Book Review – Clive Cussler’s “Deep Six”
Last night I finished reading Clive Cussler’s Deep Six, the seventh book in the popular Dirk Pitt series.
Deep Six begins in 1966 as a woman named Estelle Wallace boards a ship named the San Marino. The San Marino is an old Liberty ship that’s been reconfigured for civilian use. There are just two problems with Estelle Wallace’s journey: 1) Her name is really Arta Casilighio, and 2) the ship really isn’t sailing from San Francisco, California, to Auckland, New Zealand.
The fact that Arta Casilighio goes by a different name and recently embezzled the bank where she used to work doesn’t really matter. It’s just the woman’s bad luck that she picked the wrong vessel to make her grand escape from the pursuing law enforcement. The woman is drugged and thrown overboard with the rest of the ship’s crew, and the criminals hijack the San Marino and its valuable cargo. The ship then sails off the radar and supposedly becomes lost at sea.
Fast forward to today.
The Coast Guard cutter Catawaba intercepts a derelict crab fishing boat called the Amie Marie off the coast of Augustine Island, Alaska. The Catawaba‘s captain sends a small party over to the fishing boat, and the sailors discover that the crew of the Amie Marie is all dead. They’re still positioned at their last duty station.
Moments later, the Catawaba‘s boarding party fails to respond to their captain. The captain sends over a medic to investigate the fishing boat, and the medic makes a startling discovery — the Catawaba‘s boarding party is already dead from an unknown virus. The medic feels the virus start to affect him, so he radios the captain and lists all the symptoms as the virus quickly kills himself, too. The area is quarantined and an investigation is launched to discover the point of origin of the deadly poison.
Meanwhile, Dirk Pitt, the special projects director at NUMA (the National Underwater and Marine Agency) and his assistant, Al Giordino, are finishing a project involving the Cumberland, a Union frigate sunk during the Civil War. Dr. Julie Mendoza, an agent with the Environmental Protection Agency, visits the site of the shipwreck and takes Dirk and Al with her on a special assignment to Alaska.
Upon arriving off the coast of Alaska, Pitt and Giordino run underwater search patterns for a missing ship believed to be carrying the deadly poison. EPA agents periodically take water samples and they determine which general direction to head to locate the source of the spillage. Pitt, thinking a step ahead, analyzes a satellite map and determines that they ship they’re seeking is actually buried on a nearby coastline. It’s nearly perfectly camouflaged, but there are slight traces of it on the satellite map.
Sure enough, a ship named the Pilottown is discovered lying on the coast and almost completely covered by volcanic ash. Pitt, Giordino, Dr. Mendoza and some scientists enter one of the cargo holds and locate the barrels of poison that originated from a top secret government laboratory. One of the barrels had a leak, and water was slowly running through the cargo hold and out into the sea. That leaking poison was responsible for the deaths of not only some people but thousands of marine life including fish and birds.
Everything seems fine until a nearby volcano triggers an avalanche and sends the people fleeing out of the ship. Dr. Mendoza is injured in the process and exposed to the deadly poison, and she dies within a couple of moments. Dirk Pitt is now on a personal vendetta to find the people responsible for the fate of the Pilottown and its deadly cargo.
While on board the Pilottown, Pitt noticed that most of the ship’s identification numbers were missing. He found a serial number on a piece of machinery and traced it back to a factory in Charleston, South Carolina. The factory stopped making nautical equipment a long time ago, but according to the factory’s records, that particular part was installed on a different ship.
Back in Washington, D.C., the President of the United States along with Vice President Vincent Margolin, Speaker of the House Congressman Alan Moran and Senate Pro Tempore Senator Marcus Larimer, take a cruise on the presidential yacht, Eagle, down the Potomac River. The Soviet Union is currently experiencing an economic downturn, and the U.S. president believes that he can offer the Eastern Bloc countries an economic aide package in exchange for them turning their backs on the Soviets.
Unfortunately, those talks never take place.
On the first night of the cruise, the yacht is docked for the night and a heavy fog bank envelops the ship. A little while later the Secret Service agents on guard duty discover that nobody is on board the yacht. The president is missing!
