This exciting adventure tale opens right at the end of the Civil War. The newly launched ironclad ship “Texas” is about to get underway with a fortune in Confederate Gold, the entire wealth of the Confederacy. The “Texas” will attempt a daring escape down the James River from Richmond, Virginia running past almost the entire Union fleet of ships. Though defeated, Jefferson Davis means to be able to regroup in some foreign country and then start the war of secession all over again. At the last minute a tall bearded civilian is rushed onto the “Texas”. Down the river the “Texas” runs into just the sort of desperate battle she came to expect, but against long odds the “Texas” manages to get past the Union Fleet and sails off into the Atlantic Ocean into dense fog and is never heard from again.
Back to the present Dirk Pitt and his crew from NUMA have been sent on a mission to find out what is causing a suspiciously large red tide emanating from the mouth of the Niger River. In this part of the Western Sahara dessert some tribes have become mad and in their deranged state killed and feasted on anyone unfortunate enough to visit their villages. One scene Cussler gives us a large group of tourists is overwhelmed and killed to the last man. Their guide, who was away from the group trying to arrange for their quarters and supper, was the only survivor. He manages to escape across the dessert but when found he is sent off as a slave to dig gold in the mines belonging to the General of the Mali army and a ruthless French businessman.
Dirk and his two associates find the source of the pollution that is causing the new species of bacteria and the resulting red tide. This tide is growing very fast and is very large. It is not dying out as normal tidal blooms do and nothing seems capable of killing it. At the rate of phenomenal growth the tide will soon encompass the entire Atlantic and move into the Pacific in a matter of six to eight weeks consuming all the oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere and wiping all life from this world.
This is certainly a problem worthy of the extraordinary talents of Dirk Pitt. In true heroic form Dirk proceeds to outsmart the General and the French businessman. He is captured but he escapes. He gathers more information and is captured again but escapes again, this time making a trek across 400 Kilometers of baking dessert. When he finally contacts his boss Admiral Sandeker and gets help we see the tables being turned in his favor finally.
Tough and bloody battles ensue during which Dirk is wounded multiple times but he just keeps on fighting like the energizer bunny on steroids. Of course there is a love interest. A beautiful young scientist who is also in the country trying to find the cause of grave physical abnormalities among the dessert tribes on behalf of the UN. She and her team find much evidence but the result is that they are captured as they attempt to fly out of the country. They are also put in the slave mines to work digging gold until they die. No one has ever escaped from this brutal place. Dirk is captured when he sneaks into the chemical plant that is responsible for the pollution and he is sent to the gold mine too. But he escapes across the dessert and returns with a UN team of commandos who raid the place and free the near dead slaves.
Dirk must go on the capture the chemical plant using the same UN commandos a second time but first the good guys must make a desperate stand in an old French Foreign Legion fort. Their battle is similar to the one in Texas at the Alamo. Thousands of Malian army soldiers attack time after time and finally manage to break through into the fort. At the last minute the United States Army Rangers arrive and decimate the army before Dirk and the remainder of the commandos can be overrun and killed.
“Sahara” is another exciting story given to us my a master of the art of adventure writing. Clive Cussler’s “Sahara” gets a 9 of 10 on the Weaver meter.
