Book Review – Clive Cussler’s “Dragon”
Dragon, the tenth book in Clive Cussler’s main series of novels, takes readers into a dark organization in Japan that aims to blackmail the world through nuclear terrorism.
The story of Dragon begins on August 6, 1945, as a nuclear-armed B-29 Superfortress nicknamed Dennings’ Demons takes off from an airbase on Shemya Island, Alaska, and heads towards Japan. Their primary target was the industrial section in the city of Osaka.
An engine problem developed in one of the four engines that powered the bomber, and the aircraft had to fly at a lower altitude. As Dennings’ Demons approached the coast of Japan and begin climbing to its bombing altitude, the bomber was jumped and shot down by a Japanese Zero fighter aircraft. The nuclear bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean, and later that day a B-29 named Enola Gay made history as it dropped the first nuclear bomb to be used in combat. World War II ended on August 15, six days after a second city, Nagasaki, was attacked with an atomic bomb.
Fast forward to October of 1993.
The Narvik, a Norwegian passenger-cargo ship, is cruising southeast of Japan in the Pacific Ocean and discovers a derelict Japanese car carrier ship. The Japanese ship, the Divine Star, is listing and slightly damaged after surviving a typhoon. It’s going to sink if nothing is done to correct the water pouring into the ship. The crew of the Narvik want to board the Divine Star and try to prevent it from sinking. If they can do so then the payout for salvaging such a ship, especially one like that packed with brand new cars, would be tremendous.
A salvage crew boards the Divine Star, and they’re puzzled why the interior of the ship is in such good condition. It’s as if the crew suddenly ran from their posts and abandoned the ship. Pieces of the mystery materialize as crew members examine the cars and begin to get tremendously sick. The sickness is overpowering and men begin to fall. As one security guard is dying, he pulls out his pistol and begins shooting randomly at the cars, taking out his anger with a few gunshots. One of those bullets strikes home and the Divine Star is obliterated in a nuclear explosion. The explosion also wipes out the Narvik, sending the Norwegian ship plunging to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
Several miles away is the Invincible, a British oceanographic research vessel. The Invincible recently launched an underwater exploration vehicle nicknamed Old Gert onto a mission to the sea floor. On board the Old Gert are Craig Plunkett, the vehicle’s chief engineer and pilot, Dr. Raul Salazar, a marine geologist, and Stacy Fox, an underwater photographer. The three of them become trapped on the ocean floor as the nuclear explosion heavily damages the Invincible and quickly sends it into the depths of the Pacific Ocean.
Recognizing the dire problem, the crew of the Old Gert try to jettison their weights and float back to the surface. That fails as part of the vessel was filled with water and the rest of it was not buoyant enough to float back to the surface. The crew is doomed and it’s just a matter of time before they suffocate from a lack of breathable air.
As the crew breathes its last few breaths of air along comes another underwater vehicle on the sea bed. This vehicle is nicknamed Big John and is being driven by Dirk Pitt, the famed Special Projects Director for the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA). He successfully rescues the crew of Old Gert by transporting the entire vessel to NUMA’s secret underwater research station, a place nicknamed Soggy Acres.
Nobody is safe yet.
Although Soggy Acres is an incredibly strong underwater research station designed to withstand the incredible water pressure at those depths, the structure was not designed to withstand a major geological disturbance such as a landslide. One of the geologists stationed at Soggy Acres warns Dirk Pitt of the imminent danger to the research station. While the nuclear explosion occurred on the ocean’s surface, shock waves still travelled underwater and caused seismic pressure on the ocean’s floor. Cracks start appearing in the structure and it’s just a matter of time before the place is crushed flatter than a pancake, destroying everything caught inside the research station.
Dirk Pitt orders for the immediate evacuation of Soggy Acres. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue, but the research station has three extra people. The emergency submersibles cannot carry that much extra weight. Al Giordino, Dirk’s best friend and assistant at NUMA, pilots one of the submarines while almost everybody else boards the second one. Dirk elects to remain behind along with one of the crew of the Old Gert, and they’ll wait for one of the submarines to return from the surface. Al knows this is a suicide, but he and the other submarine race to the surface, hoping there’s enough time to descend back to the research station to rescue the last two people. That hope is lost as the two submarines leave and an avalanche crushes Soggy Acres, destroying the research station in a massive blow.
Of course, Dirk Pitt is not dead. You should know that by now. Dirk and the other scientist climbed into Big John and were in the lockout chamber when the crushing waves rushed into the research station. They were able to use the vessel’s manipulator arms to escape the wreckage and begin driving uphill. They reach the top of an underwater summit and Al’s submarine is able to help Big John float to the surface. The vessel is only able to float so high, and Dirk and the other man are forced to abandon ship and swim the last hundred feet or so to the surface.
