Clive Cussler · 1978 · global

Clive Cussler's 1978 Dirk Pitt adventure. In 1954 a military plane laden with doomsday germ weapons vanishes into an icy Colorado lake. Decades later Dirk Pitt raises the wreck - but two canisters are already gone, sold to South African plotters who mean to arm a battleship, sail it up the Potomac and bombard Washington. Only Pitt stands between the capital and catastrophe.

1. 1
   Colorado

   In the Rocky Mountains, Dirk Pitt stumbles on the wreck of Vixen 03, a transport plane that vanished into an icy Colorado lake in 1954 - and raises it to find its cargo of doomsday germ warheads two canisters short.

2. 2
   South Africa

   The missing warheads have been sold to a faction within South Africa, who mean to disguise a captured battleship as the work of black revolutionaries - a false-flag atrocity designed to bring the world's fury down on their enemies.

3. 3
   Washington

   The ghost battleship steams up the Potomac to shell the Capitol, its crew unaware two shells hold deadly plague. Pitt races to board the warship and silence the guns before the doomsday rounds can fire on Washington.