Black Wind

“Guess we're changing rides,” Dirk commented when the cable was pulled taut.

This time the submersible was hoisted smoothly into the air. Dirk rapidly jabbed the mechanical arm out and rapped three times on the rear bulkhead with the claw before being pulled up and off the deck. He and Summer watched the Sea Rover fall away beneath them as they were carried over the water and deposited on a high stern deck of the Baekje. Climbing out of the submersible, they were welcomed by a pair of armed thugs, who prodded them toward the ship's railing with their guns.

“I've had about enough of the assault rifle hospitality,” Dirk muttered.

“I bet they feel naked when they don't have a gun in their hands,” Summer replied.

From their vantage point, they watched as the remaining commandos were ferried over on the pallet, Tongju riding with the last batch.

“Dirk, is it my eyes or is the Sea Rover sitting lower in the water?” Summer asked with alarm in her voice.

“You're right,” he agreed, studying the ship. “They must have opened the sea cocks. She's listing a little to starboard as well.”

The pallet carrying Tongju swung to the deck and the commando leader jumped off, landing lightly on his feet. He immediately approached the two captives.

“I suggest you say good-bye to your ship,” he said without feeling.

“The crew is trapped in the hold, you murderous swine!” Summer cried out.

Charged by emotion, she took a lunging step toward Tongju in anger. The trained killer reacted instinctively, launching a vicious right kick to Summer's midsection, sending her sprawling backward. But his trained reflexes were not swift enough to ward off the unexpected quickness of Dirk, who sprang forward and threw a solid left hook just as Tongju regained his footing. The crushing blow landed on Tongju's right temple, sending him dropping to one knee, where he teetered on the verge of blacking out. The nearby gunmen immediately jumped on Dirk, one of them ramming an assault rifle into his stomach as two others held back his arms.

Tongju gradually regained his senses and rose to his feet, then stepped purposely over to Dirk. Thrusting his face close to Dirk's chin, he spoke in a calm voice dripping with menace.

“I shall enjoy watching you die in the manner of your shipmates,” he said, then brusquely turned and walked away.

The remaining commandos roughly herded Dirk and Summer down a side stairwell and along a narrow corridor before shoving them into a small cabin berth. The cabin door was slammed shut behind them and locked from the outside, where two men remained on guard.

Dirk and Summer quickly shook off the pain from their blows. Staggering past two twin beds wedged into the tiny cabin, they pressed their faces against a small porthole on the outside bulkhead.

“She's lower in the water,” Summer observed with dread in her voice.

Through the porthole, they could see the Sea Rover still floating alongside the Baekje, the seawater creeping inexorably closer to the tops of her gunwales. No sign of life appeared on the decks, and the big research vessel had all the appearance of a listing ghost ship. Dirk and Summer searched for signs of movement aft of the moon pool but saw nothing.

"They've either relocked the vent hatch or Morgan can't get to it, Dirk cursed.

“Or he doesn't know it exists,” Summer whispered.

Beneath their feet, they heard then felt an increased rumbling as the Baekje's engines were engaged and the big cable ship slowly pulled away from the sinking NUMA vessel. The predawn light had yet to edge over the black night sky and it took just a few minutes before the sight of the Sea Rover fell away into a fuzzy grouping of twinkling lights.

Dirk and Summer strained to watch the NUMA ship as the Baekje increased speed and distance. The twinkling lights eventually dissolved beneath the horizon until they could see nothing more of their ship and comrades.

SIR, we seem to have lost all contact with the Sea Rover?" Rudi Gunn looked up slowly from his desk. His bespectacled blue eyes bore into the NUMA field support analyst standing nervously before him.

“How long ago?” Gunn probed.

“Our communications link fell nonresponsive a little over three hours ago. We continued to receive a digital GPS position update, which showed they were still fixed on site in the East China Sea. That signal was lost approximately twenty minutes ago.”

“Did they issue a distress call?”

“No, sir, none that we received.” Despite ten years of service with the agency, the analyst displayed obvious discomfort at being the bearer of bad news to senior management.

“What about the Navy vessel? They were assigned an escort.”

"Sir, the Navy rescinded their frigate escort before Sea Rover left port in Osaka due to an exercise commitment with the Taiwanese Navy.

“That's just great,” Gunn exclaimed in frustration.

“Sir, we've requested satellite imagery from the National Reconnaissance Office. We should have something within the hour.”

“I want search and rescue craft in the air now,” Gunn barked. “Contact the Air Force and Navy. See who's got the closest resources and get them moving. Quick!”

