Dirk Pitt18-Black Wind

by Cussler, Clive

  looked at the launch clock above his head. Just twenty-one minutes and

  thirty-six seconds remained before the platform would be engulfed in a

  blasting inferno. As if that wasn't enough motivation to move faster,

  a sudden whirring noise erupted from inside the hangar. An electronic

  command had been issued from the Koguryo's launch control software and

  the hangar's large barn doors began sliding closed in preparation for

  the blastoff.

  "The doors are closing," Dahlgren huffed. "We've got to hurry."

  Like a trio of Olympic sprinters heading to the tape, the men bolted

  side by side toward the shrinking gap of the closing doors. Though he

  still had plenty of fire in his step, Pitt eased back as they

  approached the opening and let Dirk and Dahlgren jump through first.

  Following single file, he turned and slid sideways through the gap just

  before the doors sealed shut.

  Midway down the hangar, they could hear the sound of muffled voices and

  a metallic banging as the men inside the metal shed fought

  to extricate themselves. Dirk, Dahlgren, and Pitt scurried to the shed

  and examined the chained and padlocked door as they caught their

  breath.

  "That chain isn't going to give, but maybe we can pry the door off its

  hinges ... if we can find a crowbar around here," Dahlgren said,

  scanning the area for a potential tool.

  Pitt glanced at the motorized work platform Jack had ridden across the

  hangar and reached up and grabbed the control box, which dangled from

  the railing.

  "I think we've got our crowbar right here," he said, lowering the

  platform a few feet, then rolling the device up to the front of the

  shed. As Dirk and Dahlgren looked on, Pitt grabbed a loose end of the

  padlock chain and wrapped it tightly around the platform's railing,

  then yelled at the men inside the shed: "Stand back from the door."

  Waiting a second, he then hit the raise button and watched as the

  platform rose slowly, drawing the chain tight. The lifting mechanism

  groaned and strained for a moment as the wheels of the platform rocked

  across the floor. Then, with a loud crack, the shed's door ripped off

  its hinges and popped into the air, slamming against the platform with

  a shudder before dropping and dangling from the chain midair. Pitt

  quickly backed the platform out of the way as the Sea Launch crew

  surged out of the claustrophobic shed.

  The crewmen had been given little to eat since the Odyssey was

  commandeered and they appeared weak and haggard from the stress of

  their captivity. Yet an underlying anger purveyed over the men, a

  group of seasoned professionals who didn't take kindly to having given

  up their rocket and platform.

  "Is the captain and launch manager here?" Pitt shouted over the cries

  of thanks from the released crew.

  A battered Captain Christiano elbowed his way through the throng,

  followed by a thin, distinguished-looking man with a goatee.

  "I'm Christiano, captain of the Odyssey. This is Larry Ohlrogge,

  platform launch manager," he added, nodding to the man beside him

  "Has the platform been secured from those scum?" he spat with

  contempt.

  Pitt shook his head. "They've evacuated the platform in preparation

  for launching the rocket. We don't have much time."

  Ohlrogge noted the erector transporter had been returned to the hangar

  and that the hangar doors had been closed.

  "We're talking minutes," he said with alarm in his voice.

  "About eighteen, to be precise. Captain, get your crew to the helipad

  now," Pitt directed. "There's an airship waiting that can evacuate

  everyone from the platform if we move quick."

  Turning to Ohlrogge, Pitt added, "Is there any way we can stop the

  launch?"

  "The launch sequence is completely automated and controlled by the

  assembly and command ship. Presumably, these terrorists have

  duplicated that functionality on their own vessel."

  "We can mechanically halt the fueling of the rocket," Christiano

  noted.

  "It is too late," Ohlrogge said, shaking his head. "There is an

  override control in the bridge that would be our only hope at this late

  time," he added grimly.

  "The elevator at the rear of the hangar leads to the bridge deck. The

  helipad is just above," Christiano said. "Then let's get moving," Pitt

  replied.

  Quickly, the group shuffled en masse to the rear of the hangar and

  crowded around a medium-sized elevator.

  "There's not enough room for all," Christiano stated, regaining his

  captain's form. "We'll need three trips. You eight men first, then

  this group, then you ten men over there," he ordered, dividing the

  crowd into three groups.

  "Jack, you go with the first group and help them onto the Icarus. Let

  Al know there's more on the way," Pitt said. "Dirk, you bring up the

  last group, make sure everyone makes it out of here. Captain, we need

  to visit the bridge now," he said, turning to Christiano.

