"Odd choice of attack ship," Sandecker mused. "I take it they
absconded with the biological bombs that had been recovered from the
I-411?"
"Ryan confirmed as much. They had nearly completed the recovery
operation at the time of the attack. The Starfish was missing when the
crew escaped from the hold, and Ryan believes it was hoisted onto the
attack ship, perhaps with the submersible's missing pilots."
"I'll call the State Department and request an immediate dragnet from
the Japanese naval resources." Sandecker pulled an enormous Dominican
Republic cigar out of his breast pocket and. lit the green stogie,
sending a thick plume of smoke toward the ceiling. "Shouldn't be too
difficult to peg a cable ship when she slips into port."
"I've alerted Homeland Security, who is working along those same lines.
They don't seem to believe the Japanese Red Army has the skill or
technology to create a domestic threat with the weapons but are now
looking at possible ties to Al Qaeda and a few other terrorist
organizations."
"I wouldn't bet against it," Sandecker replied drily as he rolled the
cigar between his thumb and forefinger. "I'll brief the president this
afternoon. Someone is going to damn well pay for destroying an
American government vessel," he snarled, his eyes ablaze.
The inhabitants of the conference room nodded in collective agreement.
Though a large organization, there was a close-knit sense of family
within the agency and an act of terror against fellow colleagues
halfway around the world was still felt strongly by those at home.
"We share your sentiments, Admiral," Gunn replied quietly.
"By the way, the two crewmen that are missing?" Sandecker asked.
Gunn swallowed hard. "Summer and Dirk Pitt. Presumed abducted with
the Starfish"
Sandecker stiffened in shock. "Good Lord, not them. Does their father
know?"
"Yes. He's in the Philippines with Al Giordino trying to contain an
underwater environmental hazard. I spoke with him by satellite phone
and he understands that we are doing everything we can right now."
Sandecker leaned back in his leather chair and gazed at the cloud of
blue cigar smoke drifting above his head. God have mercy on the fool
that would harm that man's offspring, he thought.
Seven thousand miles away, the blue catamaran ripped across the west
coastal waters of Korea like a top fuel dragster running the traps.
Summer and Dirk were nudged and rocked in their luxury confinement as
the speedy yacht tore through the swells at almost 40 knots. A pair of
Korean fishermen in a rickety sampan cursed vehemently as the cat
stormed perilously close by, the powerful boat's wake washing waves
over the sides of the tiny fishing boat.
After two hours of hard running, the catamaran turned inland and slowed
its speed as it threaded its way through the sprinkling of small
islands that dotted the mouth of the Han River. The pilot maneuvered
the boat upriver another hour until spotting the semi hidden channel
that curled into Kang's Kyodongdo Island lair. Passing through the
inlet that he knew was monitored by hidden video cameras, the pilot
guided the catamaran across the cove to the floating dock at the base
of the sheer-walled compound. Inching to a stop, the blue catamaran
was tied up astern of Kang's gleaming white Benetti yacht.
Dirk and Summer remained locked in their cabin as Tongju strode
off the craft and rode the elevator up the cliff to Kang's private
enclave. Kang sat in his cherrywood-paneled executive office with
Kwan, studying the financial statements of a radio component
manufacturer that he intended to acquire via hostile takeover. He
looked up slowly when Tongju entered and bowed.
"Captain Lee of the Baekje has sent word that your mission was a
success," Kang stated through tight lips, offering no hint of
satisfaction.
Tongju nodded slightly. "We acquired the ordnance after it was
salvaged by the American vessel. Ten of the devices were still intact
and have been determined to be usable," he continued, neglecting to
mention that Dirk had sabotaged the other two canisters.
"More than a sufficient quantity to proceed with the operation," Kang
replied.
"The weapon scientists aboard the Baekje were most pleased. The
devices were immediately transferred to the biological research
laboratory upon our arrival at Inchon. The lab chief assured me that
the necessary refinement and containment will be complete within
forty-eight hours."
"At which time I trust the Baekje's reconfiguration will be
complete?"
Tongju nodded in reply. "She will be ready to set sail on time."
"Schedule is critical," Kang continued. "The mission must be achieved
ahead of the National Assembly referendum vote."
"As long as there is no delay with the ordnance, we will be ready,"
Tongju assured him. "The shipyard workers had already made impressive
progress by the time we departed the dock facility."
"We cannot tolerate another miscalculation," Kang said coldly.
Tongju squinted slightly, unsure of his boss's meaning. Ignoring the
comment, he continued speaking.