“Yes, sir,” the young man replied, nearly jumping out of Gunn's office.

Gunn mulled over the situation. NUMA research ships had the latest in satellite communications equipment. They wouldn't just disappear without warning. And the Sea Rover had one of the most experienced and competent crews in the NUMA fleet. Dirk must be right, he feared. There must be a powerful operation that was pursuing the biological bombs on board the I-411.

With a foreboding sense of dread, Gunn picked up his telephone and buzzed his secretary.

“Dark, get me the vice president.”

Captain Robert Morgan was not a man to go down easy. Shaking off his shattered femur and broken cheekbone as if they were a sprain and a scratch, he quickly took order of his shaken crew after being unceremoniously tossed into the confined storage hold. Seconds after his arrival, the heavy steel hatch cover was slammed down above them, the crash of the massive lid thrusting the compartment into complete darkness. Frightened whispers echoed off the steel walls while the dank air hung thick with the odor of diesel fuel.

“Don't panic,” Morgan bellowed in response to the murmurs. “Ryan, are you in here?”

“Over here,” Ryan's voice rang back from a corner.

“There should be a spare lightweight ROV secured in the rear. Find some batteries and see if you can't get the lights rigged,” he ordered.

A dim light suddenly glowed in the back of the hold, the narrow beam of a portable flashlight clasped in the paw of the Sea Rover\ chief engineer.

“We'll get it done, Cap'n,” growled the Irish-tinged voice of the engineer, a red-haired salt named Mcintosh.

Ryan and Mcintosh located the spare ROV in a storage cradle, and further rummaging under the faint light produced a stockpile of battery packs. Ryan proceeded to cut one end of the ROV's power cable and spliced several internal lines to the battery pack terminals. Once he configured a complete circuit, the ROV's bright xenon lights burst on in a blinding shower of blue-white luminescence. Several crew members standing near the ROV's lights squinted their eyes shut tight at the sudden surge of light in the blackened hold. Under the bath of light, Morgan was able to examine his shipboard crew and the onboard team of scientists, which he noted were huddled in small groups throughout the hold. A mix of confusion and fear was reflected in the faces of most of the men and women.

“Nice work, Ryan. Mcintosh, move those lights across the hold, please. Now, then, is anybody hurt?” the captain said, ignoring his own severe injuries.

A quick tally revealed a score of cuts, bumps, and bruises. But aside from the wounded machinist and a broken leg suffered by a geologist when he fell into the hold, there were no other serious injuries.

“We're going to get out of this,” Morgan lectured confidently. “These goons just want the items we've been salvaging off the Japanese submarine. Chances are, they'll let us out of here just as soon as they've smuggled the materials off to their ship,” he said, internally doubting his own words. “But, just in case, we'll figure out a way to pop the lid on our own. We've certainly got plenty of manpower to do it with. Mcintosh, swing that light around again, let's see what we've got to work with around here.”

Mcintosh and Ryan picked up the portable ROV and walked it toward the center of the hold, then slowly turned it in a 360-degree circle the bright beams spraying an arc of light over the people and objects in its path. As a storeroom for the Starfish, the hold resembled a large electronic parts bin. Coils of cabling hung from the bulkheads, while spare electronic components were stored in multiple cabinets mounted on the aft wall. Racks of test equipment lined one side of the hold, while at the forward end of the bay a sixteen-foot Zodiac inflatable boat sat on a wooden cradle. Off to one corner, a half-dozen fifty-five-gallon drums of gasoline were wedged alongside two spare outboard motors. Ryan held the light shining on the drums for several minutes, illuminating a series of iron rungs that ran up the bulkhead and under an overhang in back of the drums.

“Captain, there's a venting hatch located up those rungs that opens up onto the aft moon pool deck,” Ryan said. “It locks from the deck side, but there's a chance it may have been left open.”

“One of you men there,” Morgan barked at a trio of scientists huddled near the drums. “Climb up that ladder and see if the hatch is unlocked.”

A barefoot oceanographer clad in blue pajamas jumped at the captain's request and scampered up the metal rungs, disappearing into a narrow vent shaft that was carved through the overhang. A few moments later, he climbed back into view, his feet now sensitive to the crude ladder steps.

“It's locked solid, Captain,” he said with disappointment.

Mcintosh suddenly piped up from the center of the hold.

“Cap'n, I think we can construct a couple of spars from the wooden supports underneath that Zodiac,” he said, pointing an arm toward the rubber boat. “With six or eight men on each, we ought to be able to prod up a corner of the main hatch.”