NUMA is quickly brought into action, and Admiral James Sandecker has Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino search for the missing presidential yacht. Taking a few factors into account, Pitt deduces that the yacht must be several hundred miles downstream. Naturally, he’s correct and the Eagle is found in a deep spot on the bottom of the river. On board the sunken yacht are the murdered crew except for the VIP passengers. The president is still missing.
It turns out that the president along with Margolin, Moran and Larimer were kidnapped in an elaborate plot involving the Soviets. In a plot resembling something close to The Manchurian Candidate, the Russians use a secret laboratory and successfully implant a memory control device into the president’s brain. They analyze his brain waves and are able to control the man’s thoughts.
Meanwhile, the other elected leaders in Washington go ballistic from the kidnapping, and Secretary of State Douglas Oates steps up and assumes the role of president until things are sorted out. In addition to ordering a full investigation into the president’s disappearance, he has Jack Sutton, an actor who routinely does an interpretation of the president for television shows, act as the president for the media. He has Sutton stay at the president’s ranch in New Mexico and do some farm work for the media, covering for the missing president. This buys some time for them to find the real president.
Congresswoman Loren Smith of Colorado, Dirk Pitt’s off and on girlfriend, is on a fact-finding mission on board the Soviet cruise liner Leonid Andreyev when she witnesses a helicopter arrive on the ship one night. Loren notices what looks like Congressman Moran being taken off the helicopter and transferred onto the ship. She calls her secretary back in Washington to confirm the congressman’s whereabouts, but before her secretary can respond Loren is also kidnapped.
Loren’s secretary is able to reach Dirk Pitt and tell him the news, and Pitt and Giordino disguise themselves and board the Leonid Andreyev while it’s docking at a Caribbean island. They search the ship and locate Loren Smith along with Congressman Moran and Senator Larimer being held captive by the KGB. The members of Congress are all freed and everybody stays in Dirk and Al’s cabin while they figure out the next part of the escape plan. The Soviets on board the ship are suspicious and conduct a search of the missing prisoners, and time is running out until they’re all discovered.
A bomb is detonated near the cruise liner’s fuel tanks, engulfing the ship in flames and striking a crippling blow to the Leonid Andreyev. Many people are killed between the intense flames and smoke inhalation. Dirk, Al and the gang make their way topside and Dirk and Al help other passengers escape from the ship before it capsizes off the coast of Cuba. When the ship nears the tipping point, they all jump into the water and hang on to anything that floats. It’s a spectacular sequence of events from the bomb blast to the U.S. navy rescuing survivors from the water.
Senator Larimer dies from a heart attack while swimming away from the ship. A navy helicopter rescues Congressman Alan Moran, and a rescue boat pulls Loren Smith and Al Giordino from the water. When it’s Dirk’s turn to be rescued, the helpful seaman reveals himself to be Lee Tong, grandson of Madame Min Koryo Bougainville and the mastermind behind the evil actions in this story. He nearly kills Dirk, sends Al back into the Caribbean Sea, and kidnaps Loren Smith. Tong disappears with his new hostage as Dirk and Al are ultimately rescued by the Navy and taken to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay.
Back in the U.S., just as the media discovers that there’s a stand-in for the U.S. president, the real president suddenly appears back in the White House. It’s never explained how he returned, just the fact that he’s back and he’s the one in charge again. But as people see, the president isn’t his normal self. He’s suddenly much more sympathetic to the Soviet Union and he uses the military to stop all meetings of Congress. As the president uses executive powers and act more and more like a dictator, the other leaders come to a frightening conclusion and believe that the president is acting under Soviet mind control.
Fighting for Loren Smith, Dirk Pitt is more determined than ever to find and rescue the woman before it’s too late. By now Dirk and the government know about the secret Soviet laboratory that was located on a small river near the coastline of South Carolina. And of course, the laboratory barge has since been relocated to a new location. They have to determine where the barge was most likely taken within a radius of about a thousand miles.
While the government agents comb every river and estuary north and south of South Carolina, Pitt deduces that the tugboat and barge actually took a canal across northern Florida and entered the Gulf of Mexico. Using the names of boats associated with the Bougainville’s (the ships are all named after small towns), Pitt believes that the barge is actually close to the Bougainville’s home base near New Orleans, Louisiana. He and Giordino jump onto a jet and head to Louisiana to save the day.
