pair of ropes attached to the blimp's nose were pulled taut by three
men standing off either side of the bow while four additional men
grabbed onto side rails running the length of the gondola. Directly
forward of the wide cockpit window that ran nearly to his feet, Pitt
stared toward the crew chief, who stood at the base of the mobile
mooring mast. At Pitt's command, the crew chief signaled another
crewman, standing high atop the mooring mast, to release the nose
tether. In unison, the ground crew then tugged at the weightless
blimp, walking it away from the mooring mast several dozen yards to a
safe launching point clear of obstacles.
Pitt gave a thumbs-up signal to the crew chief, then reached over and
pulled down a pair of levers protruding from the center console, increasing the throttle to the twin engines. As the ground crew let
free of their clutches and moved clear, he gently pulled back on a
center yoke control mounted in front of his seat. The controls
manipulated the motor-driven propellers, which were each enclosed in
swiveling ducts. As he pulled on the yoke, the ducts tilted upward,
providing additional lift from the churning propellers. Immediately,
the blimp began to rise, creeping forward as it climbed. Almost
without the feeling of movement, the big airship rose off the ground
and into the sky with its nose pointed high. Giordino cheerfully waved
out an open side window to the ground crew below, who shrank to the
size of bugs as the airship rapidly gained altitude.
Despite Giordino's request for a low-flying pass over Malibu, Pitt
steered the airship directly offshore from Oxnard after leaving the
grounds of the airport and soon leveled the blimp off at a height of
twenty-five hundred feet. The Pacific Ocean resonated a deep aqua
color under a bright sun, and the men easily counted out the northerly
Channel Islands of Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and San Miguel under the
clear skies. As they floated east, Pitt noticed dew dripping off of
the blimp, its fabric sides warming under the rays of the morning sun.
He glanced at a helium pressure gauge, noting a slight rise in the
needle as the helium expanded from the warming temperatures and higher
cruising altitude. An automatic venting system would release any
excess gas if the pressure rose too high, but Pitt kept the blimp well
below its pressure height so as not to needlessly stave off helium.
The controls of the Sentinel 1000 were heavy in his hands and he noted
that the sensation of flying the blimp felt closer to sailing a
twenty-meter racing yacht than piloting an airplane. Turning the huge
rudders and elevators required some muscling of the yoke, which
resulted in an anxious pause before the ship's nose would gradually
respond. Correcting course, he absentmindedly watched the lines
dangling off the blimp's nose sway back and forth. A boat bobbed into
view beneath them, which he recognized as a charter fishing boat. The
tiny-looking day fishermen on the boat's stern suddenly waved up
at them with friendly abandon. There was something about an airship
that always seemed to strike a warm chord with people. They captured
the romance of the air, Pitt decided, offering a reminder of times past
when flying was still a novelty. With his hands on the controls, he
could feel the nostalgia himself. Floating at a leisurely pace over
the water, he let his mind churn back to the days of the thirties when
mammoth dirigibles like the Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg shared the
skies with the huge Navy airships Akron and Macon. Like the opulent
cruise ships of the same era, they offered a certain relaxed majesty
that simply no longer existed in modern travel.
When they reached a distance of thirty miles offshore, Pitt angled the
blimp south and began navigating a large, lazy arc off the Los Angeles
metropolis. Giordino powered up the LASH optical system, tied into a
laptop computer, which enabled him to spot the images of incoming
surface vessels up to thirty-five miles away. The freighters and
containerships came chugging in toward the ports of Los Angeles and
Long Beach at a sporadic yet endless pace. The big vessels hailed from
a variety of exotic-sounding home ports from Mumbai to Jakarta, though
China, Japan, and Taiwan accounted for the largest volume of traffic.
More than three thousand vessels a year entered the adjacent ports,
creating a constant stream of traffic that crawled across the Pacific
toward America's busiest port like ants to a picnic. As Giordino
studied the laptop, he reported to Pitt that he could spot two large
vessels inbound in the distance that figured to be commercial ships.
Squinting out the cockpit window, Pitt could just make out the leading
vessel on the horizon.
"Let's go take a look," Pitt replied, aiming the nose of the airship
toward the approaching ship. Flicking a button on the Coast Guard
radio set newly installed in the cockpit, he spoke into his headset.
"Coast Guard Cutter Halibut, this is airship Icarus. We are on
station
and preparing to survey two inbound vessels approximately forty-five
miles due east of Long Beach, over."
"Roger, Icarus" came a deep-voiced reply. "Glad to have you and your
eyes in the sky with us. We have three vessels deployed and engaged in
current interdiction actions. We'll await your surveillance reports on
new inbound vessels as they approach. Out."