“Poke it off with a couple of big chopsticks, eh? That, indeed, might work. Go to it, Mcintosh. You men over there, help get that Zodiac off its stand,” he growled at a party assembled near the boat.

Limping over, he grabbed hold of the boat's bow and helped muscle it off the wooden stands and onto the deck. Several men assisted Mcintosh in dissecting the support cradle and laying out its separate pieces while the ship's carpenter assessed how to reassemble the material into several spars.

While they worked, they could hear the muffled voices of the commandos on deck and the whirring and clanking of the Baekje's crane as it loaded and hoisted away the I-411's ordnance. At one point, the faint echo of machine-gun fire was heard emanating from a distant part of the ship. A short time later, Morgan detected the sound of the Starfish being hoisted out of the moon pool and dropped to the deck, followed by the shrieking cry of a woman's voice he knew to be Summer's. The activity above them grew quieter after some banging on the bulkhead above their heads. Eventually, the humming of the cranes and the sporadic voices fell silent. As it became evident that the commandos had left the ship, Morgan quietly wondered about the fate of Dirk and Summer. His thoughts were suddenly jarred by the rumble of the Baekje's engines vibrating through the hold as the cable ship pulled away from Sea Rover.

“How are we coming along, Mcintosh?” he asked loudly to mask the sound of abandonment, although he could clearly see the progress in front of him.

“We've two spars together and are close to completing a third,” the chief engineer grunted. At his feet were three uneven-looking wooden poles, roughly ten feet in length. Each was constructed of three separate pieces of timber, crudely indented at either end with a hammer and screwdriver and fitted together in a notched tongue-and-groove fashion. Metal sheeting cannibalized from a test rack was hammered around the joints for stability and finished off in a wrapped layer of the handyman's favored duct tape.

As Mcintosh sifted through the remaining pieces of scrap wood, a sudden rushing noise drifted up from the bowels of the ship. In a few minutes, the sound doubled in intensity, resembling the rumbling waters of a turbulent stream. Mcintosh stood slowly and addressed the captain in a somber, matter-of-fact voice.

“Sir, they've opened the sea cocks. They mean to sink her.”

Several unseen voices gasped in horror at Mcintosh's words and numerous cries of “No!” echoed through the hold. Morgan ignored them all.

“Looks like we'll have to make do with three spars,” the captain replied calmly. “I need seven men on each pole. Let's get them up now.”

A rush of men moved forward and grabbed the spars as the first drops of seawater began trickling into the hold through a half-dozen small bilge drains mounted flush on the hold's deck. Within minutes, they were sloshing around in ankle-deep water as the men positioned the ends of the spars against the forward corner of the hatch, next to the entry ladder. On the top step, a man stood with a two-foot-high triangular block of timber, his job to insert it under the open hatch lid and keep it wedged open.

“Ready ... lift!” Morgan shouted.

In unison, the three teams of men pressed the tips of their spars against the hatch cover eight feet over their heads and pushed up with all their might. To everyone's surprise, the hatch cover burst open several feet, letting in a spray of muted light from the deck lights, before its weight shifted and the heavy cover slammed back down.

The forlorn man at the top of the ladder froze an instant before trying to insert the block wedge and was too late. The hatch crashed down about his head as he tried to shove the wedge into the open gap, the lip nearly taking off the fingers of his right hand. The shaken man took a deep breath, then nodded at Morgan that he was okay to try again.

“All right, let's give it another try,” Morgan commanded as water now swirled about his knees, the salt water stinging his open leg wound. “One ... two ... three!”

A loud crack ripped through the hold as the top joint on one of the spars broke clean in two, the loose section falling into the water with a splash. Mcintosh waded over and examined the damaged end piece, finding the grooved joint had broken completely off.

“Not good, sir,” he reported. “Will take some time to repair.” “Do what you can,” Morgan barked. “Let's continue with two spars ... Heave!”

The remaining men shoved at their spars but it was a lost cause. There was no way of getting enough manpower behind the two spars to apply enough leverage. Additional men crowded in to try and help, but there was simply not enough room to put more hands on the timbers and push. Twice the men strained with the additional force and were able to pry the hatch open a few inches, but it was not nearly enough to block it so that a man could escape. The surging seawater was now up to Morgan's waist and he could see in the faces of the crew that the terror of drowning was about to incite panic in the hold.

“One more try, men,” he urged on while somewhere in the back of his own mind he morbidly calculated the estimated duration it took for a man to drown.

With adrenaline pumping, the men jammed the two spars against the hatch cover one last time with all their might. This time, they seemed to find their strength and the lid began to creak up. But just as they pressed their leverage, another crack echoed through the hold. A second spar splintered at the joint and the hatch cover clanged back shut. Somewhere in a darkened corner a voice blurted out, “That's it, we're finished.”

