Dirk Pitt18-Black Wind

by Cussler, Clive

  Pitt climbed to his feet and swayed on the rocking sub, sucking in

  lungfuls of the cool ocean air. He was a haggard mass of blood and

  sweat, and his clothes stuck to him as if they were glued to his skin.

  But his eyes shined as he looked skyward and threw a jaunty wave to the

  men in the gondola.

  "Going down," Giordino announced as he proceeded to guide the blimp

  down toward the sea until the gondola was skimming just inches above

  the waves. With a deft touch, Giordino gently eased the blimp

  alongside the submersible. Pitt leaned down and secured the Badger's

  top hatch, then took a few steps and staggered into the open door of

  the gondola, where Dirk and Dahlgren grabbed his arms and yanked him

  safely aboard.

  "I believe," he said to Giordino in a dry parched voice, "I'll take

  that drink now."

  Pitt slipped into the blimp's copilot seat and gulped down a bottled

  water as Al, Dirk, and Jack described the fiery disintegration of the

  Zenit rocket minutes before. While studying the vapor trails in the

  sky and eyeing the Koguryo fleeing in the distance, Pitt countered with

  a description of his drilling attack on the Odyssey's support columns

  and the tumultuous assault from the wake of the blastoff.

  "And here I had good money down that you were lolling about in the

  Odyssey's lounge nursing a martini," Giordino grumbled.

  "I was the one shaken and stirred," Pitt laughed. "Would have been

  baked alive when the Badger got jammed against the side pontoon, but I

  was able to manually force the rudder against the surge and broke free

  into cooler water. Even with the ballast tanks purged, it took me a

  while to surface until I got the bilge pump working. There's still a

  lot of water sloshing around inside, but she should stay afloat a while

  longer."

  "I'll radio Deep Endeavor and have her fish the Badger out once they've

  picked up the platform crew on Santa Barbara Island," Giordino

  replied.

  "I will have a furious sister on my hands if you first don't let her

  know you are safe," Dirk chided.

  Summer nearly fell over when her father's voice crackled through the

  Deep Endeavor's radio, jokingly ordering a beer and a peanut butter

  sandwich.

  "We feared the worst," she gushed. "What on earth happened to you?"

  "It's a long story. Suffice it to say that the Scripps Institute isn't

  going to be too happy with my submarine-driving skills," he said,

  leaving all on the bridge of the Deep Endeavor scratching their

  heads.

  As Giordino lifted the airship up off the water, Pitt noticed the F-16s

  circling the fleeing Koguryo.

  "Cavalry finally arrive?" he asked.

  "Just moments ago. The Navy has an armada headed this way as well.

  She's not going to get away."

  "Her tender is sure making haste," Pitt said, nodding toward a white

  speck to the south.

  Lost in the spectacle and confusion was the Koguryo's tender, which had

  slipped quietly away from her mother ship and was now motoring south

  toward the horizon at high speed.

  "How do you know that's her tender?" Giordino asked, squinting

  downrange.

  "Over here," Pitt replied, tapping the WE SCAM monitor. Pitt had been

  fooling around with the zoom lens while talking and happened to catch

  the speeding boat flashing by. The focused image clearly showed it was

  the Koguryo's tender, which they had observed earlier.

  "The jets definitely aren't tracking her," Dirk said from the rear,

  noting the F-16s circling tightly around the Koguryo as she sailed

  farther to the west.

  "Let's stay on her," Pitt stated.

  "She has nary a chance against our fleet wings aflutter," Giordino

  snarled, pushing the throttles to full and watching as the airspeed

  indicator crept slowly toward 50 knots.

  Why haven't they fired on the aircraft, or that infernal airship?"

  Tongju swore as he stared at the Koguryo through a pair of binoculars.

  The bouncing movement of the tender as it ran at full speed through the

  waves made it impossible for him to steady his gaze and he finally

  threw the glasses down harshly onto a cowling.

  "The aircraft have intimidated Lee," Kim said over his shoulder as he

  clutched the steering wheel tightly. "He will pay with his life in

  about two more minutes."

  The Koguryo was growing smaller on the horizon as the tender

  accelerated south. But when the planted explosives detonated, they

  could clearly see puffs of water spray into the air along the ship's

  hull line.

  Standing on the bridge, Captain Lee at first thought that the F-16s had

  fired on him. But the warbirds still circled lazily above, and there

  was no sign that they had fired any missiles. As the damage

  assessments came in reporting that the lower hull was compromised in

  several locations, Lee suddenly realized the culprit. Minutes before,

  a

  crewman had reported observing Kim and Tongju board the tender and the

  small boat was now seen running south at high speed. With a sick

  sensation of betrayal, Lee knew that he and his ship had been deemed

  expendable.

