Dirk Pitt18-Black Wind

by Cussler, Clive

  I-411. It, too, was armed with the Maka^e ordnance and was sent to

  attack the eastern seaboard of the United States," Yaeger said quietly,

  realizing he had just dropped a bomb of his own.

  It had been a long day for Takeo Yoshida. A crane operator for the

  Yokohama Port Development Corporation, Yoshida had toiled since six in

  the morning loading an aged Iberian freighter with container after

  container of Japanese consumer electronics bound for export. He had

  just secured the last of the metal containers onto the ship's deck when

  a radio crackled in the crane's control cabin.

  "Yoshida, this is Takagi," the deep voice of his foreman grumbled.

  "Report to Dock D-5 upon completion with San Sebastian. A single

  loading for the vessel Baekje. Takagi, out."

  "Affirmed, Takagi-san," Yoshida answered, holding his disdain under his

  breath. Just twenty minutes to go on his shift and Takagi gives him a

  last-minute assignment across the shipyard. Securing the crane,

  Yoshida walked eight hundred yards across the Honmoku Port Terminal

  toward Dock D-5, cursing Takagi's name with each step he took. As he

  approached the end of the pier, he glanced beyond at the waters of the

  bustling port of Yokohama, where a constant stream of commercial ships

  jockeyed into position for loading and unloading.

  With three hundred meters of waterfront, container terminal D-5 was big enough to handle the largest cargo ships afloat. Yoshida was

  surprised to find the vessel tied to the dock was not the typical jumbo

  containership awaiting a load of industrial cargo but a special-purpose

  cable ship. Yoshida even recognized the Baekje as having been built in

  the nearby Mitsubishi Heavy Industries shipyard. At 436 feet long and

  with a beam of 133 feet, the stout vessel was designed to lay

  fiber-optic cable on the seafloor while withstanding the turbulent seas

  of the North Pacific. With a modern-appearing superstructure and white

  paint that still glistened, Yoshida could tell that it had not been

  many years since the high-tech ship slid into Yokohama Bay for the

  first time. She sported a Korean flag above the bridge mast and a blue

  lightning bolt across the funnel, which Yoshida recalled was the

  signature of a Kang Enterprises vessel. Short on Korean history, the

  crane operator did not know that her name, Baekje, represented one or

  the early Korean tribal kingdoms that dominated the peninsula in the

  third century a.d.

  A pair of dockworkers was securing cables beneath an oblong object on

  the bed of a large flatbed truck when one of the men turned and greeted

  Yoshida as he approached.

  "Hey, Takeo, ever fly a submarine before?" the man yelled.

  Yoshida returned a confused look before realizing that the object on

  the back of the truck was a small white submersible.

  "Takagi says our shift is over once we get it aboard," the man

  continued, displaying a missing front tooth as he spoke. "Lay it

  aboard and let's go get some Sapporo's."

  "Is she secure?" Yoshida asked, waving a hand at the submersible.

  "All ready," the second man replied eagerly, a young kid of nineteen

  ^ho Yoshida knew had just started work on the docks a few weeks

  before.

  A few yards away, Yoshida noticed a stocky bald man with dark eyes

  surveying the scene near the ship's gangway. A menacing quality

  lingered over the man, Yoshida thought. He'd been in enough scrapes in

  the nearby shipyard bars to recognize which men were legitimate tough

  guys and which were pretenders. This man was no pretender, he

  judged.

  Shifting thoughts to the taste of a cold Sapporo beer, Yoshida climbed

  up a high ladder into the cab of the adjacent container crane and fired

  up its diesel motor. Adeptly working the levers like a concert pianist

  tickling the ivories, he expertly adjusted the movable boom and sliding

  block until satisfied, then dropped the hook and block quickly toward

  the ground, halting it dead center a few inches above the submersible.

  The two dockworkers quickly slipped a pair of cables over the hoist

  hook and gave Yoshida the thumbs-up sign. Ever so gently, the crane

  operator pulled up on the hoist line, the thick cable drawing tight as

  it wrapped around a drum behind the cab. Slowly, Yoshida raised the

  twenty-four-ton submersible to a height of fifty feet, hesitating as he

  waited for its twisting motion to halt before swinging it over to a

  waiting pad on the Baekje's rear deck. But he never got the chance.

  Before it could be seen, and almost before it physically started,

  Yoshida's experienced hands could feel something wrong through the

  controls. One of the cables had not been properly secured to the

  submersible and the tail suddenly slipped down and through a loop in

  the cable. In an instant, the rear of the sub lunged down and the

  white metal capsule hung vertically at a grotesque angle, clinging

  precariously to the single cable wrapped around its nose. Yoshida didn't breathe, and, for a moment, it looked like the dangling submersible

  would stabilize. But before he could move it an inch, a loud twang

  burst through the air as the lone securing cable snapped. Like a toon

  of bricks, the submersible dropped straight to the dock below, landing

  on its tail with an accordion like smash before plopping over on its

  side in distress.