It was enough for a trembling cook standing near the gasoline drums to lose his nerve.

“I can't swim, I can't swim!” he cried out as the water level inched up his chest.

In a frightened panic, he grabbed onto the iron rungs that ran to the vent hatch and scurried up into the shaft. Reaching the top rung in darkness, his frenzied terror continued and he began pounding on the small round hatch cover with his fists, crying to be let out. In a state of complete shock, he suddenly felt the hatch give way under his hands and drift open. With his heart pounding in disbelief, he squirmed through the hatch and stood on the deck beside the moon pool dumbfounded. It took nearly a full minute before his racing pulse began to slow and he regained composure over his senses. Realizing that he wasn't going to die just yet, he scrambled back into the hatch and down the ladder a few steps, then shouted into the hold at the top of his lungs.

“The hatch is open! The hatch is open! This way, everybody!”

Like an army of angry fire ants, the panicked crew swarmed to the ladder, crushing one another to escape. By now, most of the crew were treading water or clinging to the bulkheads, while a few drifted about the hold clinging to the now-floating rubber Zodiac. The small ROV also drifted freely, casting its bright lights in a surreal glow about the hold.

“Ladies first,” Morgan shouted, deferring to the traditional rule of the sea.

Ryan, who stood near the ladder on his toes chin high to the water, tried to restore order amid the chaos.

“You heard the captain. Ladies only. Back off, you,” he growled at a pair of male biologists clamoring to get up the ladder. As the female crew members rapidly scurried up the vent and out the hatch, Ryan succeeded in maintaining some semblance of order with the dozens waiting their turn. Across the hold, Morgan could see that the water level was rising too fast. There was no way everyone was going to get out in time, assuming the ship didn't suddenly sink from under their feet to begin with.

“Ryan, get up that ladder. See if you can get the main hatch off,” Morgan ordered.

Ryan didn't take time to answer, following a ship's nurse up the ladder as fast as his legs would carry him. Squirming through the hatch and falling to the deck, he was shocked at what his eyes beheld. In the early dawn light, he could see that the Sea Rover was sinking fast by the stern. Seawater was already washing over the sternpost, while the bow poked up toward the sky at better than a twenty-degree angle. Scrambling to his feet, he saw a young assistant communications officer helping others move to a higher level on the ship.

“Melissa, get to the radio room and issue a Mayday,” he shouted, running past her.

He climbed a short stairwell to the rear hatch, his eye catching the sparkle of a light in the far distance to the north, the cable ship heading off over the horizon. Jumping up onto the hatch, he allowed himself a second to let out a brief sigh of relief. The rising waters off the stern had not yet lapped over the edge of the hatch nor had inundated the aft crane. In their haste, the commandos had even left the crane's hook-and-boom assembly attached to the hatch.

Sprinting to the crane, he hopped into the cab and fired up its diesel engines, immediately shoving the hand controls to raise the boom. With unbearable slowness, the boom gradually rose into the air, lifting the massive hatch cover up with it. Ryan wasted no time rotating the boom a few feet to starboard before jumping out of the cab, leaving the hatch cover dangling in the air.

Rushing to the edge of the hold, he found more than thirty men bobbing in the water fighting for their lives. The water level had already risen to within a foot of the hatch. Another two minutes, he figured, and the men would have all drowned. Reaching his arms in, he began tugging and grabbing at the men one by one, yanking them up and out of the hold. With those on deck helping, Ryan had every man out within a matter of seconds. He ensured that he personally eased the final man out of the water, Captain Morgan.

“Nice work, Tim,” the captain winced as he wobbled to his feet.

“Sorry that I didn't personally check the vent hatch in the first place, sir. We could have gotten everyone out sooner had we known it was actually unlocked.”

“But it wasn't. Don't you get it? It was Dirk who unlocked it. He knocked on the door for us but we forgot to answer.”

A look of enlightenment crossed Ryan's face. “Thank God for him and Summer, the poor devils. But I'm afraid we're not out of the woods yet, sir. She's going down fast.”

“Spread the word to abandon ship. Let's get some lifeboats in the water, pronto,” Morgan replied, stumbling up the inclining deck toward the bow. “I'll see about sending a distress.”

As if on cue, Melissa the communications officer came scrambling across the deck half out of breath.

“Sir,” she gasped, “they've shot up the communications system ... and satellite equipment. There's no way to send a Mayday.”

