Dirk Pitt18-Black Wind
Page 19
The bear claw now demolished, he applied both hands in a finger dance
over the keyboard to conjure up his bionic confidante, Max.
No fellow computer programmer, Max was an artificial intelligence
system with a virtual interface in the form of a holographic image. The
brainchild of Yaeger to aid in researching voluminous databases, he had
cleverly modeled the visual interface after his wife, Elsie, adding a
sensual voice and saucy personality. On a platform opposite the
horseshoe console, an attractive woman with auburn hair and topaz eyes
suddenly appeared. She was dressed in a skimpy halter top that
revealed her navel and a very short leather skirt.
"Good morning, gentlemen," the three-dimensional image murmured.
"Hi, Max. You remember the younger Dirk Pitt?"
"Of course. Nice to see you again, Dirk."
"You're looking good, Max."
"I'd look better if Hiram would stop dressing me in Britney Spears
outfits," she replied with disdain, rolling her hands down her body.
"All right. Tomorrow it will be Prada," Yaeger promised.
"Thank you."
"Dirk, what is it that you'd like to ask Max?" Yaeger prompted.
"Max, what can you tell me about the Japanese efforts at chemical and
biological warfare during World War Two?" Dirk asked, turning
serious.
Max hesitated for a moment as the question generated a massive search
through thousands of databases. Not just limiting it to oceanographic
resources, Yaeger had wired the NUMA network into a diverse multitude
of government and public information resources, ranging from the
Library of Congress to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Sifting
through the mass of information, Max consolidated the data points into
a concisely summarized reply.
"The Japanese military conducted extensive research and experimentation
into chemical and biological weaponry both during and preceding World
War Two. Primary research and deployment occurred in Manchuria, under
the direction of the occupying Japanese Imperial Army after they had
seized control of northeast China in 1931. Numerous facilities were
constructed throughout the region as test centers, under the guise of
lumber mills or other false fronts. Inside the facilities, Chinese
captives were subject to a wide variety of human experiments with germ
and chemical compounds. The Qiqihar facility, under the command of
Army Unit 516, was the largest Japanese chemical weapons research and
test site, although chemical weapons manufacture actually took place on
the Japanese mainland. Changchun, under Army Unit 100, and the
sprawling Ping Fan facility, under my Unit 731, were the major
biological warfare research and test centers. The facilities were in
fact large prisons, where local criminals and derelicts were sent and
used as test subjects, though few of the captives would survive their
incarceration."
"I've read about Unit 731," Dirk commented. "Some of their experiments
made the Nazis look like Boy Scouts."
"Allegations of inhuman experiments performed by the Japanese,
particularly in Unit 731, are nearly endless. Chinese prisoners, and
even some Allied prisoners of war, were routinely injected with an
assortment of deadly pathogens, as their captors sought to determine
the appropriate lethal dosage. Biological bombs were dropped on
prisoners staked to the ground in order to test delivery systems. Many
experiments took place outside the walls of the facilities. Typhoid
bacilli germs were intentionally released into local village wells,
resulting in widespread outbreaks of fever and death. Rats carrying
plague-infected fleas were released in congested urban areas as a test
of the speed and ferocity of infection. Children were even considered
an acceptable target. In one experiment, local village children were
given
chocolates filled with anthrax, which they gratefully devoured, with
horrifying side effects."
"That's revolting," Yaeger said, shaking his head. "I hope the
perpetrators paid for their crimes."
"For the most part, they did not," Max continued. "Nearly to a man,
those in charge of the chemical and biological army units avoided
prosecution as war criminals. The Japanese destroyed much of the
documentation, and the camps themselves, before their surrender.
American intelligence forces, unaware of the extent of horrors, or, in
some cases, seeking to obtain the results of the ghastly experiments,
looked the other way at the atrocities. Many of the Imperial Army
medical professionals who worked in the death camps went on to become
respected business leaders in Japan's postwar pharmaceutical
industry."
"With blood on their hands," Dirk muttered.
"No one knows for sure, but experts estimate that at least two hundred
thousand Chinese died as a result of Japanese chemical and biological
warfare activity during the thirties and forties. A large percentage
of the casualties were innocent civilians. It was a wartime tragedy
that has only recently received much attention from historians and
scholars."
"Man's inhumanity to man never ceases to amaze," Yaeger said
solemnly.
"Max, exactly what pathogens and chemicals did the Japanese work with?"
