Dirk Pitt18-Black Wind

by Cussler, Clive

  deck, his arms flailing wildly to douse his burning clothes. Screaming

  in pain, he finally ran to the railing and flung himself over the side,

  the ocean waters quickly extinguishing the human torch in a whiff of

  smoke. Kim watched from the helm as the man leaped off the boat but

  made no move to turn the boat around and rescue the scorched

  commando.

  Tongju, too, was temporarily engulfed in flames, angrily lowering his

  rifle without firing and leaping under the portico, where he was able

  to stamp out the flames burning his shoes and pants. Kim gazed from

  the blazing stern to Tongju with a look of alarm in his eyes.

  "Keep going," Tongju shouted, "the flames will burn themselves out."

  The wind and sea spray from the charging boat had, in fact,

  extinguished some of the peripheral flames, but pools of burning

  gasoline still sloshed across the deck and deep black plumes of smoke

  revealed that more than just the fuel was on fire.

  "But the fuel barrels!" Kim cried, watching as the flames licked at

  the drums of gasoline.

  Tongju had forgotten about the full barrels of gasoline tied to the

  rear deck amid the blazing fire. The flames were initially

  concentrated to the rear of the barrels, but the sloshing gas on the

  deck brought the fire up to the base of the drums. Scanning the helm

  console, Tongju spotted a small fire extinguisher mounted to the

  bulkhead. With a quick lunge, he scooped up the extinguisher, pulled

  its lock-pin, and sprinted onto the rear deck to protect the fuel

  drums. But he was too late.

  A seal cap on one of the drums had not been tightened all the way,

  allowing a thin wisp of vapor to escape. The constant jarring from the

  pounding boat had generated more vapor pressure inside the drum, which

  expanded further by the heat of the nearby fire. When the flames

  finally drew near enough to ignite the vapor, the fuel drum exploded

  like a powder keg. In quick succession, the other three fuel drums

  ignited with devastating effect.

  As the blimp peeled away from the boat, Pitt and the others watched in

  awe as the first fuel drum exploded right into Tongju. A chunk of

  flying shrapnel from the drum burst through his body, tearing an oblong

  hole the size of a Softball through his chest. A stunned look crossed

  the assassin's face as he sunk to his knees. In the last seconds of

  life, he peered skyward toward the blimp and scowled defiantly before

  he was swallowed up in an inferno of flames.

  The subsequent explosions leveled the entire superstructure of the boat

  in a maelstrom of flying timbers and debris. A huge fireball rolled

  into the sky as the stern of the boat rose into the air briefly, its

  still-driving propellers churning at the sky. The explosion blasted a

  gaping hole through the hull, which quickly sucked the boat under the

  waves in a boil of froth and smoke, taking the bodies of Tongju, Kim,

  and the third commando to the seafloor.

  Giordino had sharply turned the Icarus away from the exploding boat,

  but flying debris still splattered against the airship, shearing an

  additional array of holes into the fabric skin. More than a hundred

  rips, tears, and bullet holes peppered the surface, creating avenues

  for helium to escape. The bruised and damaged airship refused to go

  down, however, and clung to the sky like a battered fighter.

  The men in the gondola surveyed the surreal scene around them. In the

  sky above, a heavy white plume of smoke still hung in the air, marking

  the Zenit rocket's explosive demise. Across the water, a Navy frigate

  and destroyer could be seen bearing down on the Koguyro as a swarm of

  fighter jets circled overhead. And beneath them, a scattering of

  burning timbers smoldered in the water, denoting the grave of Tongju

  and the sunken tender.

  "Guess we showed your pal a hot time," Giordino said to Dirk as he

  stuck his head into the cockpit.

  "I have a feeling he'll be burning in hell for quite some time to

  come."

  "We gave him a nice head start," Pitt said. "You and Jack okay back

  there?"

  "Just a few scratches. We both managed to dance around the flying

  lead."

  "But look what they did to my airship," Giordino-muttered with feigned

  hurt, waving a hand about the shot-up gondola.

  "At least all of our vital signs are good. Despite the gunshots to the

  envelope, our helium pressure is holding up, and we've got fifty

  gallons of fuel to get us back to shore," Pitt replied, eyeing the

  console gauges before shutting down the damaged engine. "Take us home,

  Mad Al."

  "As you wish," Giordino replied, easing the nose of the Icarus toward

  the east. Slowly steering the battered airship back to the mainland on

  its one good engine, he turned to Pitt and said, "Now, about those

  cigars ..."

  IT took only the mere sight of the U.S. Navy frigate and destroyer for

  the captainless crew of the Koguryo to throw in the towel. As more

  and more fighter planes appeared in the sky overhead, it became obvious

  to all aboard that trying to flee would result in their destruction.