"Eyes in the sky," Giordino grumbled. "I'd rather be the stomach on
the sofa," he said, suddenly wondering if anyone had packed them a
lunch aboard the airship.
Throughout the night, the Odyssey had churned west, inching her way
closer to the California coast that she had departed just days before.
Tongju returned to the platform after resolving the launch position
dispute and stole a few hours of sleep in the captain's cabin before
rising an hour before dawn. Under the first trickles of morning light,
he watched from the bridge as the platform followed in the Koguryo's
wake, noticing the shadow of a sizable island in the distance off the
starboard bow. It was San Nicolas Island, a dry and windblown rock
farthest from shore of all the Channel Islands and owned by the Navy
for use primarily as an amphibious training site. They continued west
for another hour before the radio crackled with the voice of Captain
Lee.
"We are approaching the location that the Ukrainian engineers have
indicated. Prepare to halt engines, and we will take up position to
the southeast of you. We will be standing by to initiate launch
countdown at your direction."
"Affirmative," Tongju replied. "We will set position and ballast the
platform. Stand by for positioning."
Tongju turned and nodded to one of Kang's undercover crewmen who was
piloting the Odyssey. With skilled confidence, the helmsman eased off
the platform's forward-propulsion throttles, then activated
the self-positioning thrusters. Using a GPS coordinate as a fixed
target, the computer-controlled system of forward, side, and rear
<
br /> thrusters was activated, locking the Odyssey in a fixed position as if
parked on a dime.
"Position control activated," the helmsman barked in a crisp military
voice. "Initiating ballast flooding," he continued, pushing a series
of buttons on an illuminated console.
Two hundred feet below the pilothouse, a series of gate valves were
automatically opened inside the twin pontoons and a half-dozen ballast
pumps began rapidly pumping salt water into the hollow steel hulls. The
flooding was imperceptible to those standing on the platform deck, as
the computer-controlled pumps ensured an even rate of flooding. On the
bridge, Tongju studied a computerized three-dimensional image of the
Odyssey on a monitor, its catamaran hulls and lower columns turning a
bright blue as the seawater poured in. Like a lethargic elevator ride,
as the men on the bridge watched rather than felt, the platform sank
slowly toward the waves. Sixty minutes passed before the platform
gently dropped forty-six feet, the bottom of its twin hulls submerged
to a stabilizing depth seventy feet below the surface. Tongju noted
that the platform had ceased its slow swaying evident earlier. With
its submerged pontoons and partially sunken pilings, the Odyssey had
become a rock-stable platform from which to launch a million-pound
rocket.
A buzzer sounded as the designated launch depth was attained, the
rising blue water on the monitor graphic having reached a red
horizontal line. The helmsman pressed a few more buttons, then stood
back from the console.
"Flooding complete. Platform is stabilized for launch," he said.
"Secure the bridge," Tongju replied, nodding toward a Filipino crewman
who stood near the radarscope. A guard standing near the door was
waved over and quickly escorted the crewman off the bridge without
saying a word. Tongju followed out the rear of the bridge, entering a
small elevator, which he rode to the floor of the hangar. A dozen or so engineers were hovering around the huge horizontal rocket,
examining an array of computer stations that were wired directly into
the launch vehicle. Tongju approached a thick-haired man with round
glasses named Ling who headed up the launch operations team. Before
Tongju could speak, Ling gushed with a nervous testimony.
"We have verified final tests on the payload with positive results. The
launch vehicle is secure and all electromechanical systems have tested
nominal."
"Good. The platform is in the designated position and ballasted for
launch. Is the rocket ready to be transported to the launch tower?"
Ling nodded enthusiastically. "We have been awaiting word to proceed.
We are prepared to initiate launch vehicle transport and erection."
"There is no reason to dawdle. Proceed at once. Notify me when you
are ready to evacuate the platform."
"Yes, of course," Ling replied, then hurried over to a group of nearby
engineers and spoke at them rapid-fire. Like a band of scared rabbits,
the engineers scattered in a fury to their collective posts. Tongju
stood back and watched as the massive hangar doors were opened,
revealing a railed path across the deck to the standing launch tower at
the opposite end of the platform. A series of electrical motors were
then started, which reverberated loudly off the hangar's interior
walls. Tongju walked behind a console panel and peered over Ling's
shoulder as the launch leader's hands danced over the control board.
When a row of lights suddenly glowed green, Ling pointed to another
engineer, who activated the mobile cradle.
