It is 1995. Dirk Pitt, on a mission to find the remains of a Pharaoh's funeral barge buried in the bottom of the Nile, rescues an attractive young woman, Dr. Eva Rojas, a biochemist with the UN World Health Organization, from being murdered by thugs on a beach near Alexandria. As the race is on to save the world from environmental catastrophe Dirk Pitt and his friends plunge into darkest Africa, battling their way up the Niger to a huge, secret, hazardous waste project, a partnership between Yves Massarde, French Billionaire entrepreneur, and General Zateb Kazim, the brutal, despotic, corrupt tyrant who rules the West African nation of Mali. Pitt's epic journey up the Niger River against the gunboat fleets and modern jet fighters of two African nations leads to the discovery of Kazim and Massarde's secret, only to find himself captured and forced to work as a slave under inhuman conditions in a gold mine deep in the desert, along with Dr. Rojas and her team of UN scientists. As the clock ticks toward the world's destruction, Pitt plots his escape across the Sahara desert. Making his way across the trackless desert to alert the world to the source of the threat, Pitt uncovers in the process the truth about Kitty Mannock's death, as well as the incredible secret behind Lincoln's assassination that lies concealed, in the middle of the Sahara, aboard the old Confederate iron-clad...