  And with the damaged hull, they were not about to outrun anybody. As

  the Navy ships approached, the Koguryds executive officer wisely

  radioed their surrender. In minutes, a small boarding party arrived

  from the destroyer USS Benfold and took custody of the ship. A repair

  team was then sent aboard to assist in stabilizing the damaged hull,

  and then the Japanese-flagged ship was sailed to San Diego at a slow

  crawl.

  Arriving at San Diego early the next morning, a media frenzy erupted.

  As word broke of the attempted rocket attack on Los Angeles, scores of

  small boats packed with reporters and cameramen buzzed around the

  harbor trying to get a close-up glimpse of the terrorist ship and crew.

  For their part, the crew and technicians aboard

  the Koguryo looked down at the swarming media with befuddled amusement.

  Their greeting at the San Diego Naval Station was less inviting as

  teams of government security and intelligence officers whisked the crew

  into heavily guarded buses, where they were hurriedly driven away to a

  secure facility for detailed interrogation.

  Back at the dock, investigators combed every inch of the ship, removing

  the launch control data and securing the surface-to-surface and

  surface-to-air missile systems. Marine engineers studied the hull

  damage, proving with certainty that it had been created by internally

  detonated explosive charges. It would take several days before

  intelligence analysts would discover that all the software data related

  to the mission flight profile and rocket payload had been

  systematically destroyed prior to the ship's capture.

  Interrogation of the ship's crew proved equally frustrating. The

  majority of the crew and launch team had believed they were actually

  launching a commercial satellite and had no clue how close they were to

  the continental United States. Those who knew otherwise refused to

  talk. Investigators were quickly able to finger Ling and the t
wo

  Ukrainian engineers as kingpins for the mission, despite their vehement

  denials.

  Publicly, the launch created a furor, which magnified as word leaked

  that the payload carried smallpox virus. The Japanese Red Army was

  behind the attack, newspapers and television reports screamed, fueled

  in part by the staged media leaks perpetrated by Kang operators. The

  government silently made no denials while piecing together their own

  evidence, further inciting the public rage against Japan. The

  attempted attack, though unsuccessful, seemed to have achieved Kang's

  desired outcome. The single-minded media applied their full reporting

  resources to the incident. Constant news coverage focused strictly on

  the investigation and speculation about possible retaliation measures

  to take against the shadowy Japanese terrorist group. Lost in the news

  was the issue of Korea and the pending vote in the National Assembly

  over the removal of U.S. troops from the South Korean Peninsula.

  As the media ran dry of new facts about the failed rocket launch, they

  turned their attention toward hero-making. The Sea Launch platform

  crew was nearly mugged by reporters when they stepped off the Deep

  Endeavor in Long Beach. Many of the tired crewmen were given just a

  few hours' rest, then helicoptered back to the Odyssey to patch up the

  holes Pitt had carved in the support structure and sail the listing

  platform back to port. Those escaping work duty were badgered for

  in-depth interviews about their capture and imprisonment aboard the

  platform, as well as their later rescue by Pitt and Giordino in the

  blimp. The men from NUMA were lionized as heroes and every news media

  organization was on the hunt for them. But they were nowhere to be

  found.

  After setting the perforated blimp down on an unused runway at LAX, the

  men beat it down to Long Beach, where they met the docking Deep

  Endeavor. Slipping quietly aboard after the Sea Launch crew departed,

  they were warmly greeted by a relieved Summer and the ship's crew.

  Dahlgren was happy to see the mangled Badger sitting upright on the

  fantail deck.

  "Kermit, we've got another search ahead of us," Pitt said to Burch.

  "How soon can we be under way?"

  "Just as soon as Dirk and Summer step ashore. Sorry, son," he said,

  turning to the younger Pitt, "but I'm afraid Rudi called. He's been

  trying to track all four of you guys down for the last two hours. Says

  the top brass wants to talk to you and Summer. They need your insight

  on the bad guys, and right away."

  "Some guys get all the luck," Giordino said, grinning at Dirk's

  misfortune.

  "Seems like we never get much time with you," Summer frowned at her

  father.

  "We'll get the next dive in together," Pitt said, throwing an arm

  around each of his kids' shoulders. "I promise."

  "I'll be counting on it," Summer replied, giving her father a kiss to

  the cheek.

  "Me too," Dirk said. "And thanks for the blimp ride, Mad Al. Next

  time, I'm going Greyhound."

  "The highbrow type, eh?" Giordino replied, shaking his head.

