet Union to kidnap the President of the United States, the Vice President, the Speaker of the House, and the President pro tem of the Senate (the leader of the United States and the next three men in line) and using a process called mind intervention brainwash them placing them under Soviet control.
  • Vincent Margolin - Vice President of the United States.
  • Dr. Julie Mendoza - Chairman of the regional emergency response team and a senior biochemical engineer for the Environmental Protection Agency. While attempting to recover the nerve agent from the Pilottown Mendoza is killed when the volcano erupts causing one of the drums to fall on her legs piercing her contamination suit and bringing her in contact with the nerve agent.
  • Alan Mercer - National Security Adviser.
  • General Clayton Metcalfe - Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
  • Congressman Alan Moran - Speaker of the House. Moran is described as described as manipulative, oily, and corrupt. After escaping from the Bougainville lab Moran attempts to manipulate the situation and assume the presidency before the Vice President can be rescued.
  • Ensign Pat Murphy - Catawaba officer in Amie Marie boarding party who dies mysteriously.
  • Douglas Oates - Secretary of State and the next in line to be president following the abductions of the next three men in the line of succession.
  • St. Julien Perlmutter - A giant of a man who weighs more than 400 pounds he's described as Santa Clause gone to seed. Perlmutter possesses what is acknowledged by experts as the finest collection of historical ship literature ever assembled.
  • Dirk Pitt - Special Projects Director for the National Underwater and Marine Agency.
  • Captain Yakov Pokofsky - Captain of the Soviet liner Leonid Andreyev on which the KGB is hiding Loren Smith, Congressman Moran, and Senator Miramar. The ship is later sunk as part of the Bougainville plot.
  • Vladimir Polevoi - Head of the Committee for State Security (KGB).
  • Admiral James Sandecker - Director of the National Underwater and Marine Agency
  • Jesse Simmons - Secretary of Defense.
  • Congresswoman Loren Smith - Second term congresswoman from the state of Colorado: she is also the on-again, off-again lover of Dirk Pitt.
  • Paul Surorov - KGB officer in charge of monitoring Dr. Lugovoy. Convinced that the project does not have the backing of the Soviet government Surorov throws a monkey wrench into the brainwashing plan when he breaks out of the lab with two of the subjects.
  • Jack Sutton - An actor who routinely does an impersonation of the president in TV commercials and on comedy shows.
  • Lt. Commander Isaac Thayer - Catawaba medical officer who quarantines the Amie Marie before also succumbing to the nerve agent.
  • Lee Tong - Grandson of Madame Bougainville. A graduate of the Wharton Business School he runs the Bougainville Maritime Line and its fleet of 138 cargo ships and tankers though he keeps to the background and it is not even listed as a director or employee of the company. He is primarily responsible for the dirty tricks department which built the base of the company.
  • Estelle Wallace (a.k.a. Arta Casilighio, is a teller at the Beverly-Wilshire bank who embezzles more than $128,000 after she discovered a passport under the seat of a Wilshire Boulevard bus that bore the name Estelle Wallace and a startling similarity in appearance to her own. She's making her getaway on the cargo freighter San Marino bound for Auckland New Zealand when it is hijacked by Korean sailors working for Bougainville Maritime.
  • Hiram Yeager - Computer guru for the National Underwater and Marine Agency known to a select few as Pinocchio because he can stick his nose into a vast number of computer networks without being detected.

[edit] Allusions to other works

The author quotes Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Arrow and the Song": "I shot arrow into the air, it fell to earth I know not where."

[edit] Literary significance and criticism

Like many works the action adventure and thriller genres Deep Six did not garner much attention from literary critics. It is however an important work in the continuing development of Clive Cussler as a writer as it shows how he has progressed from his first two books which contain simple plots to a more complicated plot in Raise the Titanic! to this work which contains multiple plot lines and more outlandish story elements. It is also his first work which contains a prologue a significant length set in the past that is later linked to the main story which will become a standardized part of his novel structures.

[edit] Allusions/references to actual history, geography and current science

In addition to the part of the story set in the fictional past the author references a number of actual historic people and events including:

[edit] Trivia

 Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.
  • The Coast Guard cutter Catawaba also appeared in the novel Iceberg.
  • One of the subplots is clearly influenced by the film The Manchurian Candidate.
  • Early in the story Cussler mentions the President and his successful merging of the United States and Canada into one nation which was the primary plot point in his novel Night Probe! This is the first and last time in this series at the merging of the two countries into the United States of Canada is mentioned.
  • A renowned car collector in his own right Clive Cussler frequently features cars from his collection in his novels, usually as part of the collection of his alter ego and hero Dirk Pitt. In Deep Six Cussler features a blue Talbot-Lago coupe with Saoutchik coach work. A 1921 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost with coach work by Park-Ward and an 1925 Isotta-Fraschini with a torpedo body by Sala are also mentioned.
  • The title of the book is also the title of a book written by fictional character Timothy McGee on the crime drama show NCIS

[edit] Release Details

v • d • e
Dirk Pitt Novels