“All right,” Morgan replied without surprise. “We'll deploy our emergency beacons and wait for someone to come looking for us. Report to your lifeboat. Let's get everybody off this ship now.”

While heading to assist with the lifeboats, Ryan now noticed that the Starfish was missing. Slipping into the auxiliary lab, he found that the recovered bomb canisters had been neatly removed, dissolving any doubts about the reason for the assault.

After their ordeal in the storage hold, an unusual calmness fell over the crew as they abandoned ship. Quietly and in composed order, the men and women quickly made their way to their respective lifeboat stations, glad to have a second chance at life despite the fact their ship was sinking beneath their feet. The advancing water was proceeding rapidly up the deck and two lifeboats closest to the stern were already flooded before they could be released from their davits. The assigned crew was quickly dispersed to other boats, which were being launched to the water in a torrid frenzy.

Morgan hobbled up the sloping deck, which was now inclined at a thirty-degree angle, till reaching the captain's boat, which sat loaded and waiting. Morgan stopped and surveyed the ship's decks a last time, like a gambler who had bet, and lost, the farm. The ship was creaking and groaning as the weight of the salt water filling its lower compartments tugged at the vessel's structural integrity. An aura of sadness enveloped the research ship, as if it knew that it was too soon for it to be cast to the waves.

At last confident that all the crew were safely away, Morgan threw a sharp salute to his vessel, then stepped into the lifeboat, the last man off. The boat was quickly winched down to the rolling sea and motored away from the stricken ship. The sun had just crept over the horizon and cast a golden beam on the research ship as it struggled for its last moments. Morgan's lifeboat was just a few yards away from the Sea Rover when her bow suddenly rose sharply toward the sky, then the turquoise ship slipped gracefully into the sea stern first amid a boiling hiss of bubbles.

As the ship slipped from view, its traumatized crew was overcome by a solitary sensation: silence.

Something's rotten in Denmark." Summer ignored her brother's words and held a small bowl of fish stew up to her nose. After uninterrupted confinement for most of the day, the heavy door of their cabin had burst open and a galley cook wearing a white apron entered with a tray containing the stew, some rice, and a pot of tea. An armed guard watched menacingly from the hallway as the food was set down and the nervous cook quickly left without saying a word. Summer was famished and eagerly surveyed the food as the door was bolted back shut from the outside.

Taking a deep whiff of the fish stew, she wrinkled her nose.

“I think there's a few things rotten around here as well,” she said.

Moving on to the rice, she drove a pair of chopsticks into the bowl and began munching on the steamed grains. At last bringing relief to her hunger pangs, she turned her attention back to Dirk, who sat gazing out the porthole window.

“Aside from our crummy lower-berth cabin, what's bugging you now?” she asked.

“Don't quote me on this, but I don't think we're headed to Japan.”

“How can you tell?” Summer asked, scooping a mound of rice into ] her mouth.

“I've been observing the sun and the shadows cast off the ship. We should be heading north-northeast if we were traveling to Japan, but it appears to me that our course heading is more to the northwest.”

“That's a fine line to distinguish with the naked eye.”

“Agreed. But I just call 'em as I see 'em. If we pull into Nagasaki,! then just send me back to celestial navigation school.”

“That would mean we're heading toward the Yellow Sea,” she replied, picturing an imaginary map of the region in her head. “Do you think we're sailing to China?”

“Could be. There's certainly no love lost between China and Japan. Perhaps the Japanese Red Army has a base of operations in China. That might explain the lack of success the authorities have had in tracking down any suspects in Japan.”

“Possibly. But they'd have to be operating with state knowledge or sponsorship, and I would hope they'd think twice before sinking an American research vessel.”

“True. Then again, there is another possibility.”

Summer nodded, waiting for Dirk to continue.

“The two Japanese hoods who shot up my Chrysler. A forensics doctor at the county morgue thought that the men looked Korean.”

Summer finished eating the rice and set down the bowl and chopsticks.

“Korea?” she asked, her brow furrowing.

“Korea.”

Ed Coyle's eyes had long since grown weary of scanning the flat gray sea for something out of the ordinary. He nearly didn't trust his eyes when something finally tugged at the corner of his vision. Focusing toward the horizon, he just barely made out a small light in the sky dragging a wispy white tail. It was exactly what the copilot of the Lockheed HC-130 Hercules search-and-rescue plane had been hoping to see.

“Charlie, I've got a flare at two o'clock,” Coyle said into his micro-phoned headset with the smooth voice of an ESPN sportscaster. Instinctively, he pointed a gloved hand at a spot on the windshield where he'd seen the white burst.

