Book Review – Clive Cussler’s “Cyclops”
Last night I finished reading Cyclops, the eighth book in Clive Cussler’s main series involving Dirk Pitt.
Cyclops continues after the events in Deep Six, though the two stories aren’t really connected with each other. The main reference point is when we’re reminded early in Cyclops that the current president of the United States was placed there because of the actions and sinister Russian plot in Deep Six. Otherwise, it’s business as usual for Dirk Pitt, Admiral Sandecker, Rudi Gunn and Al Giordino in this story.
Like most Clive Cussler novels, Cyclops begins with a prologue involving a mysterious incident at sea. This time around the incident involves a cargo ship named the Cyclops and its sudden sinking somewhere near the Bahamas in 1918. A large rogue wave is the suspected culprit, but as one of the characters discovers, the cargo for the ship may be more mysterious than what caused its sudden demise.
Fast forward to today, October of 1989.
Dirk Pitt, hero and special projects director for NUMA, the National Underwater and Marine Agency, is off the coast of south Florida and competing in a windsurfing race. He’s working his way to the front of the pack and going for the win when suddenly a massive blimp coasts overhead. The airship appears to be pilotless and drifting towards a resort hotel on the beach.
Dirk abandons the race and grabs one of the blimp’s mooring lines and hangs on, trying everything in his power to climb into the control cabin and shut down the engines. He’s knocked back into the water but still holds one of the ropes. As the airship arrives at the beach, hundreds of shocked onlookers come to Dirk’s aide and together they stop the blimp before it crashes into the hotel. Dirk is able to climb inside and shut down the engines. The sight inside the control cabin is rather horrific as three dead people are still strapped to their seats.
The president of the United States is out on a golf course when he’s surprised by a man disguised as his usual golf caddy. The man delivers the president news about a secret organization that managed to not only sneak scientists to the Moon after Apollo 17, the last manned lunar mission by NASA, but the scientists have built a colony and been living there for the past seven or eight years. The secret lunar colony is simply known as the “Jersey Colony.”
The scientists at the Jersey Colony are preparing to end their experiments and return home to Earth, but it’s known that the Soviet space program is preparing to make their first manned lunar landing in the very near future. If the Soviets are aware of the secret research facility, they’ll likely seize the place with force and steal all the research material that was created over the years, killing the American scientists and gaining significant scientific knowledge in the process.
The mysterious man disappears and the president tasks an old friend to investigate the Jersey Colony. They need to know everything about the colony and the Russians’ intentions should they discover it. It’s just rather difficult as the people involved with the Jersey Colony are extremely secretive and have penetrated many areas of government, so the president only has a few people he could trust with leading the investigation.
It turns out that the airship that Dirk Pitt helped stop belonged to a wealthy tycoon named Raymond LeBaron. Raymond’s wife, Jessie, invites Dirk Pitt to her lavish home once word of his heroic action spreads, but Dirk is turned off by her sour attitude. He reluctantly meets with her again during a meeting with Admiral James Sandecker, the chief of NUMA.
The bodies found in the airship had been examined, and Raymond LeBaron was confirmed as not being one of the deceased people. Somebody had switched the crew members and sent the airship on a return course to the U.S. with three dead bodies. We later learn that the bodies were actually those of Soviet cosmonauts who died in space, and the bodies carried a secret message to the U.S. president from Fidel Castro, the leader of Cuba.
Admiral Sandecker temporarily releases Dirk from NUMA so that he can help Jessie find her missing husband. Their goal is to pilot the airship and fly it along the same path that the treasure seeking Raymond was flying when he mysteriously disappeared. Dirk agrees to help Jessie and he brings along Al Giordino and Rudi Gunn. Jessie LeBaron also joins the crew as the pilot of the airship.
The flight departs south Florida and the airship approaches the Cuban coastline. They find the shipwreck of the Cyclops as a hurricane bears down on their location. Things become worse as a Cuban helicopter attempts to shoot down the airship. Al Giordino destroys the helicopter with a rocket, but the damage and deteriorating weather conditions have taken their toll on the airship. The blimp crash lands in the tropical waters, injuring Rudi Gunn and Al Giordino.
An underwater investigation was already part of the plans, so after the blimp lands in the water everybody uses scuba gear and descends to the wreckage of the Cyclops. They search the ship and it’s discovered that whatever mysterious cargo was within her hold has already been taken by somebody else. The only remains of the previous expedition is the dead diver in the cargo hold still wearing his modern diving gear.
Rudi, Al, Dirk and Jessie surface and climb into an emergency raft. They have to hang on for dear life as Al drives the boat towards shore while trying to avoid the mountain-sized waves and punishing wind from the hurricane. The make it to an island but a wave crashes them against the shore, destroying their emergency raft. Unfortunately, the island that they land on has a secret Soviet communication facility. They’re taken prisoner and it’s revealed that Raymon LeBaron is alive and cooperating with the Soviets.
Meanwhile, one of the Russian probes was able to transmit images from the back side of the Moon before the probe was destroyed by scientists at the Jersey Colony. The images are analyzed and astronauts are clearly visible standing on the lunar surface. Now the secret is out about the Jersey Colony, and the Russians advance their planned lunar landing mission. They also switch landing spots and swap most of the cosmonauts for Soviet soldiers.
The Jersey Colony receives warning about the approaching Soviet soldiers. The scientists have a few weapons and are ultimately able to use surprise tactics to defeat the Soviets. The scientists then gather their research material and depart the Moon for the Space Shuttle Gettysburg currently in Earth orbit. The scientists board the shuttle and prepare to return to Earth and receive a hero’s welcome.