  Yoshida grimaced, already thinking of the grief he would suffer at the

  hands of Takagai, as well as the reams of insurance paperwork he would

  be forced to fill out. Thankfully, no one was hurt on the dock. As he

  climbed down from the crane's cab to inspect the damage, Yoshida

  glanced at the bald man on the gangway, expecting to see a seething

  fury. Instead, the mysterious man looked back at him with a cold face

  of stone. The dark eyes, however, seemed to pierce right through

  him.

  The Shinkai three-man submersible was heavily mashed on one end and

  clearly inoperable. It would be shipped back to its home at the

  Japanese Marine Science and Technology Center for three months' worth

  of repairs before it would be seaworthy again. The two dock-workers

  did not fare as well. Though not fired, Yoshida noticed that the two

  men did not show up for work the next day, and, in fact, were never

  seen or heard from again.

  Twenty hours later and 250 miles farther to the southwest, an American

  commercial jetliner touched down at Osaka's modern Kan-sai

  International Airport and taxied to the international gate. Dirk

  stretched his six-foot-four frame as he exited the plane, relieved to

  be free from the cramped airline seating that only a jockey would find

  comfortable. Passing quickly through the customs checkpoint, he

  entered the busy main terminal crowded with businessmen hustling to

  catch their flights. Stopping briefly, it took just a momentary scan

  of the terminal before he picked out the woman he was looking for from

  the mass of humanity.

  Standing nearly six feet tall with shoulder-length flaming red hair, his

  fraternal twin sister Summer towered like a beacon in a sea of

  black-haired Japanese. Her pearl gray
eyes glistened and her soft

  mouth broke into a grin as she spotted her brother and waved him over to

  her.

  "Welcome to Japan," she gushed, giving him a hug. "How was your

  flight?"

  "Like riding in a sardine can with wings."

  "Good, then you'll feel right at home in the cabin berth I scraped up

  for you on the Sea Rover" she laughed.

  "I was afraid you wouldn't be here yet," Dirk remarked as he collected

  his luggage and they made their way to the parking lot.

  "When Captain Morgan received word from Rudi that we were to terminate

  our study of pollutants along the eastern coast of Japan to assist in

  an emergency search-and-recovery mission, he wasted no time in

  responding. Fortunately, we were working not far off Shikoku when we

  got the call so were able to reach Osaka this morning."

  Like her brother, Summer had possessed a deep love of the sea since

  childhood. After obtaining a master's degree in oceanography from the

  Scripps Institute, she'd joined her brother at NUMA following a uniting

  with their father, who now headed up the undersea organization. As

  headstrong and resourceful as her sibling, she'd gained respect in the

  field with her knowledge and hands-on abilities, while her attractive

  looks never failed to turn heads.

  Leading Dirk past a row of parked cars, Summer suddenly stopped in

  front of a tiny orange Suzuki subcompact parked by itself.

  "Oh, no, not another knee-crusher," Dirk laughed as he surveyed the

  tiny vehicle.

  "A loaner from the Port Authority. You'll be surprised."

  After carefully wedging his gear into the minuscule hatchback, Dirk

  opened the left-side door and prepared to pretzel himself into the

  passenger seat. To his amazement, the interior of the right-hand-drive

  car proved roomy, with a low sitting position creating ample headroom

  for the two six-footers. Summer jumped into the driver's seat and

  threaded their way out of the parking lot and onto the Hanshin

  Expressway-Heading north toward downtown Osaka, she accelerated the

  little Suzuki hard, zipping in and out of traffic, for the

  twelve-kilometer drive to the city's port terminal. Exiting the

  expressway, she turned the car into the Osaka South Port Intermodal

  Terminal and down a side dock before pulling up in front of the Sea

  Rover.

  The NUMA research vessel was a slightly newer and larger version of the

  Deep Endeavor, complete with matching turquoise paint scheme. Dirk's

  eyes were drawn to the stern deck, where a bright orange submersible

  called the Starfish sat glistening like a setting sun.

  "Welcome aboard, Dirk," boomed the deep voice of Robert Morgan, the

  master of the Sea Rover. A bearded bear of a man, Morgan resembled a

  muscular version of Burl Ives. The jovial captain held an amazing

  array of seagoing experience, having commanded everything from a

  Mississippi River tugboat to a Saudi Arabian oil tanker. Having salted

  away a healthy retirement sum from his commercial captain days, Morgan

  joined NUMA for the pure adventure of sailing to unique corners of the

  globe. Deeply admired by his crew, the skipper of the Sea Roverwas a

  highly organized leader who possessed an acute attention to detail.

