Dirk Pitt is back, in a adventure that is perhaps the most inventive and most exciting of his career - a classic treasure hunt involving an ancient hoard of gold, the secrets of a lost civilization, and an international ring of smugglers, all brought together in a plot that only Clive Cussler could devise. Inca Gold begins in 1532, when a fleet of ships sails in secret to an island in the middle of an inland sea. There they hide a magnificent treasure more vast than that of any pharaoh. Then they disappear, leaving only a great stone demon to guard their hoard. In 1578 the legendary Sir Francis Drake captures a Spanish galleon filled with Inca gold and silver and the key to the lost treasure, which included a gigantic chain of gold that belonged to the last Inca king, a masterpiece of ancient technology so huge that it requires two hundred men to lift it. As the galleon is sailed by Drake's crew back to England, an underwater earthquake causes a massive tidal wave that sweeps it into the jungle.