Dirk asked.
"It might be easier to ask which agents they didn't experiment with.
Their known research in bacteria and viruses ranged from anthrax,
cholera, and bubonic plague to glanders, smallpox, and typhus, with
experiments conducted in pretty much everything else in between. Among
the chemical agents employed in weaponry were phosgene, hydrogen
cyanide, sulfur mustard, and lewisite. It is unknown how much was
actually deployed in the field, again due to the fact that the Japanese
destroyed most of their records as they retreated from China at the end
of the war."
"How would these agents have been used on the battlefield?"
"Chemical agents, possessing a long shelf life, are perfectly suitable
for munitions. The Japanese manufactured a large quantity of chemical
munitions, mostly in the form of grenades, mortars, and a wide range of
artillery shells. Thousands of these weapons were even left behind in
Manchuria at the war's end. The Japanese biological delivery systems
were less successful due to the sensitive nature of the arming agents.
Development of a practical biological artillery shell proved difficult,
so much of the Japanese effort at fabricating the release of biological
agents was focused on aerial bombs. Known records seem to indicate
that the Japanese scientists were never completely satisfied with the
effectiveness of the bio bombs they developed."
"Max, are you aware of the use of porcelain as a bomb-casing material
for these chemical or biological agents?"
"Why, yes, as a matter of fact. Steel bombs generated excessive heat
upon explosion that would destroy the biological pathogens, so the
Japanese turned to ceramics. It is known that a variety of porcelain
bomb canisters were tested in China as aerial del
ivery systems for the
biological agents."
Dirk felt a lump in his stomach. The I-403 had indeed been on a
mission of death with its biological bombs back in 1945. Fortuitously,
the submarine had been sunk, but was that, in fact, the last of its
failed mission?
Yaeger broke his concentration. "Max, this is all new history to me. I
had no idea the Japanese actually used chemical and biological weapons
in battle. Were they ever employed outside of China, against American
forces?"
"The Japanese deployment of chemical and biological weapons was
primarily restricted to the Chinese theater of war. Limited instances
of their usage were also reported in Burma, Thailand, and Malaysia. My
data sources show no recorded use of biochemical agents in battle with
Western Allied forces, perhaps due to Japanese
fear of reprisal. It is suspected that chemical weapons would have
been employed in defense of the homeland, had an invasion of Japan been
necessary. Of course, your father's discovery proves that chemical
munitions were to be stockpiled in the Philippines for possible
deployment in defense of the islands."
"My father's discovery?" Dirk asked. "I don't understand."
"I'm sorry, Dirk, let me explain. I received a toxin assessment from
the Mariana Explorer taken from an ordnance sample recovered by | your
father and Al Giordino."
"You've completed your database search on the arsenic sample already? I
thought you said you wouldn't have that completed until after lunch,"
Yaeger asked the hologram.
"Sometimes, I can just be brutally efficient," she replied, throwing
her nose in the air.
"What's the connection?" Dirk asked, still confused. "Your father and
Al traced a toxic arsenic leak to an old cargo ship that apparently
sank on a coral reef near Mindanao during World War Two. The arsenic
was leaking from a shipment of artillery shells carried in the ship's
hold," Yaeger explained.
"One-hundred-five-millimeter shells, to be precise," Max added.
"Ammunition for a common artillery gun used by the Japanese Imperial
Army. Only the contents weren't arsenic, per se." "What did you
find?" Yaeger asked.
"The actual contents were a mixture of sulfur mustard and lewisite. A
popular chemical munitions concentrate from the thirties, it acts as a
fatal blistering agent when released as a gas. Lewisite is an arsenic
derivative, which accounts for the toxic readings found in the
Philippines. The Japanese produced thousands of mustard lewisite
shells in Manchuria, some of which were deployed against the Chinese.
Some of these old buried chemical munitions are still being dug up
today.
"Was the Japanese Navy connected with the deployment of these weapons?"
Dirk asked.
"The Japanese Imperial Navy was actively involved with chemical weapons
production at its Sagami Naval Yard, and was believed to have had four
additional storage arsenals at Kure, Yokosuka, Hiroshima, and Sasebo.
But the Navy possessed only a fraction of the estimated 1.7 million
chemical bombs and shells produced during the war, and no records
indicate they were ever used in any naval engagements. The biological
weapons research was funded through the Imperial Army and, as I
mentioned, centered in occupied China. A primary conduit for the
research activity was the Army Medical School in Tokyo. It is unknown
whether the Navy had any involvement through the medical school, as the
college was destroyed by wartime bombing in 1945."
