Black Wind

by Clive Cussler

  Barnes bent over and retched violently, then sat upright, clinging to Stimson's arm for support. Gasping in a hoarse voice, he whispered, "There's something in the air."

  No sooner had the words left his mouth when his eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he fell over stone dead.

  Stimson stood up in a state of shock, then found that the room was spinning like a top before his eyes. A throbbing pain racked his head while the grip of an iron vise suddenly began squeezing the air out of his lungs. Staggering to the radio, he tried to let out a brief cry for help but was unsure whether his lips could move because of numbness to his face. A burst of heat flared internally, like an invisible fire was consuming his organs. Choking for air and losing all sense of vision, he staggered and fell hard to the floor, dead before he hit the ground.

  Four miles east of the Coast Guard station, the three CDC scientists were just finishing their lunch when the invisible wave of death struck. Sarah was the first to detect something wrong when a pair of

  birds flying overhead suddenly stopped in mid flight as if they had struck an invisible wall and then fell to the ground wriggling. Sandy fell victim first, clutching her stomach and doubling over in agony.

  "Come now, my chili wasn't that bad," Fowler joked before he, too, became light-headed and nauseous.

  Sarah stood and took a few steps toward the cooler to retrieve some bottled water when fire shot through her legs and her thigh muscles began to spasm.

  "What's happening?" Fowler gasped as he tried to comfort Sandy before staggering to the ground in distress.

  For Sarah, time seemed to slow as her senses became dulled. Sluggishly, she dropped to the ground as her muscles weakened and refused to obey the commands sent by her brain. Her lungs seemed to constrict upon themselves, making each breath a painful stab of agony. A thumping noise began to ring through her ears as she fell prone on her back and stared blurry-eyed at the gray sky above. She felt the blades of grass dance and rustle against her body, but she was frozen, unable to move.

  Gradually, a fog enveloped her mind and a field of blackness began to encroach the edges of her vision. But a sudden intrusion jarred her senses momentarily. Into the sea of gray popped an apparition, a strange ghost with a tuft of black hair over a rubbery face that seemed to melt away like plastic. She felt the alien gaze upon her with frightening giant, three-inch-wide crystal eyes. But there appeared to be another set of eyes beyond the crystal lenses, gazing intently at her with a sense of grace and warmth. A pair of deep, opaline green eyes. Then everything turned to black.

  Sarah opened her eyes to a gray canopy above her, only this one was flat and without clouds. Shaking off the blurriness, her eyes slowly regained focus and she could see that it was not the sky above her but a ceiling. A softness beneath her revealed that she was lying in a bed with a thick pillow under her head. An oxygen mask was covering her face, which she removed, but she left alone the intravenous needle that was stuck in her arm. Carefully taking in the surroundings, her eyes gazed upon a small, simply decorated room featuring a small writing desk in one corner with an impressive painting of an old ocean liner above it, while off to the side was a small bath. The bed she lay in was mounted to the wall and the open door to a hallway had a step over threshold. The whole room seemed to be rolling, and she was uncertain if it was her head creating the motion as a result of the deep throbbing sensation that pounded at her temples.

  A movement caught her eye and she turned back to the doorway

  to find a figure standing there, looking at her with a slight grin. He was a tall man, broad-shouldered, but on a fit and somewhat wiry frame. He was young, perhaps in his late twenties, she guessed, but moved with the confidence of a more mature man. His skin showed the deep tan of someone who spent a good deal of time outdoors. Wavy black hair set off a rugged face that was more intriguing than classically handsome. But it was the eyes that radiated an aura about the man. They were a deep shade of iridescent green and revealed a sense of intelligence, adventure, and integrity all rolled into one. They were the eyes of a man who could be trusted. And they were the same green eyes, Sarah recalled, that she had seen before blacking out at the camp.

  "Well, hello, Sleeping Beauty." The words came from a warm, deep voice.

  "You ... you're the man at the camp," Sarah stammered.

  "Yes. My apologies for not properly introducing myself on the island, Sarah. My name is Dirk Pitt." He neglected to add "Junior," although he shared the same name as his father.