  After storing Dirk's bags, the threesome adjourned to a starboard-side

  conference room whose porthole windows offered a serene view of Osaka

  Harbor. They were joined by First Officer Tim Ryan, a lanky man with

  ice blue eyes. Dirk grabbed a cup of coffee to regain alertness after

  his long flight while Morgan got down to business.

  "Tell us about this urgent search-and-recovery mission. Gunn was

  rather vague with the details over the satellite phone."

  Dirk recapped the Yunaska incident and the recovery of the I-403's bomb

  canister and what had been learned of the sub's failed mission.

  "When HiramYaeger reviewed the Japanese naval records in the National

  Archives, he discovered a near-duplicate operations order that was

  issued to a second submarine, the I-411. It had the same mission, only

  to cross the Atlantic and strike New York and Philadelphia instead of

  the West Coast."

  "What became of the I-411?" Summer asked.

  "That's what we're here to find out. Yaeger was unable to uncover any

  definitive information on the I-411's final whereabouts, other than that she failed to appear for a refueling rendezvous near Singapore and

  was presumed lost in the South China Sea. I contacted St. Julien

  Perlmutter, who took it a step further and found an official Japanese

  naval inquiry which placed the loss in the middle of the East China Sea

  sometime during the first few weeks of 1945. Perlmutter noted that

  those facts matched up to a report from the American submarine

  Swordfish that she had engaged and sunk a large enemy submarine in that

  region during the same time frame. Unfortunately, the Swordfish was

  later destroyed on the same mission so the full accounting was never

  documented. Their radio report did provide an approximate coordinate

  of the sinking, however."

  "So it's up to us to find the I-411" Morgan said matter-of-factly.

  Dirk nodded. "We need to ensure that the biological bombs were

  destroyed when the submarine went down, or recover them if they are

  still intact."

  Summer stared out one of the porthole windows at a skyscraper in

  distant downtown Osaka. "Dirk, Rudi Gunn briefed us about the Japanese

  Red Army. Could they have already recovered the biological weapons

  from the I-411?"

  "Yes, that's a possibility. Homeland Security and the FBI don't seem

  to think the JRA has the resources to conduct a deep-water salvage

  operation and they're probably right. But, then, all it would take is

  money, and who's to say how well funded they, or an associate terrorist

  group, may be. Rudi agrees that we better make sure one way or the

  other."

  The room fell silent as all minds visualized a cache of deadly

  biological bombs sitting deep below the ocean's surface and the

  consequence if they fell into the wrong hands.

  "You've got the best ship and crew in NUMA at your disposal," Morgan

  finally said. "We'll get her done."

  "Captain, we've got a pretty large search area on our hands. How soon

  can we be under way?" Dirk asked.

  "We'll need to top off our fuel supplies, plus two or three of the

  crew

  still ashore obtaining additional provisions. I expect we can be under way in six hours," Morgan said, glancing at a wall chronometer.

  "Fine. I'll retrieve the search coordinates and provide them to the

  ship's navigator right away."

  As they exited the conference room, Summer tugged at Dirk's elbow.

  "So what did the data from Perlmutter cost you?" she chided, knowing

  the gourmet historian's penchant for culinary blackmail.

  "Nothing much. Just a jar of pickled sea urchins and an

  eighty-year-old bottle of sake."

  "You found those in Washington, D.C.?"

  Dirk gave his sister a pleading look of helplessness.

  "Well," she laughed, "we do have six more hours in port."

  But, Dae-jong, opening the gates to the No
rth is not going to provide

  me a usable, skilled labor pool," the CEO of South Korea's largest auto

  manufacturer asserted before taking a puff on a large Cuban cigar.

  Sitting across a mahogany cocktail table, Dae-jong Kang shook his head

  politely as a long-legged waitress brought a second round of drinks to

  the table. Their conversation halted while the young Chaebel Club

  waitress placed their drinks in front of them. The club was a private

  enclave for Korea's super rich and powerful, a secure and neutral

  meeting place where huge deals were hammered out over kimchi and

  martinis. The aristocratic club was appropriately housed on the

  hundredth floor of the world's tallest building, the recently completed

  International Business Center Tower located in western Seoul.

  "You must consider the lower labor wages. Retraining costs would be

  minor and recouped in no time. My staff has analyzed the prospects and

  told me I could save twenty million dollars a year in labor costs

  if we could draw on manpower from North Korea at their current

  equivalent wage rate. I can only imagine what your potential auto

  anufacturing savings would be. Suppose instead of expanding your

  Tllsan manufacturing facility, you built an entirely new plant in the

  orthern province of Yanggang. How would that improve your

  competitiveness on the world markets, not to mention open access to the

  northern consumers?"

  "Yes, but it is not so easy for me. I have unions to contend with, as

  well as capital budget constraints. I certainly can't throw people out

  on the street at Ulsan and rehire workers from the North at half the