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.

Iraq, 2003: in the post-war looting of the treasures from Baghdad's antiquities museum, a legendary Phoenicean statue is stolen . . .Known as the Navigator, the statue points back to the days of King Solomon and is the vital clue to a secret of unimaginable power. Lucky then that UN investigator Carina Mechadi recovers it quickly. But a daring raid by helicopter in Iceberg Alley off Newfoundland and the statue is gone again - while Carina is only saved by the timely intervention of Kurt Austin of NUMA.

After an explosion in the Gulf of Mexico destroys three oil rigs trying to revive a dying field, Kurt Austin and the NUMA Special Projects Team are tapped by the president of the US to find out what's gone wrong. The trail leads them to a brilliant billionaire in the alternative-energy field. Her goal is the end of the oil age; her company has spent billions developing the worlds' most advanced fuel-cell systems. But is she an environmental hero...or a rogue genetic engineer?

Juan Cabrillo's first adventure with the Oregon - a state-of-the-art spy ship disguised as a nondescript lumber hauler - takes him and his crew into dangerous waters as they try to put Tibet back in the hands of the Dalai Lama by striking a deal with the Russians and the Chinese.

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.