Raise the Titanic! (dirk Pitt, #4)

The novel opens in April 1912 aboard the R.M.S. Titanic during her final hours. A small, prematurely aged man, mentally shattered after five months of labor that cost eight men their lives, forces a young officer named Bigalow at gunpoint through the flooding decks to the ship's vault. Inside, the man confesses to murder, whispers "Thank God for Southby," a place-name Bigalow cannot identify, and seals himself inside as the ship sinks. Bigalow escapes by leaping overboard and snatching the White Star Line's red pennant from the water. The mystery of the man's identity and the vault's contents haunts Bigalow for seventy-six years.

The story shifts to July 1987. An unnamed President of the United States meets with Gene Seagram and Mel Donner, chief evaluators of Meta Section, a covert scientific group created to develop futuristic defense concepts. They present the Sicilian Project: a defense system that projects amplified sound waves into the atmosphere, condensing air particles into an invisible barrier capable of destroying incoming ballistic missiles. The system requires byzanium, an extremely rare radioactive element that may exist in usable quantities only on Novaya Zemlya, a Soviet-controlled Arctic island. The President authorizes the project and gives them eighteen months.

Sid Koplin, a Meta Section mineralogist, infiltrates Novaya Zemlya under cover of a NUMA (National Underwater and Marine Agency) expedition. When a Soviet patrol guard shoots him, Dirk Pitt, NUMA's special projects director, kills the guard and evacuates Koplin to safety. At Walter Reed Hospital, Koplin delivers devastating news: The byzanium deposit has already been mined, with only a teaspoonful remaining. Evidence including equipment manufactured in Colorado and a copy of the Rocky Mountain News dated November 1911 points to American hard-rock miners, "the Coloradans."

Donner traces the miners to a faked disaster at the Little Angel Mine in Colorado, where nine men, including mining engineer Joshua Hays Brewster, were reported killed on November 17, 1911. Brewster's nephew, a retired geologist named Harry Young, presents evidence that the disaster was a hoax. Meanwhile, Seagram visits Jake Hobart's ninety-three-year-old widow, who produces postcards proving her husband traveled to Europe and the Arctic after his supposed death.

A classified file containing Brewster's journal reveals the full story. Brewster discovered byzanium on Novaya Zemlya when his ship ran aground, then worked with U.S. Army Intelligence to double-cross the Société des Mines de Lorraine, his French employer. The Coloradans extracted roughly half a ton of ore over five brutal Arctic months. French agents pursued them across Britain, killing the miners one by one. Brewster's final journal entry, dated April 10, 1912, states the ore is safely in "the vault of the ship" and that he departs on "the great White Star steamer." Seagram realizes the ship was the Titanic and declares they must raise it.

Seagram recruits Pitt to command the salvage operation. Gene's wife, Dana Seagram, a marine archaeologist at NUMA, agrees at the President's request to support Gene through the project despite their failing marriage. Admiral James Sandecker, NUMA's director, secures Navy support. A NUMA submersible retrieves a cornet from the seafloor near the Titanic's last-known position, identified as a presentation instrument belonging to Graham Farley, the ship's solo cornetist. Its preservation suggests the wreck may be intact.

Using computer analysis of the sinking trajectory, Pitt descends with Al Giordino, his longtime friend and NUMA's assistant projects director, and Commander Rudi Gunn in the Navy submersible Sea Slug. At 12,375 feet, they find the Titanic sitting upright with her name still legible in golden letters. Nine months of salvage work follow: Four submersibles seal the hull's iceberg damage using Wetsteel, an underwater sealant that hardens with steel-like rigidity, and pump compressed air into the interior.

Complications multiply. Captain André Prevlov of Soviet Naval Intelligence, briefed on the Sicilian Project through intelligence the CIA has deliberately leaked, wins authorization to seize the byzanium. Two embedded Soviet agents, code-named Silver and Gold, relay information from the salvage crew. NUMA instrument specialist Henry Munk is murdered aboard a submersible; Pitt later discovers a hidden communications pinger in Munk's storage locker. Through methodical investigation, Pitt identifies the agents as Ben Drummer and Sam Merker, nonidentical twins from Halifax, Nova Scotia.

When the submersible Deep Fathom becomes trapped on the wreck with its crew facing drowning, Pitt orders explosive charges detonated in the surrounding sediment. After an agonizing delay, aftershocks break the hull free, and the Titanic rockets to the surface, saving the trapped crew with only eighteen inches of air remaining. Pitt visits the now-elderly Commodore Bigalow in England, who recounts the Prelude's secret and gives Pitt the red pennant. Pitt ties it to the stub of the Titanic's aft mast.

As Navy tugs tow the ship toward New York, Hurricane Amanda bears down on the convoy. Drummer sabotages the hull while Merker cuts the tow cable. Dana, who has been covering the operation for the press, boards a helicopter to retrieve a lost item, is attacked and knocked unconscious by one of the agents, and becomes stranded aboard the Titanic. During the hurricane's eye, Prevlov and Soviet marines storm the ship, killing NUMA salvage crew photographer Omar Woodson and capturing the crew. Prevlov threatens to mutilate Dana, but she defiantly strips to distract the guards while Pitt, who has secretly brought Navy SEALs under Lieutenant Fergus aboard from the submarine USS Dragonfish, emerges from hiding and exposes the entire espionage operation. A SEAL sniper kills the guard poised to shoot Dana, and Fergus's team eliminates the remaining marines.

The Mikhail Kurkov's captain prepares to launch a nuclear missile at the Titanic but halts the countdown when the Dragonfish threatens retaliatory attack. The crew battles through the hurricane with fuel from the surfaced submarine. The tugs reconnect, and the Titanic arrives in New York Harbor to a thunderous welcome of sirens, whistles, and cheers. CIA Director Warren Nicholson offers Prevlov defection, revealing that his aide, Lieutenant Pavel Marganin, is actually a CIA agent named Harry Koskoski who spent years engineering Prevlov's apparent betrayal.

In dry dock, the vault is opened, revealing ten wooden boxes and the mummified remains of Joshua Hays Brewster, the man from the Prelude. The boxes contain only common gravel. Seagram, whose mental health has deteriorated throughout the project, has a complete psychotic break and is carried away.

Pitt disappears, telling Sandecker only that he is looking for "Southby." Retracing the Coloradans' path across Britain by following their grave markers, he discovers Southby, a tiny village near Southampton. In the churchyard lies the grave of Vernon Hall, the last miner to die, with a carved ship on its stone slab. Brewster's reference to "the vault of the ship" meant not the Titanic's vault but Hall's burial vault, marked with the carved ship. Driven mad by guilt, Brewster had buried the byzanium in the grave and substituted worthless rock aboard the Titanic.

After obtaining a presidential exhumation order, the grave is opened. Koplin detects strong radioactive readings: Brewster filled it with ultra-high-grade byzanium ore, hidden in plain sight for seventy-six years. In August 1988, the British cruiser H.M.S. Troy commits Commodore Bigalow's remains to the sea at the exact coordinates of the Titanic's sinking, fulfilling his dying wish. Simultaneously, a U.S. submarine test-launches four ballistic missiles; all four are destroyed by the Sicilian Project's barrier, powered by the recovered byzanium. The defense system is an unqualified success.