  Christiano, Ohlrogge, Dahlgren, and Pitt crowded into the elevator with

  eight other men and waited impatiently as the elevator zipped up to the

  bridge level above the hangar. Dahlgren quickly located a stairwell

  off to one side that led to the helipad and herded the crewmen up to

  the exposed deck.

  As promised, the silver airship hung hovering several feet above the

  pad, Giordino at the controls smoking a fat cigar. He quickly rotated

  the swiveling propulsion ducts and brought the gondola down to the deck

  as Jack ran up.

  "Hi, sailor. Give a few girls a ride?" Dahlgren asked, poking his

  head into the gondola doorway.

  "Certainly," Giordino replied. "How many do you have?"

  "About thirty, give or take," Dahlgren replied, looking suspiciously at

  the gondola's passenger compartment.

  "Shove 'em in, we'll make them fit. But we better toss any unnecessary

  weight if we want to get off the ground. Just make it quick, as I have

  an aversion to getting baked alive."

  "You and me both, pardner," Dahlgren replied, herding the first of the

  crewmen aboard.

  In addition to the two-seat cockpit, the gondola's passenger

  compartment was configured to seat eight passengers in oversized

  leather airplane-type seats. Dahlgren studied the arrangement and

  grimaced at the prospect of squeezing all the men in and possibly

  grounding the blimp. As the crew climbed aboard, he checked the

  mountings of the seats and found that they had a quick-release

  mechanism for temporary removal. He quickly unlatched five of the

  seats and, with the help of a Russian engineer, tossed them out the

  door of the gondola.

  "Everybody to the back of the bus," he barked. "It's going to be

  standing room only."

  As the last man in his group wedged into the passenger compartment,

  Dahlgren turned to Al.

  "How much time do we have?"

  "About fifteen minutes, by my count."

  The next group of crewmen began spilling off the stairs and sprinting

  across the deck of the helipad. Dahlgren let out a slight sigh. There


  would be time, if not room, to get every man to the blimp before

  blastoff. But would it be enough time to stop the launch, he wondered,

  catching sight of the Zenit rocket standing fueled and ready across the

  platform.

  Inside the Odyssey's bridge, Captain Christiano turned pale and shook

  his head silently as he surveyed the bullet-ridden computer stations

  and shattered glass that littered the floor. Walking to the navigation

  station, he curiously noticed a lonely computer mouse dangling by its

  cord, its companion keyboard nowhere to be seen. Ohlrogge observed

  that the computer drive itself was undamaged.

  "I've got scores of laptop computers downstairs. We can plug one in

  and activate the platform controls," he offered.

  "They have no doubt secured the automated controls," Christiano said

  with disgust, thrusting a thumb over his shoulder toward the window.

  Pitt followed his motion, observing the Koguryo sitting defiantly in

  the distance. Returning his gaze to the captain, Pitt caught sight of

  the Badger, still tied up in the water off the starboard support column

  far below.

  "There is no time. It might take hours to work around," Christiano

  continued, moving to the bridge's center console with a look of despair

  on his face.

  "You said there was a manual override on the bridge?" Pitt asked.

  Christiano anticipated the results before his eyes reached the console.

  They had simply known too much. How to navigate and ballast the

  platform, how to fuel the Zenit, how to control and launch the rocket

  from their own support ship. There was simply too much inside

  knowledge for the terrorists not to have sabotaged the manual override.

  With disappointing confidence in his beliefs, he looked down at a

  jumbled mass of cut wires and smashed controls that offered the last

  hope of halting the launch.

  "Here's your manual override control," he swore, flinging a segregated

  clump of wires and switches across the bridge. The three men stood in

  silence as the mass of electronics bounced across the deck before

  coming to a halt against the bulkhead. Then the bridge door opened and

  Dirk thrust his head into the bay. From the looks on the other men's

  faces, he knew that their attempt to prevent the launch had failed.

  "The crew is all aboard the airship. I respectfully suggest we abandon

  the platform, and now."

  As the last four men aboard the platform began to scramble up the

  helipad stairwell to the waiting airship, Pitt stopped and grabbed his

  son by the shoulder.

  "Get the captain aboard the blimp and tell Al to take off without me.

  Make sure he gets the airship up range of the platform before the

  rocket fires."

  "But they said there was no getting around the automated launch

  controls," the younger Pitt protested.

  "I may not be able to stop the rocket from launching, but I just might

  be able to change its destination."

  "Dad, you can't stay aboard the platform, it's too dangerous."

  "Don't worry about me, I don't intend to stick around," Pitt replied,

  giving his son a gentle shove. "Now get going."

  Dirk looked his father in the eye. He had heard numerous tales of his

  father placing the safety of others above himself and now he was seeing

  it firsthand. But there was something else in his eyes. It was a calm

  look of assurance. Dirk took a step toward the stairwell, then turned

  back to wish his father luck but he had already vanished down the

  elevator.