“I got her,” Major Charles Wight replied with a slight drawl while peering out the cockpit. A lanky Texan with a cucumber-cool demeanor, the HC-130's pilot gently banked the aircraft toward the fading smoke stream and slightiy reduced airspeed.

Six hours after departing Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, the search-and-rescue pilots had started wondering whether their mission was a wild-goose chase. Now they crept to the edge of their seats, wondering what they would find in the waters beneath them. A grouping of white dots slowly appeared on the distant horizon, gradually growing larger as the aircraft approached.

“Looks like we've got us some lifeboats,” Wight stated as the specks grew into distinguishable shapes.

“Seven of them,” Coyle confirmed, counting the small boats stretched in a line. Morgan had rounded up all the lifeboats and lashed them together, bow to stern, in order to keep the survivors together. As the Hercules flew in low over them, the crew of the Sea Rover waved wildly in response and let out a collective cheer.

“Roughly sixty heads,” Coyle estimated as Wight brought the plane around in a slow circle. “They look to be in pretty good shape.”

“Let's hold the PJs, drop an emergency medical pack, and see if we can initiate a sea pickup.”

The PJs were three medically trained para rescue jumpers in the back of the plane ready to parachute out of the HC-130 at a moment's notice. Since the crew of the Sea Rover appeared in no imminent danger, Wight opted to withhold their deployment for the time being. A lo adman at the back of the Hercules instead lowered a big hydraulic door beneath the tail and, at Coyle's command, shoved out several emergency medical and ration packs, which drifted down to the sea suspended from small parachutes.

An airborne communications specialist had meanwhile issued a distress call over the marine frequency. Within seconds, several nearby ships answered the call, the closest being a containership bound for Hong Kong from Osaka. Wight and Coyle continued to circle the lifeboats for another two hours until the containership arrived on the scene and began taking aboard survivors off the first lifeboat. Satisfied they were now safe, the rescue plane took a final low pass over the castaways, Wight waggling the wingtips as he passed. Though the pilots could not hear it, the tired and haggard survivors let out a robust cheer of thanks that echoed across the water.

“Lucky devils,” Coyle commented with satisfaction.

Wight nodded in silent agreement, then banked the Hercules southeast toward its home base on Okinawa.

The large freighter had let go a welcoming blast of its Kahlenberg air horn as it glided toward the lifeboats. A whaleboat was lowered to guide the shipwreck victims around to a lowered stairwell near the stern, where most of the Sea Rover's crew climbed up to the high deck. Morgan and a few other injured crewmen were transferred to the whaleboat and hoisted up to the containership's main deck. After a brief welcome and inquiry by the ship's Malaysian captain, Morgan was rushed down to the medical bay for treatment of his wounds.

Ryan caught up with him after the ship's doctor had tended to the NUMA captain's leg and confined him to a bunk next to the crewman with the broken leg.

“How's the prognosis, sir?”

“The knee's a mess but I'll live.”

“They do amazing things with artificial joints these days,” Ryan encouraged.

“Apparently, I'll be finding that out in an intimate way. Beats a peg leg, I guess. What's the state of the crew?”

“In good spirits now. With the exception of Dirk and Summer, the Sea Rover's crew is all aboard and accounted for. I borrowed Captain Malaka's satellite phone and called Washington. I was able to speak directly with Rudi Gunn and informed him of our situation after briefing him on the loss of the ship. I let him know that our recovered cargo, along with Dirk, Summer, and the submersible, is believed aboard the Japanese cable ship. He asked me to express his thanks to you for saving the crew and promised that the highest levels of the government will be activated to apprehend those responsible.”

Morgan stared blankly at a white wall, his mind tumbling over the events of the past few hours. Who were these pirates that had attacked and sunk his ship? What was their intent with the biological weapons? And what had become of Dirk and Summer?. Not generating any answers, he simply shook his head slowly.

“I just hope it won't be too late.”

After sailing north for a day and a half, the Baekjegradually arched its bow around toward an easterly heading. Landfall was spotted at dusk, and the ship waited until dark before creeping into a large harbor amid a hazy fog. Dirk and Summer surmised that they had, in fact, sailed to Korea and correctly guessed that they were in the South's large port city of Inchon, based on the number of internationally flagged freighters and containerships they passed entering the port.

The cable-laying ship moved slowly past the wide-spaced commercial docks that busily loaded and unloaded huge containerships around the clock. Turning north, the Baekje crept past an oil refinery terminal, snaking around a rusty tanker ship before entering a dark and less developed corner of the harbor. Drifting past a decrepit-looking shipyard housing scores of decomposing hulks, the ship slowed as it approached a small side channel that ran to the northwest. A guard hut with a small speedboat alongside stood at the entrance to the channel, beneath a rusting sign that proclaimed, in Korean: kang MARINE SERVICES----PRIVATE.