  "You know who I am?" she asked, still confused.

  "Well, not intimately," Dirk smiled non threateningly "but a brainy scientist named Irv told me a little about you and your project on Yu-naska. Irv seemed to think he poisoned everyone with his chili."

  "Irv and Sandy! Are they all right?"

  "Yes. They took a little nap, like you, but are fine now. They're resting just down the hall," Dirk said, motioning with his thumb toward the corridor. He could see the look of bewilderment in Sarah's eyes and touched her shoulder with his hand in a reassuring squeeze.

  "Don't worry, you're in good hands. You're aboard the National Underwater and Marine Agency research ship Deep Endeavor. We were returning from an underwater survey of the Aleutian Basin when we picked up a distress call from the Coast Guard weather station on Yu-naska. I flew to the station in a helicopter we have on board and happened to see your camp while flying back to the ship. I gave you and

  your friends an all-expense-paid aerial tour of Yunaska, but you slept through the whole thing," Dirk added with mock disappointment.

  "I'm sorry," Sarah murmured, feeling somewhat bashful. "I guess I owe you a big thanks, Mr. Pitt."

  "Please, call me "Dirk." "

  "Okay, Dirk," Sarah replied with a smile, feeling an odd flutter as she spoke his name. "How are the Coast Guard people?"

  Dirk's face went dark and a look of sorrow crossed his brow. "I'm afraid we didn't make it in time. We found two men and a dog at the station. They were all dead."

  A shiver went up Sarah's spine. Two men dead, and she and her companions nearly as well. None of it made any sense.

  "What on earth happened?" Sarah asked in shock.

  "We don't know for sure. Our ship's doctor is running some tests, but, as you can imagine, his resources are somewhat limited. It appears to have been some sort of airborne fume or toxin. All we know for sure is that the Coast Guard station thought there was something in the air. We flew in with gas masks and were not impacted. We even took some white mice from our shipboard lab with us. They all survived fine, without any apparent symptoms. Whatever it was, it must have dissipated by the time we landed at the Coast Guard station. You and your team were apparently far enough away from the source to be impacted less severely. You probably didn't receive a full dose of whatever it was."

  Sarah's eyes dropped and she fell quiet. The horror and pain of the whole ordeal came back to her with a showering of fatigue. She wanted to sleep it all off and hope it was just a bad dream.

  "Sarah, I'll have the doctor check on you, then let you sleep some more. Perhaps later I can buy you a plate of king crab legs for dinner?" Dirk asked with a smile.

  Sarah smiled briefly in return. "I'd like that," she murmured, then fell fast asleep.

  Kermit Burch stood at the helm reading a fax communique when Dirk stepped into the bridge from the starboard wing door. The seasoned captain of the Deep Endeavor shook his head slightly as he read the document, then turned to Dirk with a slightly annoyed look on his face.

  "We've notified the Coast Guard and the Department of Homeland Security, but nobody intends to do anything until the local authorities have filed their report. The village public safety officer from Atka is the area law enforcement official and he can't get to the island until morning," Burch snorted. "Two men dead and they treat it as an accident."

  "We don't have much to go on," Dirk replied. "I spoke with Carl Nash, our saltwater environmental analyst, who is well versed on te
rrestrial pollutants. According to Nash, there are naturally occurring environmental emissions, such as sulfuric volcanic releases, which could have killed the men. High concentrations of industrial pollutants are another potential culprit, although I'm not aware of any neighborhood chemical plants in the Aleutians."

  "The public safety officer told me it sounds to him like a classic case of carbon monoxide poisoning from the station house generator. Of course, that doesn't explain our friends from the CDC succumbing to similar effects four miles away."

  "Nor does it explain the dog I found dead outside of the station house," Dirk added.

  "Well, perhaps the CDC crew can shed some light on the matter. How are our three guests doing, by the way?"

  "A little groggy still. They don't remember much, other than that it struck pretty rapidly."

  "The sooner we get them to a proper medical facility, the sooner

  I'll rest easier. The nearest airfield is Unalaska, which we can make in under fourteen hours. I'll radio ahead for a medical flight to transfer them to Anchorage."