The two-hundred-foot horizontal rocket rocked sluggishly toward the
hangar doors, its support cradle creeping forward on a countless mass
of wheels that churned like the legs of a centipede. With its base
thrusters leading the way, the rocket crept through the doors and into
the daylight, its white paint glistening under the morning sun. Tongju
strolled alongside the rolling launch vehicle, admiring the potent
power of the huge rocket while amazed at its massive girth in the prone
position. Several hundred yards away, the Koguryo stood off the
platform, a throng of crew and engineers craning from her top deck to
catch a glimpse of the big rocket under way.
Crossing the open deck, the mechanical caterpillar ground to a halt as
it reached the base of the launch tower. The upper section of the
rocket had not completely cleared the hangar and a sliding panel in the
hangar roof suddenly crept open to provide clearance. The transporter
was locked securely in place to the deck and then the erector
mechanicals were engaged, activating hydraulic pumps that pushed gently
against the rocket's cradle. With delicate patience, the launch
vehicle was slowly tilted upright, its nose sliding through the hangar
roof opening, until it stood vertically against the launch tower. A
series of support braces clamped the rocket to the platform, while a
jumble of fuel, cooling, and venting lines were affixed and checked.
Several workmen on the tower plugged in a series of data cables that
allowed the engineers on the Koguryo to monitor the dozens of
electronic sensors embedded under the rocket's skin. Once the Zenit
was affixed upright, the erector transporter support cradle was gently
eased away, leaving the rocket braced only by the launch tower. With a
hydraulic murmur, the cradle was slowly lowered to its original
horizontal position and returned to the hangar, where it would be
sheltered out of harm's way during launch.
Ling spoke anxiously by radio to the Launch Control Center on the
Koguryo before dashing over to Tongju.
"Some minor anomalies, but, overall, the launch vehicle meets all major
prelaunch parameters."
Tongju looked up at the towering rocket with its payload of deadly
virus, aimed to rain death on millions of innocent people. The
suffering and deaths meant nothing to him, a man purged of emotional
empathy decades ago. The power he felt before him was all that
mattered, a power greater than he had ever known before, and he
relished the moment. Gradually, his eyes played down from the tip of
the
rocket to its base, then swept slowly across the breadth of the plat
form, before settling on Ling. The engineer stood waiting anxiously
for a reply. Tongju let Ling wallow in discomfort a moment longer before breaking the silence in a deep, firm tone. "Very well," he said.
"Begin the countdown."
The crew OF the Deep Endeavor had quickly found interdiction support
duty to be a monotonous assignment. After two days on station, they
had only been requested to board and search one ship, a small freighter
from the Philippines carrying a shipment of hardwood timber. The
commercial shipping traffic that approached Los Angeles from the
southwest had been light and ably handled by the nearby Coast Guard
cutter Narwhal. The NUMA crew preferred to be put to work rather than
circle aimlessly waiting for action and quietly hoped traffic would
pick up in their quadrant.
In the
ship's galley, Dirk sat sipping a cup of coffee with Summer
while she studied a report on coral mortality in the Great Barrier Reef
when a crewman approached and told them that they were wanted on the
bridge.
"We've received a call from the Narwhal," Delgado reported. "They're
halfway through a container vessel search and asked us to confirm identification on a vessel approaching west of Catalina and
then stand by for possible interdiction."
"No advance identification from our eye-in-the-sky?" Dirk asked.
"Your father and Al took off in the Icarus this morning. They're
working their way down from the north and will probably make a pass
through our quadrant within the next couple of hours."
Summer peered out the bridge window to the north, spotting the Narwhal
bobbing alongside a large containership that rode low in the water from
its heavy cargo. Farther west, she spotted a red speck approaching on
the horizon. The Deep Endeavor's pilot was already steering an
intercept course toward it.
"Is that her?" Summer asked, pointing a finger toward the object.
"Yes," Delgado replied. "The Narwhal has already radioed her to halt,
so we'll intercept her after she's had a chance to slow. She's
reported herself as the Maru Santo out of Osaka."
An hour later, the Deep Endeavor hove to alongside the Maru Santo, a
rusty, multipurpose cargo freighter of small size by inter-Pacific
standards. Aimes's Sea Marshal team, along with Summer, Dahlgren, and
three other NUMA crewmen, climbed into a small launch and motored over
to the freighter, tying up to a rust-stained stairwell that was lowered
over the side. Having made fast friends with the bomb-sniffing dogs,
Summer quickly volunteered to take the leash of one of the retrievers.
As Aimes and Dahlgren met with the freighter's captain to review the
Dirk Pitt18-Black Wind Page 45