“Pitt has been compared to other popular adventure heroes, but Cussler has created a one-of-a-kind …
DRAGON
Hideki Suma: The blue-eyed multimillionaire was the most powerful ultranationalist in Japan—with a plan to destroy any nation that dared to thwart the rise of his new empire …
Moro Kamatori: The collector of antique weapons also collected human heads on Suma’s private island, where he would make his most pleasurable hunt of all—for Dirk Pitt!
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“From one hair-raising scene to another,
“Cussler once again bounces to the top of his field by combining current events with an active imagination. … A fine writer. … A spectacular ending.”
“The master storyteller of undersea adventures… has provided a superb story… Thrill-per-page momentum … [an] incredible finale.”
Dirk Pitt® Adventures by Clive Cussler
Flood Tide
Shock Wave
Inca Gold
Sahara
Dragon
Treasure
Cyclops
Deep Six
Pacific Vortex
Night Probe!
Vixen 03
Raise the
Iceberg
The Mediterranean Caper
By Clive Cussler and Craig Dirgo
The Sea Hunters
Clive Cussler and Dirk Pitt Revealed
From the NUMA Files by Clive Cussler with Paul Kemprecos
Serpent
Blue Gold
Available from POCKET BOOKS
POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
Copyright © 1990 by Clive Cussler Enterprises, Inc.
First Pocket Books printing July 1991
Dennings’ Demons
THE DEVIL CLUTCHED a bomb in his left hand, a pitchfork in his right, and smirked impishly. He might have appeared menacing if it wasn’t for the exaggerated eyebrows and the half-moon eyes. They gave him more of a sleepy gremlin look than the fiendish expression expected from the ruler of hell. Yet he wore the customary red suit and sprouted regulation horns and long forked tail. Oddly, the clawlike toenails of his feet were curled over a gold bar that was labeled
In black letters above and below the circled figure on the fuselage of the B-29 bomber were the words
The aircraft, named for its commander and crew, sat like a forlorn ghost under a sheet of rain driven southward over the Aleutian Islands by a wind from the Bering Sea. A battery of portable lights illuminated the area beneath the open belly of the plane, casting wavering shadows from the ground crew on the glistening aluminum body, Flashes of lightning added to the haunting scene, stabbing the darkness of the airfield with disturbing frequency.
Major Charles Dennings leaned against one of the twin tires of the starboard landing gear, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his leather flight jacket, and observed the activity around his aircraft. The entire area was patrolled by armed MP’s and K-9 sentries. A small camera crew recorded the event. He watched with uneasy trepidation as the obese bomb was delicately winched into the modified bomb bay of the B-29. It was too large for the bomber’s ground clearance and had to be hoisted out of a pit.
During his two years as one of the top bomber pilots in Europe, with over forty missions to his credit, he had never laid eyes on such a monstrosity. He saw it as a gigantic overinflated football with nonsensical boxed fins on one end. The round ballistic casing was painted a light gray, and the clamps that held it together around the middle looked like a huge zipper.
Dennings felt menaced by the thing he was to carry nearly three thousand miles. The Los Alamos scientists who assembled the bomb at the airstrip had briefed Dennings and his crew the previous afternoon. A motion picture