  "Captain, I'd like to take the helicopter back out and reconnoiter the island. We didn't have much of a chance to look around on the last flight. Maybe there's something we missed. Any objections?"

  "No ... just so long as you take that Texas joker with you," Burch replied with a pained grin.

  As Dirk ran through a preflight checklist from the pilot seat of the NUMA Sikorsky S-76C+ offshore helicopter, a sandy-haired man with a bushy mustache ambled across the flight platform. With scuffed cowboy boots, chiseled arms, and a ubiquitous scowl that hid a mordant sense of humor, Jack Dahlgren looked like a bull rider who got lost on the way to the rodeo. A notorious practical joker, Dahlgren had already worked his way under Burch's skin by spiking the galley's coffee urn with a cheap bottle of rum on their first night at sea. An engineering whiz who grew up in west Texas, Dahlgren knew his way around horses and guns, as well as every type of mechanical equipment that operated above or below the sea.

  "Is this the scenic island tour my travel agent recommended?" he asked Dirk, sticking his head through a sliding cockpit window.

  "Step right up, sonny boy, you won't be disappointed. All the water, rocks, and sea lions your eyes can absorb."

  "Sounds swell. I'll give you an extra quarter if you can find me a bar with a short-skirted waitress."

  "I'll see what I can do," Dirk grinned as Dahlgren climbed into the copilot's seat.

  The two men had become fast friends years before, while studying ocean engineering at Florida Atlantic University. Avid divers, they regularly cut classes together in order to spearfish the coral reefs lying off Boca Raton, using their fresh-caught fish to woo local sorority girls with barbecues on the beach. After graduating, Jack completed his college ROTC commitment in the Navy while Dirk obtained a master's degree from the New York Maritime College and trained at a commercial dive school. The two men were reunited when Dirk joined his father at NUMA as a special projects director and convinced his old friend to accompany him at the prestigious research agency.

  After years of diving together, there was almost an unspoken bond between the two men. They knew they could depend on each other and performed at their best when the chips were down. Dahlgren had seen the look of determination in Dirk's eyes before and knew the dogged persistence that came with it. The mysterious events on Yu-naska were weighing on his friend, Dahlgren noticed, and he wasn't likely to let it go.

  The main rotor blade of the Sikorsky wound to a high pitch as Dirk gently eased the helicopter up and off a small landing platform mounted amidships of the Deep Endeavor. Climbing to one hundred feet, Dirk held the helicopter stationary for a moment, admiring the bird's-eye view of the NUMA research ship. The wide-beamed, turquoise-colored survey ship had a stubby look to her 270-foot length. But the lack of a svelte streamline made for a stable work platform, ideal for operating the myriad of cranes and hoists strategically positioned about the large, open stern deck. In the middle of the deck, a bright yellow submersible sparkled like a jewel in the late afternoon sunlight as it rested on a large wooden cradle, while several technicians tinkered with its thrusters and electronics. One of the technicians stood and waved his cap toward the suspended helicopter. Dirk threw the man a quick wave, then banked the chopper and headed northeast toward the island of Yunaska, less than ten miles away.

  "Back to Yunaska?" asked Dahlgren.

  "The Coast Guard station we scouted this morning."

  "Great," Dahlgren moaned. "We acting as a flying hearse?"

  "No, just checking out the source of whatever killed the men and dog."

  "And are we looking for animal, vegetable, or mineral?" Dahlgren asked through his headset, his teeth mashing a large wad of gum.

  "All three," Dirk replied. "Carl Nash told me that a toxic cloud could be created by anything from an active volcano to an algae bloom, not to mention your garden-variety industrial pollutant."

  "Just stop at the next walrus and I'll ask for directions to the closest pesticide factory."

  "That reminds me, where's Basil?" Dirk asked, his eyes glancing about the cockpit.

  "Right here, safe and sound," Dahlgren replied, grabbing a small cage from beneath his seat and holding it up in front of his face. Inside, a small white mouse peered back at Dahlgren, his tiny whiskers twitching back and forth.