That’s just a small part of the action in Dragon.
The heart of Dragon lies with a Japanese leader named Hideki Suma and his secret project named “Kaiten Project.” Using an underground command center on an island off the coast of Honshu, Suma plans on using nuclear blackmail against the United States, Soviet Union and other countries to establish a solid economic future for the country of Japan. If those superpowers refuse to cooperate, Suma plans on detonating a series of small nuclear weapons throughout the countries, not killing society but rather creating massive electromagnetic fields, crippling the infrastructure by destroying every electronic device from cars to factories to household items.
As Suma smuggles his nuclear car bombs into the United States, Ichiro Tsuboi, “. . . the chief director of Kanoya Securities, the largest security company in the world,” tries to bully his way with the U.S. Congress. Congresswoman Loren Smith and Senator Mike Diaz are Tsuboi’s chief opponents as they blast his plans for radically unfair business practices in favor of Japan corporations.
While this is taking place, Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino are recruited by Admiral James Sandecker to cooperate with Raymond Jordan, the Director of Central Intelligence. Jordan also heads the National Security Service and answers directly to the president. Jordan is deeply disturbed by the nuclear explosion in the Pacific Ocean along with the recent discovery of other Japanese car carriers also heading to the United States. He develops a Multi-Agency Investigative Team (MAIT) to investigate the threat and determine ways to stop it.
Hideki Suma knows that new laws opposing Japanese business practices are about to be passed in Congress. If he can stop Congresswoman Smith and Senator Diaz from leading that campaign, then his tactics for nuclear blackmail will proceed that much smoother. One day when Dirk Pitt is racing one of his cars in a classic car show (racing against Clive Cussler, the author’s first cameo in his books) Loren Smith is kidnapped. She’s taken away in a limousine and later flown to Japan. Senator Diaz is also snatched and taken prisoner.
Through the work of MAIT, the organization learns about Hideki Suma and his massive underground city named Edo City. They also become aware of a secret underground compound on a neighboring island. Connecting the two underground structures is a tunnel that runs under the sea. It’s the structure on the island where Smith and Diaz are believed to be held prisoner.
The only problem is that nobody knows which of the hundreds of islands is home to the underground command structure for Suma. The key to that lies with a collection of paintings that were painted by a visionary Japanese painter. Suma is desperately seeking a painting of an island called Ajima, and it’s that island that MAIT believes is home to Suma’s command center. The problem is that the painting of Ajima was lost during World War II.
The last records showed that the painting of Ajima was in the Japanese embassy in Berlin, Germany, during World War II. The painting, amongst hundreds of other artifacts, was removed and presumably hidden from the approaching Allied forces.
By chance, a farmer in West Germany discovers a sink hole one day in his farm. That sink hole leads to a hidden underground Nazi airfield, complete with forty Me-262 jet aircraft in nearly perfect condition. Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino lead a team of scuba divers through a flooded chamber and successfully defeat a deadly booby trap. Inside a hidden room beyond the flooded chamber is a massive collection of art work and other artifacts that were stolen by the Nazis and hidden for future retrieval, some time well after the war had ended. Sure enough, the missing Ajima painting was included in the horde of treasure.
Using the painting as a reference, they determine that Ajima is really an island called Soseki Island. A naval ship carries Dirk and Al into the western Pacific Ocean, and the two NUMA men use jet-powered gliders to fly above the height of the waves and sneak their way onto Soseki Island, a place they know is well guarded with the latest detection equipment. While they’re flying to Soseki, three other members of the MAIT team, including Stacy who was working for British intelligence the whole time, infiltrate Edo City and make their way to Suma’s command center, Dragon Center.
Dirk and Al are quickly captured by robotic sentries after crash landing on Soseki Island. Inside of Suma’s retreat they’re reunited with the MAIT team who was captured inside the Dragon Center. Now they have to deal with a deadly man named Moro Kamatori, a man who has samurai ancestors and he enjoys killing people with his katana, a curved sword. All of the captured people are sentenced to death. Instead of killing the people individually, Kamatori toys with them. He plans on sending them into the wilderness of the island and then stalking and killing them one by one much like in Richard Connell’s classic story The Most Dangerous Game.
Dirk is sent into the wilderness first. He successfully evades Kamatori and manages to fake his own death. When Kamatori returns to the other people held hostage, Dirk makes his miraculous appearance and fights Kamatori in a sword fight. Dirk wins and he kills Kamatori in a bloody manner, removing all of the man’s honor as he dies. Dirk and Al head to the top of the island to secure transportation while the three other members of the MAIT team head back into the Dragon Center to place a small explosive in a key location. The bomb won’t destroy the center but rather delay the place from being operational for several additional days. They place the bomb but a robot sentry notices it and has it removed. While the group flies back to the naval ship that launched Dirk and Al, the bomb harmlessly explodes in a hallway.