  Sprinting up the stairwell two steps at a time, the younger Pitt leaped

  onto the deck of the helipad and looked on in amazement at the waiting

  blimp. The gondola looked like a windowed can of sardines, with the

  fish replaced by humans. The entire Sea Launch crew had managed to

  squeeze aboard the passenger compartment, cramming into every available

  square inch. The weakest of the crew were given the three passenger

  seats that Dahlgren did not remove while the rest of the men stood

  shoulder to shoulder in the remaining space. Scores of men hung their

  heads out the side windows while one or two were even jammed into the

  small bathroom at the rear of the gondola. The sight made a New York

  City subway at rush hour look spacious by comparison.

  Dirk ran over and wedged himself through the door, hearing Dahlgren's

  voice somewhere in the mass telling him that the copilot's seat was

  vacant. Half-crawling, he squirmed his way into the cockpit, taking

  the empty seat alongside Giordino, who had moved to the left-hand

  pilot's seat.

  "Where's your dad? We need to get off this barbecue grill, pronto."

  "He's staying put. Has one last trick up his sleeve, I guess. He said

  to get the blimp up range of the platform, and that he'll meet you for

  a tequila on the rocks after the show."

  "I hope he's buying," Giordino replied, then tilted the propeller ducts

  to a forty-degree angle and boosted the throttles. The gondola chugged

  forward, pulling the helium-filled envelope with it. But in

  stead of rising gracefully into the air as before, the gondola clung to

  the deck, dragging across the helipad with a dull scraping sound.

  "We've got too much weight," Dirk stated.

  "Get up, baby, get up," Giordino urged the mammoth airship.

  The gondola continued to skid across the pad, heading to the forward

  edge, which dropped straight down two hundred feet to the sea. As they

  approached the lip of the helipad, Giordino adjusted the propellers to

  a higher degree of inclination and jammed the throttles to their stops

  but the gondola continued to scrape along the deck. An eerie silence

  filled the cabin, as every man held his breath while the gondola

  slipped over the edge of the helipad.

  A falling surge suddenly hit the pit of everyone's stomach as the

  gondola lurched down ten feet, then halted. The occupants were roughly

  thrown forward as the blimp's fabric-covered tail bounced off the

  helipad, pushing the nose of the blimp at a steep decline as the

  airship's balance of weight cleared the edge. Continuing to jar

  forward, the tail finally scraped past the platform edge and the entire

  blimp rushed nose first toward the sea.

  Giordino had a split-second decision to make in order to save the

  airship. He could either pull the thrusters all the way back to a

  ninety-degree vector and hope the engine propulsion would overcome the

  excess weight and hold the blimp at altitude. Or he could do the

  complete reverse: by pushing down the thrusters, he could try to

  increase the blimp's forward velocity, which would generate lift if he

  gained sufficient speed. Staring at the looming ocean, he let the

  momentum of the blimp guide his decision and calmly pushed the yoke

  forward, accelerating their downward dive.

  Cries of alarm wafted from the rear passengers as it appeared Giordino

  was deliberately trying to crash into the sea. Ignoring the pleas, he

  turned to Dirk in the copilot's seat.

  "Above your head there is a water ballast release control. At my

  command, hit the release."

 
While Dirk located the button on the overhead console, Giordino

  focused his eyes on the altimeter. The dial was rolling backward

  quickly from two hundred feet as their descent speed increased.

  Giordino hesitated until the dial read sixty feet, then barked:

  "Now!"

  In unison, Giordino yanked back on the yoke while Dirk activatec the

  water ballast system, which instantly dumped a thousand pounds of water

  stored in a compartment beneath the gondola. Despite the sudden

  actions, there was no immediate response from the blimp. The massive

  airship moved at its own deliberate pace, and, for an instant Giordino

  thought he had acted too late. As the approaching ocean filled the

  view out the cockpit windshield in a rush of speed, the nose gently

  began to pull up in a sweeping arc. Giordino eased of the yoke to

  level the airship as the gondola surged closer toward the sea, its nose

  rising with agonizing slowness. With a sudden jolt, the base of the

  gondola slapped the water's surface as the airship flattened from out of

  its dive but bounded quickly up and off the surface. As every man

  aboard held his breath, the blimp staggered forward a short distance

  before slowly climbing a few feet above the water and holding steady.

  As the seconds ticked by and the airship held in the air, in became

  apparent that Giordino had pulled it off. Though risking high-speed

  impact, the accelerated dive and last-second ballast release had been

  just enough to keep them airborne.