"I have brought two of the captives from the American vessel with me.
The pilots who operated their submersible. One of them is the
man responsible for the death of our two agents in America. I thought
perhaps you might wish to entertain him personally," he said, placing a
sinister emphasis on the word entertain.
"Ah, yes, the two missing crew members from the NUMA ship."
"Missing crew members?"
Kwan stepped forward and thrust a news story gleaned from the Internet
into Tongju's hands.
"It is all over the news," Kwan said. "Research vessel sunk in East
China Sea; all but two saved," he quoted from a headline in Chosun
I/bo, Korea's largest newspaper.
Tongju's face went pale but he didn't move a muscle. "That is
impossible. We sank the vessel with the crew sealed in a storage hold.
They could not have all escaped."
"Escape they did," Kang said. "A passing freighter picked up the crew
and took them to Japan. Did you not watch the ship go under?"
Tongju shook his head. "We were anxious to return with the salvaged
material at the earliest possible moment," he said quietly.
"It is being reported that the ship suffered an accidental fire on
board. Apparently, the Americans are afraid of publicizing yet another
terrorist incident," Kwan said.
"As well as revealing the true nature of their presence in the East
China Sea," Kang added. "Perhaps the lack of media reporting will
temper their investigation into the incident."
"I am confident that we maintained our false identity. My assault team
was of mixed ethnicity and only English or Japanese was spoken while on
the American ship," Tongju replied.
"Perhaps your failure to dispose of the crew was not a bad thing," Kang
stated with a slight glare. "It will further embarrass the Japanese
and keep the American inte
lligence effort focused on Japan. They will,
of course, be searching for the Baekje. The sooner she can be put back
to sea, the better."
"I will provide a continuous update from the shipyard," Tongju replied.
"And the two Americans?"
Kang perused a leather-bound schedule book. "I am traveling to Seoul
for an engagement with the minister of unification this evening and
shall return tomorrow. Keep them alive until then."
"I shall give them a last supper," Tongju replied without humor.
Kang ignored the comment and stuck his nose back into a stack of
financial documents. Taking the clue, the assassin turned and departed
Kang's office without making a sound.
A half mile from the Inchon enclosed dock where Baekje was undergoing
its cosmetic refit, two men in a dingy pickup truck slowly circled a
nondescript shipyard building. Empty pallets and rusting flatbed
carriers littered the grounds around the windowless structure, which
was marked by a faded kang shipping company sign perched over the main
entrance. Dressed in worn coveralls and grease-stained baseball caps,
the two men were part of a heavily armed undercover security team
numbering two dozen strong who patrolled the supersecret facility
around the clock. The dilapidated exterior of the building hid a
high-tech engineering development center filled with the latest super
computing technology. The main and upper floors were dedicated to
developing satellite payloads for Kang's satellite communications
business. A small team of crack engineers worked to incorporate
concealed eavesdropping and reconnaissance capabilities into
conventional telecommunication satellites that were sold for export and
launched by other regional governments or commercial companies. Hidden
in the basement, and heavily guarded, was a small microbiology
laboratory whose very existence was known by only a handful of Kang
employees. The small cadre of scientists who worked in the lab had
mostly been smuggled in from North Korea. With their families still
living in the northern provinces, and forceful patriotic mandates
placed upon them, the microbiologists and immunologists had little
choice in accepting the nature of their work with hazardous biological
agents.
The I-411's deadly bombs had been quietly transferred into the lab,
where an ordnance expert had assisted the biologists in separating the
powdery smallpox virus from the sixty-year-old compartmentalized aerial
bombs. The viruses had been freeze-dried by the Japanese, allowing the
pathogens to remain inert for storage and handling. The smallpox-laden
bombs were designed to maintain their deadly efficacy for the duration
of the submarine's voyage until hydrogenated upon deployment. Over
sixty years later, their porcelain casings had repelled all destructive
effects from decades of submersion. The aged bomb payloads were still
every bit as potent as when they were loaded.
Placing samples of the cream-colored powder into a bio safe container,
the biologists carefully initiated a controlled reconstitution of the
viruses using a sterile water-based diluent. Under a microscopic eye,
the dormant, block-shaped microorganisms could be seen waking from
their long slumber and bouncing off each other like bumper cars as they
resumed their lethal state. Despite the long period of dormancy, only
a small percentage of the viruses failed to rejuvenate.