The Baekje^ captain maneuvered the ship gently into the channel and proceeded several hundred yards at a slow creep before rounding a sharp bend. The channel fed into a small lagoon, which was dwarfed by a massive pair of covered docks that sat at the opposite end. As if pulling a car into the garage, the Baekjeh captain inched the ship into one of the cavernous hangars that towered a solid fifty feet above the ship's forecastle. The ship was tied off under a field of bright halogen lamps that hung from the ceiling, while a large hydraulic door quietly slid shut behind them, completely concealing the vessel from outside eyes.

A crane immediately swung over and a half-dozen crewmen began unloading the ordnance containers, which were lowered to the dock under Tongju's supervision. Once the bomb canisters were stacked on the deck in an orderly pyramid, a large white panel truck backed down the dock to the cargo. Another group of men, wearing powder blue lab coats, carefully loaded the weapons into the back of the truck, then drove away from the ship. As it turned a corner at the end of the dock, Tongju could see the familiar blue lightning bolt emblazoned on the side of the truck, beneath the words kang satellite telecommunications CORP.

Kim approached as Tongju watched the truck exit the hangar through a guarded doorway.

“Mr. Kang will be quite pleased when he learns that we have recovered all of the ordnance,” Kim stated.

“Yes, though two of the twelve are worthless. The submersible pilots cracked open the last two shells and released the armament into the water. An accident, they claim, due to a loss of visibility in the water.”

“An inconsequential loss. The overall mission was quite successful.”

“True, but there is still a difficult operation ahead of us. I am tak tag the prisoners to Kang in order for him to interrogate them. I trust that you will administer to the ship preparations satisfactorily,” he stated rather than asked.

“The reconfiguration of the vessel, as well as the replenishment of fuel and provisions, will begin immediately. I will ensure that the ship is ready to depart the minute our cargo is reloaded.”

“Very well. The sooner we get to sea, the better our chances of success.”

“We have surprise on our side. There is no way we can fail,” Kim said confidently.

But Tongju knew otherwise. Taking a long puff on a lit cigarette, he considered the element of surprise. It could indeed mean the difference between life and death.

“Let us just hope that our deception endures,” he finally replied thoughtfully.

Belowdecks, Dirk and Summer were roughly roused from their cabin cell, a thick-necked guard first handcuffing their wrists behind their backs before shoving them out of the room. They were marched at gunpoint to a gangway leading off the ship, where Tongju stood watching with a sneer on his face.

“It was a lovely cruise. You never did show us where the shuffle-board court was located, however,” Dirk said to the assassin.

“Now, be honest,” Summer piped in. “The food didn't exactly warrant a five-star rating.”

“The American sense of humor is hardly amusing,” Tongju grunted, his cold eyes showing that he was not the least bit entertained.

“By the way, what exactly is the Japanese Red Army doing in Inchon, Korea?” Dirk asked bluntly.

A barely perceptible arch crossed Tongju's brow.

“Most observant, Mr. Pitt.” Then, ignoring his captives further, he turned to Thick Neck, who cradled an AK-74 leveled at the pair.

“Take them to the high-speed launch and lock them in the forward berth under guard,” he barked, then turned on his heels and marched to the bridge.

Dirk and Summer were marshaled down the gangplank and across the dock to a smaller side slip, where a sleek-looking motor yacht was tied up. It was a thirty-one-meter South Pacific marine high-speed catamaran, painted a teal blue. Designed and built for passenger ferry service, it had been refitted as a fast oceangoing personal luxury yacht. Equipped with four-thousand-horsepower diesel engines, the luxury cat could cruise along at speeds over 35 knots.

“Now, this is more my style,” Summer commented as they were prodded aboard and locked in a small but plushly appointed center berth.

“No windows this time. Guess Mr. Hospitality didn't like your Inchon crack,” Summer added as she curled her way into a small salon chair, her hands still cuffed behind her back.

“Me and my big mouth,” Dirk replied. “At least we now have a rough idea of where we are.”

“Yes ... right in the middle of deep kimchi. Well, if we got to go, at least we get to go first class,” she said, admiring the walnut paneling and expensive artwork adorning the walls. “These guys certainly have some deep pockets for a second-rate terrorist organization.”

“Apparently, they have some friends at Kang Enterprises.”

“The shipping company?”

