This might seem a little obvious, and it pops up in lots of thrillers:

The Diabolical Billionaire--
He (or she) usually has the most to lose or gain, and the resources to make bad stuff happen on a global scale. Many of them have come by their riches through criminal activity, so they've already sold their soul, so to speak.
Thriller writers (Cussler included) have learned the hard lesson that when you make your bad guy a politically motivated enemy, rather than an economically motivated, you run the risk of making your novel obsolete. It won't be too many more years before young people pick up a copy of raise the Titanic, and wonder who the Soviets are, and why we need a missile shield.

This is an incomplete list:

Med. Caper--Von Till
Iceberg--Kelley, Ronheim, Fyrie, et al.
Deep Six--Min Koryo Bougainville
Treasure--The Cappesterre Family (also a crime dynasty)
Sahara--Massarde
Dragon--Suma
Inca Gold--The Zolar Family (also a crime dynasty)
Shock Wave--Arthur Dorsett & daughters
Flood Tide--Qin Shang
Atlantis Found--The Wolfe family
Valhalla Rising--Zale
Trojan Odyssey--(I don't have this one in front of me, but I know the bad "guys" were wealthy hoteliers.

Billionaire baddies also abound in the Kurt Austin world. I'm reading Lost City right now with the Fauchard family. Can anyone help me out with the ones I'm missing

Raise the Titanic - Andre Prevlov
Pacific Vortex - Delphi Moran

Kurt Austin books
Fire Ice - Andre Prevlov
White Death - Barker, crazy eskimos
Lost City - The Fauchards

Sigh.....'Ol Foss never gets any lovin'.

I could've sworn I posted this elsewhere...

oh, well.

Is Prevlov from RTT the same guy as Fire Ice? That's a connection that escaped me, but it's been years since I read RTT and a while since I read Fire Ice.

Was Prevlov in RTT wealthy?

As for Delphi, I thought about including him since his criminal net worth is probably high enough to earn membership in the club--Valhalla Rising indicates that Summer had more than enough of her father's money to live well and raise the kids--but I don't see him in the same class as the Dorsett or Qin Shang. Consider how he sold his Hawaiian listening post to the Russians--he wasn't so rich that he didn't need to make a deal with unsavory types now and then.

Let's see, I suppose Henri Villon was rather wealthy, but not a billionaire. And Foss? Well, I think he got plenty of lovin' pretending to be Villon, and must have been paid off quite handsomely but as far as villains go, he was always more of an evil minion than the top of the totem pole.

Yes, i asked myself the same question in a recent post. But Andre Prevlov is the same guy from Raise the Titanic. He sort of reforms and helps Austin out in Fire Ice since the fall of the Soviets. It's a cool connection how Cussler brought him back after twenty some odd years and sort of gives him and Austin a rivaled history that ends in friendship.

Well at the end he left the soviets and the the americans payed him loads

It seems to me then that Prevlov, as a villain, was most definitely a political villain, not a wealthy schemer.

The Diabolical Billionaire tag is reserved for those who use catastrophe to advance their own wealth. Min Koryo Bougainville for example worked with the Soviets, but only for her own profit.

Serpent - Don Halcon and the brotherhood (it sounds like a band)

I just finished Fire Ice and there is no Andre Prevlov, only Viktor Petrov a.k.a. Ivan. If i remember correctly Prevlov in RTT was KGB and in Fire Ice, i get the idea that Petrov wasn't KGB man. Why Prevlov would return to Russia and work for the government if in RTT, he defected to USA? In my opinion that would make no sense.