Celtic Empire

1

 

May 2020

 

Copapayo, El Salvador

 

Elise Aguilar watched with somber eyes as the funeral procession marched through the dusty village square. The four male pallbearers strode with downcast faces as they balanced a child's white casket on their shoulders. A small bouquet of yellow orchids had been slid across the lid, covering a hand-painted image of a soccer ball.

 

The dead child's family followed, weeping openly despite words of comfort offered by the townspeople.

 

Elise tracked the entourage until they disappeared around a bend thick with foliage. The town's tiny cemetery lay on a small hill just beyond.

 

She ignored a black Jeep that skirted the funeral procession as she turned and followed a worn footpath in the opposite direction. She walked past a handful of low-roofed, white stucco buildings that were home to the village's thirty residents. The path ambled downhill and opened onto an expansive view of a shimmering blue lake.

 

Cerr n Grande was a reservoir, the largest in El Salvador, built to supply hydroelectric power for the region. Hundreds of families had been resettled when the Lempa River was flooded in 1976, some to the hastily constructed village of Copapayo. Elise glanced at the lake. A fisherman in a canoe and a small workboat cruised across the waterway. To the right, a powder-gray concrete barrier marked the upper lip of the Cerr n Grande Dam that had created the lake.

 

Elise descended the path nearly to the water's edge. She stopped and wiped her brow in front of a large awning made from gnarled tree roots and covered with palm thatching. A half-dozen red tents were pitched in a semicircle around the awning's opposite side, facing the shaded interior. To either side lay a large tract of farmland, bursting with rows of green

Clive Cussler is the author or coauthor of more than 50 previous books in five best-selling series, including Dirk Pitt, NUMA Files, Oregon Files, Isaac Bell, and Sam and Remi Fargo. His nonfiction works include Built for Adventure: The Classic Automobiles of Clive Cussler and Dirk Pitt, plus The Sea Hunters and The Sea Hunters II. They describe the true adventures of the real NUMA, which, led by Cussler, searches for lost ships of historic significance. With his crew of volunteers, Cussler has discovered more than 60 ships, including the long lost Confederate ship Hunley. He lives in Arizona.

Dirk Cussler, an MBA from Berkeley, worked for many years in the financial arena and now devotes himself full-time to writing. He is the coauthor with Clive Cussler of Black Wind and Treasure of Khan. For the past several years, he has been an active participant and partner in his father s NUMA expeditions and served as president of the NUMA advisory board of trustees.

Praise for Celtic Empire

The scene settings are colorful, the characters appealing or despicable as needed....One darned thing after another keeps the Pitts in peril and will keep readers turning the pages. Kirkus Reviews

Cussler s 25th Dirk Pitt novel has a little bit of everything that helped make the character, who the Associated Press once called the 'oceanic answer to Indiana Jones,' a household name to begin with including lots of cutting-edge science and plenty of action. The Real Book Spy

Celtic Empire is some of the best work between Clive and Dirk Cussler in years proving that Dirk Pitt, one of the thriller genre s premier heroes, has plenty more adventures left in him moving forward. Crime Reads