Kurt Austin and his crew are back to slake their thirst for action as they attempt to drown an eco-extortionist's plan to control the world's freshwater supply. From deep within the Venezuelan rain forest emanates the legend of a white goddess and a mysterious tribe with startling technical accomplishments. Few believe the tribe exists, and even fewer suspect its deity can change the course of history.

The hero of Serpent and Blue Gold confronts a deadly global plot, in this breathtaking Kurt Austin adventure.

An enzyme that will dramatically prolong life has been discovered 2,000 feet down in the North Atlantic, in an area known as "Lost City". But why are the people attempting to harvest it getting killed? Why are the scientists in a remote Greek laboratory disappearing one by one? To Kurt Austin, leader of NUMA's Special Assignments Team, and his colleague Joe Zavala, it's clear they have their work cut out for them, but it may be even bigger than they think.

Polar shift: It is the name for a phenomenon that may have occurred many times in the past. At the very least, it disorients birds and animals and damages electrical equipment. At its worst, it causes massive eruptions, earthquakes, and climatic changes. At its very worst, it would mean the obliteration of all living matter, and if that happens - exit Earth. Sixty years ago, aHungarian genius discovered how to artificially trigger such a shift, but then his work was lost. Or so it was thought....

Fully armed and with all hands onboard, the nuclear submarine Starbuck sailed into the calm Pacific Ocean for sea trials - and vanished. No wreckage, no signals, no survivors: nothing...until ace maritime troubleshooter Dirk Pitt finds a single chilling clue in the shark-torn surf off Hawaii - the log of the Starbuck. 'Do not search for us, it can only end in vain....' A crazed journal of madness and death is all that remains.

On a NUMA training mission in the Caribbean, Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala catch a distress call from a nearby freighter. Leaping into action, they locate a damaged vessel and a dead captain clutching a shotgun. While searching the freighter for clues, Kurt and Joe are ambushed by crew members who seem terrified and disoriented, almost brainwashed. The trawler they were hauling has vanished, taken—the men say—by baffling lights that circled the ship.

When Kurt Austin is injured attempting to rescue the passengers and crew from a sinking yacht, he wakes with fragmented and conflicted memories. Did he see an old friend and her children drown? Or was the yacht abandoned when he came aboard? For reasons he cannot explain, Kurt doesn't trust either version of his recollection.

An enzyme that will dramatically prolong life has been discovered 2,000 feet down in the North Atlantic, in an area known as "Lost City". But why are the people attempting to harvest it getting killed? Why are the scientists in a remote Greek laboratory disappearing one by one? To Kurt Austin, leader of NUMA's Special Assignments Team, and his colleague Joe Zavala, it's clear they have their work cut out for them, but it may be even bigger than they think.

When the most advanced aircraft ever designed vanishes over the South Pacific, Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala are drawn into a deadly contest to locate the fallen machine. Russia and China covet the radical technology, but the United States worries about a darker problem. They know what others don't - that the X-37 is carrying a dangerous secret, a payload of exotic matter extracted from the upper reaches of the atmosphere and stored at a temperature near absolute zero.

An alarming rise in the world's sea levels - much larger than could be accounted for by glacier melt - sends Kurt Austin, Joe Zavala, and the rest of the NUMA scientific team rocketing around the globe in search of answers. What they find at the bottom of the East China Sea, however, is even worse than they imagined: a diabolical plan to upset the Pacific balance of power - and in the process displace as many as a billion people.