The Rising Sea

DIRK PITT, KURT AUSTIN, AND THE WORLD OF THE RISING SEA

“Every ocean takes its toll of men and ships, yet none devour them with the voracious appetite of the Pacific. The mutiny on the Bounty took place in the Pacific. The mutineers burning the ship at Pitcairn Island. The Essex, the only known ship to be sunk by a whale, lies under the Pacific’s waves. So does the Hai Maru, blown to bits under the Pacific’s waves when an underwater volcano erupted beneath her hull.”

One story is true, the other two came out of a writer’s imagination.

So begins the prologue of Pacific Vortex!, the first Dirk Pitt novel I wrote (though not the first to be published).

Pitt has fought many nasty villains through these adventure epics, and was introduced lying on a beach in Hawaii, a six-foot-three, deeply suntanned man. “The hairy, barrel chest that rose slightly with each intake of air bore specks of sweat that rolled downward in snaillike trails and mingled with the sand. The arm that passed over the eyes shielding them from the strong rays of the tropical sun was muscular but without the exaggerated bulges generally associated with iron pumpers. The hair was black and thick and shaggy, and it fell halfway down a forehead that merged into a hard-featured but friendly face.”

Giving him black hair and green eyes was easy. In those days, my hair was black, with no sign of gray, and my eyes a deep green. We were both thirty-four. Every hero has a sidekick, and so did Pitt. Al Giordino was his friend from high school and then the Air Force Academy, and those years formed a tight bond between them. Sharing adventures, Pitt and Giordino have saved each other’s lives on more than one occasion.

In appearance, they are complete opposites. Al Giordino is dark, curly-haired, and short in height, broad-chested and tough as they come. It usually comes as a surprise to learn that Giordino was third in his class at the Air Force Academy, and since then has become one of the finest ocean engineers in the world, the creator of underwater submersibles that can operate in water twenty thousand feet deep. Al is also the one character that I based on someone I know, a friend from my Air Force days in Hawaii.

But time marches on. Now Pitt is married with two children, Admiral Sandecker is Vice President of the United States, and Dirk Pitt is the Director of NUMA. All the characters are older than when they were introduced.

With the success of Dirk Pitt, the publishers approached me to write a second series, the NUMA® Files. My new characters also work for National Underwater Marine Agency, and you have their latest adventure in your hands.

Kurt Austin, again a daring man with charming features, is described as tall but with silver hair and blue eyes — quite the contrast from Dirk’s black hair and green eyes. To establish even more of a difference, while Pitt collects classic automobiles, Austin is an antique gun collector.

His partner is Joe Zavala. As always, I kept their first names one syllable. Easy to say, easy to remember, and in an action scene it’s better to have a short name. Certainly calling out “Shagnasty” can interfere with the excitement and tempo of a fast-paced action scene.

Zavala is the name of an historic shipwreck that my foundation, the actual NUMA, found in Texas, half buried just off the waters of Galveston. And Joe is a great one-syllable name.

Now, my coauthor, Graham Brown, and I write the NUMA series. This book, The Rising Sea, brings together the excitement of adventure and the mysteries of the oceans with the technology of the future.