“A single eggshell-colored glove moved through the Unity module….Spinning like a ballerina, the glove impacted a padded wall, sending it twirling on its axis through a swarm of floating orb-like marbles and into the Harmony module – the heart of the ISS.
“The burgundy-colored spheres stretched and blobbed. Some clung to one another and formed larger orbs, while others multiplied and stained the glove red.
“That’s what blood does in outer space.”
In Ryan Pote’s Blood and Treasure, a man named Ethan Cain witnesses a remarkable sight off the coast of Mozambique – a space capsule hurtling through the sky and into the ocean near him. What’s inside is even more remarkable – a woman, unconscious and bloodied, but somehow still alive. It is only later that he learns she is the only survivor of the International Space Station disaster – and that the other crew members were brutally murdered.
What happened? Who could have done this? These are only some of the questions swirling around his head. A former special ops pilot, he and his team are treasure hunters, and they are in the middle of the biggest job of their lives: the recovery of an ancient bronze scroll, which in turn will point the way to something much greater. But what? Why is everyone so secretive about it? Why does he keep getting warned not to let it fall into the wrong hands? Whose hands are they, exactly?
And what does it all have to do with the woman who has fallen from the sky? As Cain probes for answers, enlisting both friends and enemies, and some that could go either way, he and his crew have no idea of the astonishing events that will soon envelop them. What’s at stake, it turns out, is more than just ancient objects, or even mass murder – it may just be control of the world.
Clive Cussler and Tom Clancy have passed on, though others continue to explore their worlds. Talented writers such as Steve Berry, Dan Brown, and Brad Thor still spin their complex webs of past and present; of spies, warriors, and conspiracies. And now Ryan Pote joins them to take us on a rollercoaster ride of action, adventure, science, lore, and technology; a novel filled with twists and surprises. It is the beginning of a blazing new career.
It’s hardly his first career, though. For many years, Pote was a Navy helicopter pilot, and served as a mission commander in a joint interagency special operations task force in Central and South America. His experiences infused everything in Blood and Treasure.
“It was the foundation for all of it,” he says. “My time with the task force combating transnational criminal organizations gave me the tactical knowledge to weave the story together. I’d worked with every lettered government agency, and more, to hunt bad actors out of Central and South America. We did a lot of work with the NSA. The timber-trafficking angle in the book is something most aren’t aware of as a source of income for drug cartels – it’s not just drugs anymore. There’s a scene in the novel that is a fictional account of a raid in East Africa. My good friend was one of the pilots flying a Dash-8 that day. I wanted to share some of their unknown story and found a way to weave it in and get it approved for release by the DoD. Almost every character is modeled after someone I’d worked with or encountered.”
That includes himself. Ethan Cain has burn scars all over his body, “like the rippling bark of an ancient oak tree.” Asked if there were parts of Ethan that he shared, Pote replied, “In every way.”
To read more of Neil’s review and discussion with Ryan Pote, go here.
