G.P. Putman's Sons, NY 2002
434 PP
ISBN# 0-399-14872-8
Number Line: 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
From the dust jacket: "Critics and fans everywhere have welcomed the enormously entertaining new series from Clive Cussler: the adventures of Kurt Austin, taken from the NUMA® Files. It's "a jolt of energy," praises The Denver Post. "As always, Cussler twists fact and fiction into a rope of tension that will leave you dangling until the last page," says the Tulsa World.
In Serpent and Blue Gold, Cussler introduced a hero for the new millennium in Kurt Austin, the leader of NUMA's Special Assignments Team. In previous encounters, Austin and his colleague Joe Zavala have battled eco-extortionists and mad empire builders - but they have never faced a menace like the one before them now.
In the heart of the old Soviet Union, a mining tycoon has proclaimed himself czar of Russia. Claiming Romanov ancestry and backed by billions of dollars, he is determined to overthrow the already shaky Russian government - and U.S. opposition doesn't bother him one bit. A little crisis of their own should distract the Americans for a while, and he knows just the thing. All along the eastern seaboard lie pockets of methane hydrate, a notoriously unstable compound known as "fire ice." What if somebody should set them off, say, outside a major city? Think of the explosions. Think of the earth tremors. Think of the tidal waves…
Filled with all the hair-raising action and endless imagination that are Cussler's hallmarks. Fire ice is a dazzling thriller from the grand master of adventure fiction."

Clive Cussler and Paul Kemprecos team up again for another adventure from the NUMA files.