All copies of this title, including those transferred to portable devices and other media, must be deleted/destroyed at the end of the lending period.
Description
"The suspense is harrowing and brilliantly conceived. Child tells a story with style and fascination. DEEP STORM is undersea adventure told like never before, with a terrific ending." --CLIVE CUSSLER, #1 New York Times bestselling author
Twelve-thousand feet beneath the Atlantic Ocean . . . scientists are excavating the most extraordinary undersea discovery ever made. But is it the greatest archaeological find in history--or the most terrifying?
Former naval doctor Peter Crane is urgently summoned to a remote oil platform in the north Atlantic, to help diagnose a bizarre medical condition spreading through the rig. But when he arrives, Crane learns that the real trouble lies far below--on "Deep Storm," a stunningly advanced science research facility built two miles beneath the surface on the ocean floor. The top-secret structure has been designed for one purpose: to excavate a recently discovered undersea site that may hold the answers to a mystery steeped in centuries of myth and speculation.
Sworn to secrecy, Peter Crane descends to Deep Storm. A year earlier, he is told, routine drilling uncovered the remains of mankind’s most sophisticated ancient civilization: the legendary Atlantis. But now that the site is being excavated, a series of disturbing illnesses has begun to affect the operation. Scientists and technicians are experiencing a bizarre array of symptoms--from fatigue to paralysis to violent psychotic episodes. As Crane is indoctrinated into the strange world of Deep Storm, he attempts to discover the cause . . . but he begins to suspect that the covert facility conceals something far more complicated than a medical mystery. The discovery of Atlantis might, in fact, be a cover for something far more sinister . . . and deadly.
Like Lincoln Child’s spectacular bestsellers coauthored with Douglas Preston, DEEP STORM melds scientific detail and gripping adventure in a superbly imagined, chillingly real journey into unknown territory. Child is a master of suspense, and DEEP STORM is his most entertaining novel to date.
It looked, Peter Crane thought, like a stork: a huge white stork, rising out of the water on ridiculously delicate legs. But as the helicopter drew closer and the distant outline sharpened against the sea horizon, the resemblance gradually fell away. The legs grew sturdier, became tubular pylons of steel and pre--stressed concrete. The central body became a multi--level superstructure, studded with flare stacks and turbines, festooned with spars and girders. And the thin, neck--like object above resolved into a complex crane-and-derrick assembly, rising several hundred feet above the superstructure.
The pilot pointed at the approaching platform, held up two fingers. Crane nodded his understanding.
It was a brilliant, cloudless day, and Crane squinted against the bright ocean stretching away on all sides. He felt tired and disoriented by travel: commercial flight from Miami to New York, private Gulfstream G150 charter to Reykjavik, and now helicopter. But the weariness hadn't blunted his deep--and growing--curiosity.
It wasn't so much that Amalgamated Shale was interested in his particular expertise: that he thought he could understand. It was the hurry with which they'd wanted him to drop everything and rush out to the Storm King platform that surprised him. Then there was the fact that AmShale's forward headquarters in Iceland had, rather oddly, been bustling with technicians and engineers rather than the usual drillers and roughnecks.
And then there was the other thing. The helicopter pilot wasn't an AmShale employee. He wore a Navy uniform--and a sidearm.
As the chopper banked sharply around the side of the platform, heading for the landing zone, Crane realized for the first time just how large the oil rig was. The jacket structure alone had to be eight stories high. Its upper deck was covered with a bewildering maze of modular structures. Here and there, men in yellow safety uniforms checked couplings and worked pump equipment, dwarfed by the machinery that surrounded them. Far, far below, the ocean frothed and worried around the pillars of the substructure, where it vanished beneath the surface to run the thousands of feet to the sea floor itself.
The chopper slowed, turned, and settled down onto the green hexagon of the landing zone. As Crane reached back for his bags, he noticed that someone was standing at the edge of the LZ, waiting: a tall, thin woman in an oilskin jacket. He thanked the pilot, opened the passenger door, and stepped out into frigid air, ducking instinctively under the whirring blades.
The woman held out her hand at his approach. "Dr. Crane?"
Crane shook the hand. "Yes."
"This way, please." The woman turned and led the way off the landing platform, down a short set of stairs, and along a metal catwalk to a closed, submarine--style hatch. She did not give her name.
A uniformed seaman stood guard outside the hatch, rifle at his side. He nodded as they approached, opened the hatch, then closed and secured it behind them.
Beyond lay a spacious, brightly--lit corridor, studded along both sides with open doors. There was no frantic hum of turbines, no deep throbbing of derrick equipment. The smell of oil, though detectable, was faint, almost as if efforts had been made to remove it.
Crane followed the woman, bags slung over his shoulder, glancing curiously into the rooms as he passed. Once again, curiosity pricked at him: there were laboratories full of whiteboards and workstations; computer centers; communications suites. Topside had been quiet, but there was plenty of activity here.
Crane decided he'd venture a question. "Are the divers in a...
Reviews
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Menace is everywhere as naval doctor Peter Crane investigates mysterious illnesses at an even more mysterious underwater research facility in the North Atlantic. The scientists say they're excavating long-lost Atlantis, but Crane suspects that something weirder and more dangerous is under way. Thank goodness for narrator Scott Brick, who offers both equanimity and tension in his reading, which intensifies the drama while keeping the complex plot clear (if not believable). He also adds color through subtle characterizations of everyone from straight-ahead military types to obsessed researchers and truly creepy secret agents. I wished that the scary types didn't always speak so deliberately, but that's a very minor quibble in this well-performed entertainment. A.C.S. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine
Clive Cussler...
"Harrowing and brilliantly conceived."
The Denver Post...
"Fast paced.... Page-turning action."
San Jose Mercury News...
"Clever.... A sci-fi mystery thriller."
Vince Flynn, bestselling author of Protect and Defend...
"Thrilling and tantalizing.... A fascinating riddle...exhilarating."
Tampa Tribune...
"Lincoln Child has a well-earned reputation for writing solid thrillers."