  But a miscalculation would save them. Kim's demolition team had

  planted ample explosives to rip the bowels out of a normal ship

  Koguryo's size. But a critical piece of information about the cable

  ship had not been considered: she had a double hull. The detonated

  charges easily ruptured the vessel's inner hull but only buckled the

  plates of the outer hull. Seawater gushed into the lower holds, but

  not with the massive force that would submerge the running ship as

  Tongju had envisioned. Lee immediately stopped the ship, deployed

  portable pumps to the damaged holds, and then sealed off the high-risk

  areas behind watertight doors. The ship would list and be unable to

  run at speed but she would not founder.

  Once the flooding was halted, the captain peered through a set of field

  glasses at the speeding tender escaping in the distance. Lee knew that

  he had little to live for now. As the captain of the vessel that

  launched the aborted missile attack against the United States, he would

  be the prime scapegoat if captured. If he somehow escaped, or was

  released, there would be no telling what sort of reception he'd receive

  from Kang. Satisfied that the ship was stabilized, Lee excused himself

  from the bridge and retired to his cabin. Retrieving a Chinese-made

  Makarov 9mm pistol from beneath a dresser drawer filled with pressed

  shirts, Lee lay down neatly on his bed, held the barrel to his ear, and

  pulled the trigger.

  While pursuing the speeding tender, the men in the Icarus caught sight

  of the series of explosions that ripped along the hull of the Koguryo.

  "Are those lunatics trying to scuttle her with all hands?" Dahlgren

  wondered.

  For several minutes, they watched the ship as she slowed but held

  steady. Pitt noticed that there was no apparent rush for the

  lifeboats, and he could see several members of the crew standing idly

  at the rail watching the jets overhead. He
studied the waterline for a

  significant change but could only detect a slight list.

  "She's not going to disappear on us anytime soon," he said. "Let's

  keep after the tender."

  Giordino glanced at the LASH system output on the laptop computer,

  spotting several gray shapes to the southeast approximately thirty

  miles away.

  "Our Navy pals are on the way," he said, tapping the screen. "They

  won't be alone for long."

  With a nearly 20-knot advantage in speed, the airship began easily

  gaining ground on the fleeing white boat. The Icarus had only ascended

  to a five-hundred-foot altitude when Giordino gave chase and he didn't

  waste power on any further climbing. The blimp glided smoothly toward

  the boat's wake, driving fast and low over the water. As the airship

  moved closer, Pitt focused the surveillance camera on the boat's open

  rear deck and cabin. Through the covered portico, he could only make

  out indiscriminate shapes at the helm.

  "I count four men above decks," he said.

  "Apparently, they're not ones for a crowded escape," Giordino

  replied.

  Pitt scanned the camera about the deck, relieved to find no heavy

  armament but noting the extra drums of fuel near the stern.

  "Plenty of gas for a run to Mexico," he said.

  "I think our Coast Guard friends in San Diego might have something to

  say about that," Giordino replied, tightening his bearing on the

  boat.

  Tongju and his men had been focused on the Koguryo, but one of the

  commandos finally noticed the approaching blimp. While Kim

  manned the helm, the other three men instinctively stepped to the rear

  open deck to better observe the airship. Pitt focused the zoom lens of

  the camera on the men until their faces could clearly be

  distinguished.

  "Recognize any of these characters?" Pitt asked over his shoulder to

  Dirk and Dahlgren.

  The younger Pitt studied the screen for just a moment before gritting

  his teeth hard. The flash of anger subsided quickly, though, as a

  contented smile returned to his face.

  "The Fu Manchu character standing in the center. His name is Tongju.

  He's Kang's master of ceremonies for torture and assassination.

  Appeared to be calling the shots aboard the Odyssey earlier."

  "For such a nice guy, it would be kind of a shame to ruin his Mexican

  vacation," Giordino replied.

  As he spoke, he dipped the prow of the blimp down and held steady as

  the airship slowly dove toward the water. When it looked like he was

  going to drive the nose into the sea, Giordino gently pulled up on the

  controls, leveling the gondola just fifty feet above the water. The

  Icarus had closed the gap between the two vessels during the dive, and

  Giordino guided the airship along the port side of the tender until the

  gondola was suspended side by side.

  "You want to step off and have a beer with these guys?" Pitt asked as

  he eyed the men on the boat just a few dozen feet away.

  "No, just want to let them know that they ain't going to outrun Mad Al

  and his Magic Bag of Gas," he grinned.

  Giordino eased back on the throttles until he matched speeds with the

  bouncing tender, the large envelope of the blimp casting a shadow over

  the topsides of the boat. Above the din of the tender's twin inboard

  engines and the airship's Porsche motor-driven propellers, the men in

  the Icarus suddenly detected an unwelcome staccato. Glancing back at

  the tender, Pitt saw that Tongju and the two commandos had retrieved

  automatic weapons and were standing on the stern deck blasting away at

  the blimp.

