Book Review – Clive Cussler’s “Inca Gold”

Last night I finished reading Inca Gold, the twelfth book in Clive Cussler‘s main series of books featuring adventurer / aviator / engineer / underwater explorer Dirk Pitt.

Inca Gold begins with a prologue set in 1533 as a fleet of makeshift ships sails to an unknown island in a far away sea.  The ships are carrying a vast collection of gold and other treasures, all of which are meant to be hidden for a very long time.

The story then cuts to 1578 off the coast of Peru in South America.  Legendary seafaring explorer Sir Francis Drake on the Golden Hind captures a Spanish galleon, Concepcion, filled with treasures from the Inca Empire.  Drake decides to send a small crew on the Concepcion back to England with a bunch of the captured treasure.

As the crew sails away with the treasure on the Concepcion, an underwater earthquake creates a powerful tsunami.  The wall of water lifts and carries the Concepcion into the jungles on the coast of South America, never to be seen again.

Fast forward to today (1998).

In the Andes Mountains in Peru is an archaeological expedition that has recently discovered an ancient sinkhole that filled with water and eventually became a sacrificial pool.  Archaeologist Dr. Shannon Kelsey makes a dive into the sacrificial pool with veteran photographer Miles Rodgers.  When neither of them surface, a call is made over the radio for emergency assistance.

The U.S. National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) answers the call the fastest as a NUMA ship, Deep Fathom, was stationed off the coast of Peru.  Out of the helicopter step Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino.  Dirk makes a dive into the pit, discovers a cave on the side of the sinkhole, and finds Shannon and Miles alive but trapped in an air pocket.  He uses a spare air tank to help both of them back to the surface.

Waiting for them on the surface are gunmen posing as terrorists.  Shannon and Miles are captured along with Al Giordino and the rest of the archaeological team.  Dirk stays hidden in the sacrificial pool and later escapes from the sinkhole once the gunmen have left with the hostages.  He follows them through the jungle and later launches a surprise attack to free his companions.  The leader of the gunmen, Tupac Amaru, is seriously wounded.

The gang later escapes when more helicopters arrive carrying more gunmen.  Al Giordino and Dirk Pitt commandeer one of the helicopters and make a getaway for the coast.  They have to fight back against a pursuing helicopter, but they find a way to knock it out of the air.  As their own helicopter runs out of fuel, Al ditches the helicopter in the ocean and everybody is rescued when the Deep Fathom arrives on scene.

The story continues and we learn more about the antagonists, the wealthy and powerful Zolar family.  The Zolars are proficient in the underground world of stolen artifacts, lost artwork, and obsessions with treasure.  They will easily bribe police and government officials just as easily as they will kill anybody who stands in their way.

It’s not long until Dirk learns about the history of the Incas and their missing treasure.  After learning about the Golden Hind, Dirk contacts his old friend Julien Perlmutter, a naval historian, and learns about the disappearance of the Concepcion.  If the rumors about the Concepcion are true, then onboard the lost ship is a vital clue to finding the location of the Incas’ secret treasure.

Back at NUMA’s headquarters, Hiram Yeager researches the topic and is able to use his computer to simulate the underwater earthquake that struck in 1578, and the tsunami as well.  He narrows down the ideal search area and transmits that information to Dirk and Al on the Deep Fathom.  The two of them, and Rudi Gunn, take a helicopter and use a magnetometer to locate the remains of the Concepcion in the jungle.  Dirk uses a rope to descend to the jungle’s floor where he locates the remains of the ship and discovers an ancient cord that the Incas used to measure the distance and route to the hidden treasure.

After analyzing the cord and doing further research into the tales of the lost treasure, the group determines that the lost treasure is hidden on an island somewhere north in the Sea of Cortez.

Meanwhile, the Zolars are also hot on the trail of the lost treasure.  They have accessed a golden casket belonging to an Incan leader, and on the casket are a series of markings.  A team of husband and wife archaeologists translates the markings and give the Zolars the same information about the location of the missing treasure.  They also head to the Sea of Cortez and begin searching the islands.

In the Sea of Cortez, Congresswoman Loren Smith has joined the NUMA team to spend more time with Dirk Pitt, and help search for the hidden treasure.  However, when Dirk and Al fly over the islands, none of them match the description of what they’re looking for.  Just when the situation seems bleak, Dirk realizes that the island is no longer a true “island.”  It’s really a mountain that’s now just off the coast in Baja California.