  "Breathe deep, little friend, and don't go to sleep on us," Dahlgren requested of the furry rodent. He then strung the cage from an overhead lanyard, like a canary in a coal mine, so they could easily see if the mouse succumbed to any toxins in the air.

  The grassy island of Yunaska crested out of the slate green water ahead of them, a sprinkling of light cirrus clouds dancing about the larger of the island's two extinct volcanic peaks. Dirk gradually increased the helicopter's altitude as they approached the craggy shoreline, then banked left along the water's edge. Flying counterclockwise around the island's perimeter, it took only a few minutes before they spotted the yellow building of the Coast Guard station. Bringing the helicopter to a hover, Dirk and Dahlgren carefully examined the ground surrounding the station for any unusual signs. Dirk eyed the body of Max the husky still lying outside the hut's door and it brought back to mind the look of pain and horror on the dead men's faces inside when he and Dahlgren first landed at the station earlier in the day. He carefully shelved his emotions and shifted his mental motor to discovering the source of the deadly toxic breeze.

  Dirk nodded past the windscreen to the right. "The prevailing winds come from the west, so the source would likely have come from farther up the coast. Or possibly from offshore."

  "Makes sense. The CDC team was camped to the east of here and they obviously caught a less lethal dose of the mystery gas," Dahlgren replied while peering at the ground through low-power binoculars.

  Dirk applied a gentle force to the cyclic control lever and the helicopter edged forward and away from the yellow structure. For the next hour the two men strained eyeballs searching the grassy island for signs of a natural or man-made origin to the toxin. Dirk traced wide semicircular arcs north and south across the island, expanding their way west until they reached the western coast and returned to the vicinity of the Coast Guard station.

  "Nothing but grass and rocks," Dahlgren grumbled. "The seals can keep it, as far as I'm concerned."

  "Speaking of which, take a look down there," Dirk replied, pointing to a small gravel beach ahead of them.

  A half-dozen brown sea lions lay stretched out on the ground, seemingly enjoying the rays of the late afternoon sun. Dahlgren looked closer his forehead suddenly wrinkling in puzzlement.

  "Geez, they're not moving. They've all bought it, too."

  "This thing must not have come from Yunaska but from the sea, or the next island over."

  "Amukta is the next rock pile to the west," Dahlgren replied, running his finger across a chart of the region.

  Dirk could clearly see the dirty gray outline of the island on the hori
zon. "Looks to be about twenty miles from here."

  Eyeing the helicopter's fuel gauge, he continued, "I think we've got time for a quick gander before our fuel runs low. Okay if you miss your pedicure treatment in the ship's salon?"

  "Sure I'll just reschedule it with my body wrap tomorrow," Dahlgren replied.

  "I'll let Burch know where we're headed," Dirk said, dialing up the ship's radio frequency.

  "Tell him to hold supper in the galley," Dahlgren added while rubbing his stomach. "I'm working up an appetite taking in all this scenery."

  As Dirk radioed the survey ship, he guided the Sikorsky toward the island of Amukta, skimming low over the open water. The powerful helicopter, designed for offshore oil transport, flew straight as a rail under Dirk's firm hand. After cruising steadily for ten minutes, Dahlgren quietly lifted an arm and pointed out the cockpit window to an object on the horizon. It was a white speck, growing larger by the second, until it slowly revealed itself as a large boat complete with trailing wake. Without a word, Dirk applied gentle pressure to his left pedal control until the helicopter eased about on the same line as the boat. Approaching rapidly, they could see it was a steel-hulled fishing trawler, running to the southwest at full bore.

  "Now, there's a tub calling out for a little spit and polish," Pitt remarked as he eased off the throttle to match speeds with the boat.

  Though not appearing particularly old, the fishing vessel had obvious signs of hard use over the years. Scrapes, dents, and grease marks abounded both on the hull and throughout the open deck. Its original coating of white paint was worn thin in the spots where rust had not yet declared victory. By outward appearance, she looked as tired as the frayed bald tires hanging over her sides like a string of donuts. Yet like many disheveled-appearing work boats her twin diesel engines were newly rebuilt and pushed the hulk hard through the waves with a barely a wisp of black smoke from the funnel.