"So no wartime records exist that show chemical or biological weapons
were ever assigned onboard Navy vessels?"
"None that were publicly released," Max said, shaking her holographic
head. "The bulk of the captured Japanese wartime records, including
those of the Navy Ministry, were consigned to the National Archives. As
a gesture of goodwill, most of the documents were later returned to the
Japanese government. Only a fraction of the records were copied,
however, and even a smaller portion have ever been translated."
"Max, I'd like to explore the Naval Ministry records for information on
the mission of a particular Japanese submarine, the I-403. Can you
determine whether these records might still exist?"
"I'm sorry, Dirk, but I don't have access to that portion of the
National Archives' data records."
Dirk turned to Yaeger with an arched brow and gave him a long, knowing
look.
"The National Archives, eh? Well, that should be a lot less dangerous
than tapping into Langley," Yaeger acceded with a shrug.
"That's the old Silicon Valley hacker I know and love," Dirk replied
with a laugh.
"Give me a couple of hours and I'll see what I can do."
"Max," Dirk said, looking at the transparent woman in the eye, thank
you for the information."
"My pleasure, Dirk," she replied seductively. "I'm happy to be at your
service any time."
Then, in an instant, she vanished. Yaeger already had his nose against
a computer monitor, fingers flying over a keyboard, completely
engrossed in his subversive mission at hand.
At promptly ten o'clock, Dirk entered a plush executive conference
room, still carrying the large duffel bag over his shoulder. Thick
azure carpet under his feet complemented the dark cherrywood conference
table and matching wood paneling on the walls, which were dotted with
ancient oil paintings of American Revolutionary warships. A thick pane
of glass stretched the length of one wall, offering a bird's-eye view
of the Potomac River and the Washington Mall across the water. Seated
at the table, two stone-faced men in dark suits listened attentively as
a diminutive man in horn-rimmed glasses discussed the Deep Endeavor's
recent events in the Aleutian Islands. Rudi Gunn stopped in
mid-sentence and popped to his feet as Dirk entered the room.
"Dirk, good of you to return to Washington so quickly," he greeted
warmly, his bright blue eyes beaming through the thick pair of
eyeglasses. "Glad to see your ferry landing injuries were minor," he
added, eyeing Dirk's swollen lip and bandaged cheek.
"My companion broke her leg, but I managed to escape with just a fat
lip. We fared a little better than the other guys," he said with a
smirk, "whoever they were. It's good to see you again, Rudi," he
added, shaking the hand of NUMA's longtime assistant director.
Gunn escorted him over and introduced him to the other two men.
"Dirk, this is Jim Webster, Department of Homeland Security special
assistant, Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection," he
said, waving a hand toward a pale-skinned man with cropped blond hair,
"and Rob Jost, assistant director of Maritime and Land Security)
Transportation Security Administration, under DHS." A rotund,
bearish-looking man with a flush red nose nodded at Dirk without
smiling "We were discussing Captain Burch's report of your rescue of
the
CDC team on Yunaska Island," Gunn continued.
"A fortunate thing we hap
pened to be in the area. I'm just sorry we
weren't able to reach the two Coast Guardsmen in time."
"Given the apparently high levels of toxins that were released near the
station, they really didn't have much of a chance from the beginning,"
Webster said.
"You confirmed that they died from cyanide poisoning?" Dirk asked.
"Yes. How did you know? That information hasn't been made public."
"We recovered a dead sea lion from the island, which a CDC team in
Seattle examined after we returned. They found that it had been killed
by cyanide inhalation."
"That is consistent with the autopsy reports for the two Coast
Guardsmen."
"Have you uncovered any information on the boat that fired at us, and
presumably released the cyanide?"
After an uncomfortable pause, Webster replied, "No additional
information has been obtained. Unfortunately, the description provided
matches a thousand other fishing boats of its kind. It is not believed
to have been a local vessel, and we are now working with the Japanese
authorities to investigate leads in their country."
"So you believe there is a Japanese connection. Any ideas on why
someone would launch a chemical attack on a remote weather station in
the Aleutians?"
"Mr. Pitt," Jost interrupted, "did you know the men who tried to kill
you in Seattle?"
"Never saw them before. They appeared to be semiprofessionals, more
than just a pair of hired street hoods."