  "I hate to be the one to tell you but they're shooting holes in your

  gasbag, Mad Al," Pitt said.

  "The jealous lowlifes," Giordino replied, goosing the throttles.

  Before departing Oxnard, they had been told that the airship could

  withstand a profusion of holes and gashes to the air bags and still

  retain its lift. Tongju and his men would have to exhaust a crate of

  ammunition to threaten the airworthiness of the helium-filled blimp.

  But the safety of the gondola was less assured. After a momentary

  pause in the firing, the floor of the main cabin suddenly erupted in a

  spray of splinters as the gunmen redirected their weapons at the

  gondola.

  "Everybody down!" Pitt yelled as a burst of fire smashed the side

  cockpit window, the bullets grazing just over his head. The sound of

  shattering glass resonated through the cabin as a rain of bullets

  poured into the gondola. Dirk and Dahlgren lay flat on the floor as

  several bursts stitched past them and into the ceiling above. Giordino

  jammed the throttles all the way forward, and, while waiting anxiously

  for the blimp to speed ahead, turned the yoke full to port to turn away

  from the tender.

  "No," Pitt yelled at him, "turn and fly over him."

  Giordino knew not to question Pitt's judgment and, without hesitation,

  threw the rudder over in the opposite direction, pushing the Icarus

  back toward the tender. Glancing at Pitt, he could see him studying

  the tender below with an arched brow. The blistering fire continued to

  tear into the gondola for a second, then abruptly stopped as Giordino

  steered the gondola above and slightly ahead of the tender's cabin

  roof, temporarily obscuring the field of fire.

  "Everyone all right?" Pitt asked.

  "We're okay back here," Dirk replied, "but one of the engines isn't

  faring too well."

  As the sound of gunfire fell away, the men could hear sputtering and

  coughing emanating from the starboard gondola motor. Giordino glanced

  at the console gauges and shook his head.

  "Oil pressure falling, temperature rising. Going to be tough to run

  away from these guys on one leg."

  Pitt peered down at the deck of the tender, spotting Tongju and the two

  gunmen moving toward the stern of the boat reloading their weapons.

  "Al, hold your position," he said. "And lend me your cigar."

  "It's one of Sandecker's finest," he replied, hesitating before handing

  Pitt the saliva-soaked green stub.

  "I'll buy you a box of 'em. Hold steady for ten seconds, then turn

  hard to port and get us the hell away from the boat."

  "You're not going to do what I think you are?" Giordino asked.

  Pitt just flashed a sly look, then reached up for an overhead ripcord

  with one hand while he turned a dial marked fuel ballast to the open

  position. Pulling on the cord, he silently counted to eight, then

  released the line and closed the lever. At the stern of the gondola,

  an emergency dump valve opened on the fuel tank, releasing a flood of

  gasoline that surged out the bottom of the tank.

  Pitt's quick discharge released more than seventy-five gallons of

  gasoline out of the gondola tank, which sprayed down directly onto the

  stern deck of the tender. Pitt looked down and could see that the rear

  deck was awash in fuel that sloshed along the rear gunwale as the boat

  charged through the waves. Tongju and the two gunmen covered their

  faces and sprinted under the portico as the rain of liquid splattered


  down on them but quickly returned after the deluge ended and raised

  their weapons again to finish off the blimp. Pitt watched curiously as

  the pool of gasoline washed around their feet and splashed over some

  deck chairs, a bench, and the four fifty-five-gallon drums tied to the

  side. He stoked a few puffs on the cigar to brighten its ember, then

  stuck his head out the shattered side cockpit window. Just a few yards

  away, Pitt eyed Tongju and smiled as the assassin looked up and swung

  his assault rifle toward him. Through his legs, Dirk could feel the

  blimp begin pulling to one side as Giordino threw the

  controls over. With a calm nonchalance, he took a last puff on the

  cigar and casually tossed it toward the stern of the tender.

  A wave jostled the tender, and Tongju braced himself against a side

  railing as he jerked the stock of the AK-74 assault rifle to his

  shoulder. He barely noticed the small green object that fluttered down

  and struck the deck beside him as he took aim at Pitt's head poking out

  the cockpit window. His finger was just tightening on the trigger when

  a loud poof erupted at his feet.

  The cigar's glowing ember ignited the gasoline vapors rising off the

  deck before the stogie even struck the surface. The airship's rain of

  gasoline had sprayed everywhere and in seconds the whole stern of the

  boat was a wall of flame. A commando standing beside Tongju had been

  drenched in fuel and the flames shot up his legs and torso in a rush.

  The panicked man dropped his weapon and danced frantically about the