In Cuba, Dirk Pitt, Rudi Gunn and Al Giordino are brutally interrogated while in captivity. The villain carrying out the punishment is none other than Foss Gly, an American thug who tried to help Canada in Night Probe! It turns out that he did not die from a plane crash as originally thought, and now the sadist is helping the Soviets down in Cuba.
Dirk and his companions are beaten, but they’re not out of the game quite yet. It turns out that the compound where they’re being held captive was not designed as a prison. It’s rather easy for Dirk to later escape from his room and sneak around the structure. He finds Rudi and Al in a nearby room, but neither of them are in any condition to escape. Dirk leaves them behind, pledging to return for them soon.
Dirk makes his way out of the compound and reaches the shore. There aren’t any boats or seaworthy vessels, so in one of his more famous moves, he attaches a small motor to an old bathtub and uses that to sail north. The vessel is small enough to evade most radar and Dirk is later rescued by an American submarine.
Back in the Soviet Union, the Russians aren’t going to sit back as the scientists from the Jersey Colony not only kill the Russian soldiers but also return to the U.S. with their research material. They conceive a plan to use the advanced communication facility off the coast of Cuba and basically trick the Space Shuttle Gettysburg into landing at Havana instead of Cape Canaveral.
Knowing about the Soviet plan to capture the Space Shuttle, and wanting to rescue his friends, Dirk Pitt helps lead a rescue operation back into Cuba. The CIA invasion force battles for the Soviet compound and Jessie, Rudi and Al are rescued from the enemy forces, but Raymond LeBaron is killed in the gunfire. Foss Gly is also mortally wounded and dies when Dirk Pitt returns for his revenge.
The Soviet communication center is destroyed and the Space Shuttle Gettysburg is able to avoid landing in Cuba and make an emergency landing at the Key West Naval Air Station.
But the action in Cuba is just beginning.
When riding their watercraft back across the water, Jessie LeBaron “kidnaps” Dirk and forces him to head to Havana, Cuba. They land on the island, steal a Cuban uniform, and then with the help of a local taxi driver, they make their way to the island nation’s capital city. Once there they meet with more CIA agents hiding in the American part of the Swiss Embassy.
It turns out that the Soviets are in the process of carrying out a massive terrorist attack in Havana, with the explosion projected to kill thousands of people including Fidel and Raul Castro. Once the Castros are killed, the Soviets plan on installing a Soviet agent as the new leader of Cuba.
The people originally believe that the Soviets are planning on using a nuclear bomb to level the city and kill everybody. Dirk pieces together the evidence and realizes that the attack will come from three cargo ships moored in the harbor, each of them filled with highly flammable / explosive cargoes. When the ships are simultaneously detonated, the explosion from conventional munitions will surpass that of a nuclear origin.
Jessie LeBaron heads out to warn the Castros of the impending attack (and to carry out her secret mission of passing along the U.S. president’s message of goodwill), and Dirk Pitt leads a mission to move the cargo ships out of the harbor. They partially succeed, and when the Soviets detonate the explosives, only a fraction of people are killed compared to what should have happened. More importantly, Fidel and Raul survive the explosion.
Cyclops ends with Dirk Pitt conducting a salvage mission based on a clue said by a dying Raymond LeBaron. It turns out that Raymond LeBaron teamed with a partner, and the two of them located the shipwreck of the Cyclops and found the incredible golden statue in the cargo hold. Raymond became greedy and killed his partner, keeping the discovery to himself. He then hid the statue in Havana’s harbor on the location of the Maine‘s original sinking. The goal was to hide the statue until there was a way to smuggle it into the U.S. without being charged massive income tax penalties. Unfortunately, right after he ditched the statue in the harbor, Cuba went through a revolution and Fidel Castro came to power. The island was locked down and the statue was trapped right there in the harbor for many years.
Fidel Castro granted Dirk Pitt salvage rights in the harbor, and down there he found the golden statue. It was raised and taken to a museum in Washington, D.C.
So is Cyclops any good?
Yes and no.
The ship mystery in the prologue was interesting as always with these Cussler books, and I loved the science fiction element with the Jersey Colony. In addition to that, the action in Cuba was pretty interesting.
When it comes to the actual story though, it seems like Clive Cussler fell asleep when writing Cyclops. The dialogue is corny throughout most of the book (especially conversations involving the president and anything happening in space with the Jersey Colony), some of the scenarios are either lame or greatly simplified (anything regarding the Space Shuttle and the Soviet soldiers in Cuba), and some of the characters aren’t used anywhere near their full potential.
Don’t expect to see a whole lot of Admiral Sandecker, Rudi Gunn or Al Giordino in Cyclops. Sandecker is lightly scattered in a couple of sections, and Gunn and Giordino are pretty much only a factor from the moment the airship leaves Florida to their capture off the coast of Cuba.
It was great that we saw the return of Foss Gly from Night Probe!, but he really didn’t do much of anything here in Cyclops. A villain of his magnitude deserved much more action and a better death scene (He really did die this time, didn’t he?) in this book.
Cyclops is an easy read and fans of Clive Cussler’s books will find themselves right at home with this one. You’ll benefit more from the story if you read Night Probe! before this one, but it’s not mandatory. Most of the Cussler books are loosely connected to each other and not really direct sequels that leave readers lost if they’ve skipped a book or two in the series.