  Dirk and Summer said a quick good-bye to Dahlgren and the other men on

  the bridge, then hopped off the Deep Endeavor as the vessel backed away

  from the dock. A feeling of satisfaction should have beat through

  them, but, with Dirk, an underlying anger still brewed. The deadly

  virus strike had been prevented, the Koguryo was captured, and even

  Tongju was dead. More selfishly, Sarah was safe as well. But on the

  other side of the world, Kang still breathed. As they moved down the

  pier, Dirk felt Summer hesitating beside him and he turned and stopped

  so she could wave a friendly farewell to the ship. He stared and waved

  as well, but his mind was churning elsewhere. Together, they stood and

  watched a long while as the turquoise NUMA ship chugged out the harbor

  and eased slowly toward the western horizon.

  Well before the Homeland Security investigation team thought to round

  up all available search and salvage vessels and comb for the sunken

  rocket debris, the Deep Endeavor had already slipped her towed sonar

  array fish over the side and was scanning the depths for the remains of

  the payload. Captain Burch had anticipated a salvage operation and

  knew precisely where to start searching. While standing on the deck of

  the Deep Endeavor watching the Zenit disintegrate across the sky, he

  had carefully tracked the trajectory of the debris and marked on a

  nautical chart an impact zone where he thought the nose cone struck the

  water.

  "If the payload remained intact, it should be somewhere within that

  box," he told Pitt as they chugged back to sea, pointing to a

  nine-square-mile grid penciled on the chart. "Though we're probably

  dealing with a scattered debris field."

  "Whatever is left has only been sitting on the bottom a few hours,

  so we'll have a fresh profile at least," Pitt replied, studying the

  chart. Burch guided the Deep Endeavor to a corner of the grid, where

  they began running north south survey lanes. Just two hours into the

  search, Pitt identified the first scattering of debris visible against

  the rolling bottom. Pointing to the sonar monitor, he fingered a

  cluster of sharp-edged objects protruding in succession.

  "We've got a string of man-made objects running in a rough line to the

  east," he said.

  "Either a local garbage scow spilled her goods or we've got a pile of

  rusting rocket parts," Giordino agreed, eyeing the data.

  "Kermit, why don't we break off the lane and run a tack to the east.

  Let's see if we can follow the debris trail and see where it leads."

  Burch ordered the ship about and they followed the trail of wreckage

  for several minutes as it intensified in quantity before slowly

  petering out. None of the debris appeared larger than a few feet long,

  however.

  "That's one heckuva jigsaw puzzle someone's gonna have to piece

  together," Burch said as the last of the wreckage fell away from the

  screen. "Shall we resume the survey lane?" he asked Pitt.

  Pitt thought for a moment. "No. Let's hold our course. There's got

  to be more substantial remains."

  Pitt's years of underwater exploration had refined his senses to almost

  psychic ability. Like an underwater bloodhound, he could nearly sniff

  out the lost and hidden. There was a lot more of the Zenit still out

  there and he could feel it.

  As the sonar monitor reeled off nothing but flat bottom, the men on the

  bridge began to have their doubts. But a quarter mile later, a few

  small pieces of ragged-edged debris crept onto the screen. Suddenly,

  the silhouette of a large rectangular object filled the monitor lying

  perpendicular to the other debris. As it rolled off the screen, a new

  image crawled into view. It was the shadow of a large, high

  cylinder.

  "Boss, I think you've just found the whole enchilada," Giordino

  grinned.

  Studying the image with a nod, Pitt replied, "Let's go have a taste."

  Minutes later, the Deep Endeav
or fixed its position by engaging its

  side thrusters and lowered a small remote-operated vehicle over the

  stern railing. A large winch unrolled the ROV's power cable as the

  machine sunk to the seafloor nine hundred feet beneath the surface. In

  a dimly lit electronics bay beneath the wheelhouse, Pitt sat in an

  oversized captain's chair where he controlled the unmanned submersible

  thrusters with a pair of joysticks. A rack of video monitors lined the

  wall in front of him, displaying multiple images of the sandy bottom

  fed from a half-dozen digital cameras mounted on the

  ROV.

  Adjusting the thrusters so that the ROV hovered a few feet above the

  bottom, Pitt gently guided the submersible toward a pair of dark

  objects nearby. Protruding from the sandy bottom, the cameras

  revealed, were two jagged pieces of white metal several feet long,

  which were clearly chunks of skin from the Zenit rocket. Pitt kept the

  ROV moving past the debris until the initial sonar targets materialized

  in the inky water, two unmistakable sections of the launch vehicle

  rising high off the bottom. As the ROV moved closer, Pitt and Giordino

  could see the first section was nearly fifteen feet long, and almost as

  high, but flattened on one side. The rocket section had tumbled before

  impact, smacking the water lengthwise in a jarring blow that had given

  it the rectangle shape identified by the sonar. Guiding the ROV to one

  end, the cameras showed a large thruster nozzle protruding from a mass

  of pipes and chambers that constituted a rocket engine.

  "An upper stage engine?" Giordino asked, eyeing the image.

  "Probably the Zenit's third stage motor, the uppermost propulsion unit