"A large conglomerate. We've seen their commercial freighters around for years. They're also involved in some other high-tech businesses as well, though I'm only familiar with their shipping division. I met a guy in a bar once who worked as an oiler on one of their ships. He told me about their enclosed repair and storage facility in Inchon. Never seen anything like it. There's supposedly a dry dock at one end,

and the place is chock-full of state-of-the-art equipment. The cable ship had the Kang trademark blue lightning bolt on the funnel. This has to be the place."

“Glad to see all that time you spent as a barfly is finally paying off,” Summer quipped.

“Research. Strictly research,” he smiled.

Summer suddenly turned serious. “Why would a South Korean business be mixed up with the JRA? And what do they want with us?”

Her words were interrupted by the throaty roar of the catamaran's diesel engines as they were fired up astern of their cabin.

“I guess we'll soon find out.”

Tongju crossed over and boarded the catamaran as the ropes were cast off, the fast boat burbling along the dockage at a crawl. The huge hangar door slid to the side again, allowing the catamaran to exit the enclosed building. As they slipped through the doorway, Tongju glanced back at the big cable ship towering over them.

An army of workmen was already crawling about the Baekje like a swarm of bees. A heavy-duty crane was removing the giant cable-laying wheel from the stern deck, while teams of painters re sprayed the topside decks. Elsewhere, construction crews were cutting the superstructure in some areas while adding compartments and bulkheads in other places. A work detail hung over the fantail, re beading and painting the ship's name, while another team painted the funnel a golden yellow. In just a matter of hours, the entire ship would be transformed to another vessel that even the trained eye would have trouble detecting. It would be as if the cable ship Baekje never existed.

The fiery bantam marched through the executive corridors of NUMA's headquarters as if he owned the building, which, in fact, he essentially did. Admiral James Sandecker was a revered figure throughout the halls, offices, and laboratories of NUMA, the legacy of his founding the agency with a handful of scientists and engineers several decades before. Though diminutive in size, his blazing blue eyes and bright red hair with matching goatee simply advertised the burning intensity with which he operated twenty-four hours a day.

“Hello, Darla, you're looking stunning today,” he said graciously to the forty-something secretary typing on a computer. “Is Rudi in the executive conference room?”

“Good to see you again, Admiral,” the woman beamed as her eyes roved to a pair of Secret Service agents struggling to keep up with the fast-moving chief. “Yes, Mr. Gunn is waiting for you inside. Please go right in.”

Though still regarded as the Admiral by his NUMA comrades, the rest of the world knew him as Vice President Sandecker. Despite a lifelong aversion to the subversive world of Washington politics, Sandecker was persuaded by President Ward to fill the shoes of the vice presidency when the elected veep unexpectedly died in office. Sandecker knew the president to be a man of honor and integrity who would not force his second-in-command to remain a wallflower. The fiery admiral immediately broke the mold of past vice presidents. Far from being a figurehead and emissary for state funerals, Sandecker held a strong position in the administration. He vigorously spearheaded defense and security reforms, increased the funding and focus of government-sponsored scientific research, and led the point for environmental conservancy initiatives and all matters relating to the seas. At his bullying, the administration successfully strong-armed a worldwide ban on whaling by all industrialized nations, as well as implementing a host of tough penalties and sanctions on ocean polluters.

Sandecker burst through the door to the conference room, immediately hushing the group of NUMA officials deliberating the loss of the Sea Rover.

“Thanks for coming over, Admiral,” Gunn said, jumping up and showing his boss to the head of the table.

“What's the latest information?” Sandecker asked, dispensing with the usual around-the-table pleasantries.

“We've confirmed that the Sea Rover has, in fact, been sunk after being attacked in the East China Sea by a small armed force that infiltrated the vessel. Miraculously, the crew escaped from a locked storage hold minutes before the ship went under. They were able to make it into the lifeboats, where they were later spotted by an Air Force search-and-rescue plane. A nearby freighter was alerted, and they have since been picked up. The freighter and crew are en route to Nagasaki as we speak. All but two of the crew have been accounted for.” “She was boarded by force?”

“A stealth commando team of unidentified nationality got aboard her at night and took over the ship without a struggle.”

“That's Bob Morgan's ship, isn't it?”

“Yes. The old goat apparently put up a fight and took a gunshot wound to the leg during the struggle. I spoke with Ryan, his exec, who told me that he's expected to pull through in good shape. According to Ryan, the boarders claimed to be with the Japanese Red Army. They made their escape in a cable-laying ship bearing the Japanese flag.”

“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 intelligence 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.