The research lab was run by a highly paid Ukrainian microbiologist
named Sarghov. A former scientist with Biopreparat, the old Soviet
Union civilian agency that fronted the republic's military biological
weapons program, Sarghov had taken his knowledge of bio weapon genetic
manipulation and sold his skills in the marketplace to the highest
bidder. Though he never desired to leave his homeland, his stock as a
budding scientific leader in the agency was tarnished when he was
caught in bed with the wife of a politburo member. Fearing for his
life,
he made his way through Ukraine to Romania, where he hopped a Kang
freighter in the Black Sea. A hefty bribe to the ship's captain led
him to higher contacts in the company, where his scientific skills were
recognized and soon put to illicit use.
With ample resources, Sarghov quietly compiled a high-tech DNA research
laboratory stocked with the equipment and tools necessary for a skilled
bioengineer to splice, dice, isolate, or recombine the genetic material
of one microorganism to another. In the confines of Sarghov's secret
laboratory, a smorgasbord of dangerous bacterial and viral agents was
littered about the facility, the seeds he cultivated to create a garden
of death. But he still felt impotent. His stock was a commoner's
cache of easily acquired agents, such as the hepatitis B virus and
tuberculosis mycobacterium. Potentially lethal agents in their own
right, they were nothing like the deadly Ebola, smallpox, and Marburg
viruses he had worked with during his days at the Russian facility in
Obolensk. Sarghov's feverish attempts at creating a knockout killer
agent with the resources at hand had failed. He felt like a boxer with
one hand tied behind his back. What he needed and desired was a truly
lethal pathogen, one from the A-list.
His gift to evil science came from an unexpected source. A North
Korean agent in Tokyo had infiltrated a government records disposal
center and intercepted a cache of classified Japanese documents.
Expecting to find a bonanza of current Japanese security secrets, the
agent's handlers in Pyongyang were angered to find that the records
were old World War II classified documents. Included in the heist were
reports relating to Imperial Army experiments with biological weapons,
records that were to be destroyed for fear of embarrassing the
government. A sharp intelligence analyst stumbled upon the Imperial
Army's involvement with the final missions of the I-403 and I-411,
however, and Sarghov was soon on his way to his own supply of Variola
major.
In the Frankenstein world of genetic engineering, biologists have found
it a daunting task to create an entirely new organism from
scratch. But manipulating existing microorganisms through deliberate
mutation, then prompting their reproduction to useful quantities, has
been an ongoing art since the seventies. Laboratory-formulated
agricultural crops that are resistant to pestilence and drought have
been a major societal benefit of such bioengineering, along with the
more controversial creation of super developed livestock. But the dark
side of genetic surgery has always been the potential creation of a new
strain of virus or bacteria with unknown, and possibly catastrophic,
consequences.
For a man of his propensity, Sarghov was not content simply to
regenerate the supply of smallpox. He had much more up his sleeve.
With help from a Finnish research assistant, Sarghov acquired a sample
of the HIV-1 virus, the most common source of acquired immune
deficiency syndrome. Delving into the HIV-1 vira
l makeup, Sarghov
synthesized a key genetic element of the horrifying AIDS virus. Taking
his freshly reconstituted batch of smallpox virus, the scientist
attempted to grow a new mutated bug, integrating the highly unstable
HIV-1 virus. Boosted by the synthetic element that acted to stimulate
recombination, mutant viruses were soon cultivated and then reproduced
in mass. The result was a new microorganism that contained the
attributes of both individual pathogens. Microbiologists sometimes
refer to the process as a "chimera." Sarghov's chimera combined the
highly contagious lethality of smallpox with the immunitive destroying
abilities of HIV-1 into one deadly super virus
Reproducing the mutant pathogen in large quantities from scratch was a
time-consuming process despite the ferocity of the virus. Limited by
Kang's schedule, Sarghov maximized the quantities as best he could,
then freeze-dried the resulting mutant viruses much as the Japanese had
years before. The crystallized super virus was then mixed into the
larger stores of freeze-dried smallpox virus from the aerial bombs,
creating a diversified toxic compound. The entire batch was processed
and refined a second time with boosters that would accelerate the
rejuvenation process.
The now easily disseminated mixture was delicately packed into a series
of lightweight tubular containers resembling the insert to a roll of
paper towels, which were then stacked on a gurney and transported out
of the lab. The packaged viral amalgamate was rolled upstairs to the
satellite payload assembly bay, where a team of mechanical engineers
Dirk Pitt18-Black Wind Page 31