They locate the mountain and discover that on top of it sits a stone demon, just as it was mentioned in the tales of the treasure.  They discover an opening and descend into the mountain.  Inside of the mountain the NUMA crew discovers a second stone demon, a series of mummified bodies of the last Inca warriors to guard the treasure, and then the treasure itself, complete with a massive gold chain.  The only catch is that the treasure is located inside of a cavern but on the opposite side of a vast underground river.

When Dirk returns to the ferryboat functioning as NUMA’s floating headquarters, he’s not surprised that the Zolars have arrived there and taken everybody hostage.  He and Al had spotted a Zolar helicopter in the area and they figured that they were being followed.  What greatly upsets Dirk though is that the Zolars have taken hostage and severely beaten both Rudi Gunn and Loren Smith.  When the gunmen are about to shoot Dirk, he makes a getaway by jumping over the side of the ship.  He eventually swims to shore and makes his way to help.

The Zolars eventually take Rudi and Loren with them when they begin to excavate the vast amount of Incan treasure from within the mountain.  Dirk desperately wants to rescue his friends, but attacking the mountain directly would only get everybody killed.  Instead of attacking the forces on the mountain, Dirk and Al infiltrate the mountain through the underground river, something previously unknown to geologists.  It’s an incredibly risky mission that injures both Dirk and Al when they fall down a waterfall, but they eventually make it to the treasure room.

Inside the treasure room, Dirk saves Rudi Gunn from execution and Loren Smith before she’s attacked again by the gunmen.  He then fights Tupac Amaru again, and both of them get swept downstream and presumed to be dead from drowning.  Geologists know that the underground river flows to the Sea of Cortez, but it’s an uncharted river that flows for an estimated hundred miles or more.

Tupac Amaru drowns and his body is later recovered in the Sea of Cortez.  Later, Dirk Pitt surprises everybody by also surfacing in the Sea of Cortez, but he’s alive.  He was able to make it to air passages and also use his spare air tank to survive the underground journey.  Just as he was about to drown in the Sea of Cortez, a fisherman’s line pulled him to safety.

Inca Gold ends with Dirk Pitt, Al Giordino, Rudi Gunn and Loren Smith injured but alive.  The remaining Zolars are captured and sit in jail.  The U.S. government has acquired not just the stolen Incan treasure, but the rest of the Zolar’s stolen artifacts as well.  It’s all to be documented before being returned to their rightful owners.

Down in Baja California in Mexico, the underground river is named the Rio Pitt, and it’s used to fertilize a new region of farm land.

FINAL THOUGHTS

So is Inca Gold a good story?

Yes and no.

The story in the Andes Mountains and the jungles of South America was interesting, as was the first sequence with the underground river as well.  It was a nice combination of the mountains, the dense tropical forest, and the claustrophobia and terror of navigating an uncharted underground river.  Those were some great moments in the story.

The action scenes were also pretty good, especially the helicopter chase and race to the coastline and Deep Fathom.  That was also handled quite nicely in the story.

My biggest problem with Inca Gold is that most of the story was a race to discover a legendary stockpile of lost treasure.  That’s pretty tame (or weak depending on your point-of-view) considering that most of Clive Cussler’s stories involve some kind of villain looking to wreck havoc on others, whether it’s on a local, regional or global scale.

In this story you have the Zolars, an incredibly wealthy crime family, looking to become even more rich and powerful.  They’ve bribed their way through Central and South America, and in some of those countries they could do as they pleased.  So for them to seek even more treasure and fortunes, that just makes for a boring story.

The last part of the book was slightly interesting only because Rudi Gunn and Loren Smith were being held hostage and going to be executed.  Of course, Cussler isn’t going to let those characters die, so it’s just a matter of how they’re rescued without falling into a pit of endless clichés.  The trek down the underground river was interesting though a bit far-fetched because of its sheer distance from the starting point to the underground treasure room.

As far as Pitt’s incredible journey down the remainder of the underground river, all the way to the Sea of Cortez, that was just too corny.  It’s too bad that the story didn’t have a better ending.  Then again, most of this story could have been rewritten as well into something a lot more interesting.