Hideki Suma was captured and taken prisoner when Dirk and Al were making their escape, and now the Dragon Center is being controlled by his partners. The men are ruthless and plan on putting extra pressure on the President of the United States. One of the nuclear car bombs is sent to an isolated area of Wyoming and detonated. Only a couple of people are killed in the massive explosion, but the message is clear.
Around that time a surveyor analyzing underwater photographs taken by a spy satellite makes a startling discovery. Sitting on the ocean floor and very close to Soseki Island is Dennings’ Demons, the missing B-29 from August 6, 1945. It’s determined that the aircraft is still relatively intact and it should have the nuclear bomb in its cargo bay. The key thing is that the nuclear bomb is still operational.
A massive C-5 Galaxy cargo plane flies over the western Pacific Ocean. Inside the aircraft is an underwater exploration vehicle named Big Ben. Dirk Pitt sits behind the controls of Big Ben as the vessel is pushed out the rear of the cargo plane and then parachutes into the ocean. Big Ben continues slowly falling all the way to the ocean floor. As James Sandecker and Al Giordino monitor the operation from the orbiting C-5 Galaxy, Dirk Pitt successfully finds the wrecked B-29, acquires the nuclear bomb, and then drives it to its designation position off the underwater coast of Soseki Island. The bomb won’t destroy the island since it’s composed of solid rock, but the bomb can instead significantly alter the underwater terrain.
Dirk places the nuclear bomb in the right position, activates the countdown timer, and then tries to escape from the blast in Big Ben. He’s not quite at the safety distance when the bomb explodes and triggers an earthquake. The earthquake releases an avalanche which sinks most of Soseki Island. The massive disturbance of underwater terrain also creates a massive tsunami which finishes destroying Soseki Island. The Dragon Center and Edo City are crushed when the tremendous force of incoming water smashes its way into the underground (now underwater) structures, killing everybody and destroying everything.
Dirk Pitt is believed to have been killed when all contact was lost after the nuclear explosion. He successfully drives Big Ben out of the surf and onto Marcus Island, a luxury retreat several hundred miles off the coast of Japan, a few weeks later. Pitt had a feeling that something bad would happen during the mission, so on the C-5 Galaxy he filled Big Ben with as much food and water as possible. Big Ben‘s nuclear power source and oxygen generator continued working, so it was up to Pitt to simply find a driveable slope of land that reached the surface.
Back in his aircraft hanger home, one of the Me-262 jet fighters from the secret underground airfield in West Germany is the latest addition to Pitt’s continually growing collection of classic cars and aircraft.
That concludes Dragon, the tenth book in Clive Cussler’s main series of novels starring Dirk Pitt.
So is Dragon any good?
To me, Dragon is a good book with a decent amount of action, but it’s not as great as Cussler’s other books. The book’s pace feels rushed for a plot as terrifying as this one, and the ending is too convenient and simplistic.
For starters, it’s a bit awkward the way that Cussler uses the metric system in the book. I remember there being a big push for the metric system back in the late 1980s and early 1990s (this book was first published in 1990), but obviously we’re still not that way in today’s society over twenty years later. So it’s more of an annoyance reading an American novel and seeing constant usage of the metric system.
I did have a few problems with Dragon.
For starters, the title Dragon seems a bit odd when discussing the Japanese culture. Yes, there are some tales of dragons in Japanese folklore, but dragon tales are predominantly from the land of China. Cussler should have picked a different name for the book, something more relevant to Japanese society, history or mythology.
Another problem lies with the book’s opening segment. Why was the B-29 flying alone into enemy territory? The Enola Gay had two other B-29 Superfortress bombers escorting them though they were there mainly for observation purposes. So in Dragon we’re meant to believe that a B-29 carrying such a powerful weapon was sent alone over Japan without any sort of escort or additional protection?
More problems with Dragon lie with the antagonists, Hideki Suma and Moro Kamatori. We really don’t see much character development with them. It’s hard to believe that Kamatori is such a deadly and evil hunter when we only see him attacking easy prey. He also makes a critical error when trying to fight Dirk Pitt inside that room in Suma’s retreat. It was too easy to see that his arrogance was going to quickly lead to his downfall.
Speaking of other characters, Hiram Yaeger has such a minor role that he probably shouldn’t have been included in the novel. Stacy Fox should have also had a much bigger and more developed role in this story. Here you have a cunning British intelligence agent who could have given Pitt a run for his money, and suddenly her character is thrown into the background with the other secondary characters. She’s basically nothing after a quarter of the way into the book.
It’s hard to take Dragon seriously when an author like Clive Cussler has written so many better novels. The story does have its moments and the concept behind Soggy Acres was quite intriguing, but as a whole this story is a miss. With some changes here and there Dragon could have been a significantly better story.