Naturally, Pitt’s guess is correct and with the help of the FBI, they locate the Bougainville’s laboratory barge. It’s a trap though and heavily armed men attack them, wounding most of the FBI agents. A tugboat pulls the barge and it heads for deep water. Lee Tong intends of scuttling the barge, killing Loren Smith and Vice President Vincent Margolin. But as they creep closer to the safety of open water, a most unusual vessel gives them chase.
It’s an old fashioned paddle steamer riverboat! Pitt and Giordino are on board the 19th century ship along with about forty volunteer re-enactors from the Sixth Louisiana Regiment. The Confederate troops strike back and use Civil War era cannons and muskets to attack the armed tugboat. There’s a mighty battle as the Confederacy ultimately claims victory over Bourgainville’s men. Dirk Pitt enters the barge, kills Lee Tong, and rescues Loren Smith and Vincent Margolin.
Back in Washington, Speaker of the House Alan Moran is about to take the oath of office and become president when Vice President Margolin makes his grand entrance. Moran’s plans are foiled and it’s Margolin who becomes the next president.
A little while later, Dirk Pitt and Sal Casio, a private investigator and father of the late Arta Casilighio / Estelle Wallace track Madame Min Koryo Bougainville to her residence in one of the towers at the World Trade Center. Her security guards are disabled and the two men confront the woman in her apartment. Madame Bougainville manages to kill Sal Casio with her advanced security system, but she misses Dirk Pitt. He disables the security and takes the woman prisoner. Instead of taking her to the police department (knowing that she’ll flee the country as soon as she posts bail), he instead pushes her wheelchair down an empty elevator shaft, killing the woman.
Deep Six ends as Dirk Pitt and Loren Smith plan on spending a week together at an expensive hotel there in New York City.
So is Deep Six any good?
To me, Deep Six doesn’t feel like the standard Clive Cussler action-adventure novel.
Deep Six starts out great with the mysterious San Marino ship and then with Dirk and Al locating the Pilottown ship off the coast of Alaska, but the story drops from there. The relatively simple kidnapping of the president and next three men in the chain of command seemed to be a little too simple. It’s extremely doubtful that criminals such as Lee Tong could make their way onto the ship let alone be part of an elaborate plan that involved a double of the ship taking the place of the Eagle. It’s like Cussler needed an easy way out for this part of the story.
The story involving brainwashing the president and the other men was straight out of The Manchurian Candidate. That whole segment of Deep Six and everything related to it should have been replaced with a more original story.
Was it just me, or is there a huge plot hole when the “real” president suddenly reappears back in Washington, D.C.? Since when would somebody as important as the president be able to appear out of nowhere without anybody being suspicious or trying to figure out where he’s been hiding for the past few days? Again, this part of the novel is just poor storytelling, something that’s definitely out of place in a Clive Cussler book.
The Soviet cruise liner Leonid Andreyev was a highlight of Deep Six. Cussler is in his prime talking about ships, and this segment is possibly the best part of the book. It’s nothing short of spectacular and horrific when the bomb is detonated and the cruise ship goes up in flames before ultimately capsizing. It’s just too bad that this event doesn’t occur until later in Deep Six.
Dirk Pitt rarely guesses wrong (this gets old after a while), and the conclusion between the steam powered riverboat and the tugboat was corny but amusing. It was entertaining reading about the Confederate re-enactors using their cannon and muskets to battle and seize the enemy tugboat.
To me, Deep Six just doesn’t seem like it fits with the other Dirk Pitt books. Cussler seemed to be more focused with re-telling The Manchurian Candidate than giving an original story starring the special projects director for NUMA. Throw in the fact that there was no deep sea salvaging or exploring as implied by the book’s title, Deep Six, and this book for the most part feels like a waste of time. A few parts of the book are entertaining and classic Clive Cussler, but as a whole this book is a rare miss.
Deep Six is a great book to borrow from the library. Read this one once and then move on to the next book in the series. Don’t bother with adding this to your collection unless you’re one of those who wants to collect every single book in a series.
