Vixen 03
First Edition Hardcover
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| Author | Clive Cussler |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Lou Feck |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Dirk Pitt Novels |
| Genre | Adventure; Techno-thriller |
| Publisher | Viking Press |
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Publication date
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June 1978 (1st edition) |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 286 pages (Hardcover edition) |
| ISBN | (Hardcover edition) |
| OCLC | 4193140 |
| 813/.5/4 | |
| LC Class | PZ4.C9856 Vi 1978 PS3553.U75 |
| Preceded by | Raise the Titanic! |
| Followed by | Night Probe! |
Vixen 03 is an adventure novel by Clive Cussler. This is the fourth book to feature the author’s primary protagonist Dirk Pitt.
In 1954 "Vixen 03", an aircraft carrying a top-secret cargo to the military’s testing grounds in the South Pacific, crashes and is never recovered. Thirty-four years later while on vacation Dirk Pitt, Special Projects Director for the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA), finds the remains of "Vixen 03" and her top-secret cargo. His salvage efforts turn up some anomalies, including a body that is not of any member of the original crew; and send Pitt on a chase to stop a plot that could potentially leave millions dead.
In January 1954 a Boeing C-97 Stratofreighter of the United States Air Force, callsign "Vixen 03", takes off from the Buckley Naval Air Station in Colorado on a late-night flight transporting a top-secret cargo from the Rocky Mountain Arsenal to testing grounds near the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. The aircraft never arrives at its destination in the Pacific, and, despite a massive four-month search by the Navy and Coast Guard, no trace of "Vixen 03" is discovered.
The story then jumps forward 34 years; Dirk Pitt, Special Projects Director for the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA), is vacationing with Colorado Congresswoman Loren Smith at her father’s cabin in the Sawatch Mountains. Pitt discovers some aircraft parts in the cabin garage and follows this lead until he intuits that there is an aircraft crash site in the local lake, Table Lake. Calling for his friend and Assistant Special Projects Director Al Giordino to fly in specialized NUMA equipment, they survey the lake and quickly find the wreck of "Vixen 03".
Discovering clues found on the wreck, Pitt follows the evidence to retired Admiral Walter Bass, United States Navy, who was the commander who ordered "Vixen 03" on its top-secret mission. Bass first denies any knowledge of the aircraft, but after Pitt convinces him that he really has found the wreck, the admiral reveals that it was carrying a cargo of 16-inch battleship shells loaded with a deadly biological doomsday organism. The organism, nicknamed QD for quick death, is a virulent bacterial weapon that causes nearly instant death. The agent is described as being so deadly that just five ounces (143 ml) air-dropped over Manhattan Island would kill 98% of all human life and, because the strain actually grows stronger over time, would render the island uninhabitable for up to 300 years.
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