Dirk Pitt18-Black Wind

by Cussler, Clive

  along the top of the aircraft hangar. "I'll go belowdecks and do the

  same."

  Dirk glanced at the orange face of his Doxa dive watch, a gift from his

  father on his last birthday. "We've only got eight more minutes of

  bottom time. Let's be quick."

  "I'll meet you back here in six," Dahlgren said, then disappeared with

  a kick of his fins through the gash in the hangar wall.

  Dirk entered the gloomy crevice adjacent to the hangar, diving past a

  jagged edge of mangled and twisted steel. As he descended, he could

  make out the sub's unusual twin side-by-side pressured hulls, which ran

  lengthwise down the keel. He entered an open bay and quickly

  identified it as the remains of the control room, as evidenced by a

  large mounted helm's wheel, now covered in barnacles. An array of

  radio equipment was fixed to one side of the room-while an assortment

  of mechanical levers and controls protruded from another wall and

  ceiling. Shining his light on one set of valves, he made out barasuto

  tanku in white lettering, which he presumed operated the ballast

  tanks.

  Kicking his fins gently, Dirk moved forward at a deliberate pace trying

  not to stir up sediment from the deck. As he passed from one

  compartment to the next, the submarine seemed to echo with the life

  from the Japanese sailors. Dining plates and silverware were strewn

  across the floor of a small galley. Porcelain sake vials were still

  standing in cabin shelves. Gliding into a large wardroom where

  officers' staterooms lined one side, Dirk admired a small Shinto shrine

  mounted on one wall.

  He continued forward, cognizant of his dwindling bottom time but

  careful to take in all that his eyes could absorb. Moving past a

  maze

  of pipes, wires, and hydraulic lines, he reached the chief's quarters,

  near the forward part of the ship. At last, he approached his

  objective, the forward torpedo room, which loomed just ahead. Thrusting

  ahead with a powerful scissors kick, he advanced to the torpedo room

  entrance and prepared to pass in. Then he stopped dead in his

  tracks.

  He blinked hard, wondering if his eyes were playing tricks on him. Then

  he turned off his light and looked through the hatch again. He was not

  imagining what he saw.

  In the inky bowels of the rusting warship, entombed at the bottom of

  the sea for over sixty years, Dirk was welcomed by a faint but distinct

  flashing green light.

  Dirk pulled himself through the hatch and into the pitch-black darkness

  of the torpedo room, save for the penetrating beam of light. As his

  eyes adjusted to the blackness, the flashing green light became

  clearer. It appeared to be a pair of tiny lights, situated at eye

  level, and fixed at the far side of the room.

  Dirk turned his own light back on and surveyed the room. He was in the

  upper torpedo room, one of two torpedo bays the I-403 had stacked

  vertically at the bow of the sub. Near the forward bulkhead, he could

  see the round chamber hatches for the four twenty-one-inch-diameter

  torpedo tubes. Lying in racks on either side of the room were six of

  the huge Type 95 torpedoes, large and deadly fish that were both more

  reliable and more explosive than the American counterpart during the

  war. Jumbled on the floor, Dirk shined his light on two additional

  torpedoes that had been jarred out of their racks when the submarine

  had slammed into the bottom. One torpedo lay flat on the floor, its

  nose angled slightly off bow from where it had rolled after

  hitting the deck. The second torpedo was propped on some debris near

  its tip, pointing its nose lazily upward. It was just above this

  second torpedo where the eerie green light flashed on and off.

  Dirk floated over to the pulsating light, putting his face mask up

  close to the mystery beam. It was nothing more than a small stick-on

  digital clock wedged at the end of the torpedo rack. Fluorescent green

  block numbers flashed a row of zeroes, indicating an elapsed time that

  had run out more than twenty-four hours before. Days, weeks, or months

  before, it would be impossible to tell. But it certainly could not

  have been placed there sixty years earlier.

  Dirk plucked the plastic clock and stuffed it in a pocket of his BC,

  then peered upward. His expended air bubbles were not gathering at the

  ceiling, as expected, but were trailing upward and through a shaft of

  pale light. He kicked up with his fins and found that a large hatch to

  the open deck had been wedged open several feet, easily allowing a

  diver access to and from the torpedo bay.

  A crackly voice suddenly burst through his earpiece. "Dirk, where are

  you? It's time to go upstairs," Dahlgren's voice barked.

  "I'm in the forward torpedo room. Come meet me on the bow, I need

  another minute."

  Dirk looked at his watch, noting that their eight minutes of bottom

  time had expired, then swam back down to the torpedo rack.

  Two wooden crates were crushed beneath one of the fallen torpedoes,

  split open like a pair of suitcases. Constructed of hardwood mahogany,

  the crates had amazingly survived the ravages of salt water and

  microorganisms and were in a minimal state of decay. He curiously

  noted that no silt covered the broken crates, unlike every other object

  he had seen on the submarine. Someone had recently fanned away the

  sediment to reveal the crates' contents.

  Dirk swam over to the closest crate and looked inside. Like a half

  carton of eggs, six silver aerial bombs were lined up in a

  custom-fitted casemate. Each bomb was nearly three feet long and

  sausage-shaped, with a fin-winged tail. Half of the bombs were still wedged under the torpedo,

  but all six had been broken up by the torpedo's fall. Oddly,

  to Dirk, they appeared to be cracked rather than simply crushed. Running

  his hand over an undamaged section of one of the bombs, he was

  surprised to feel the surface had a glassy smoothness to the touch.

  Kicking his fins gentry, Dirk then glided over to the other crate and

  found a similar scene. All of the bomb canisters had been crushed by

  the falling torpedo in the second crate as well. Only this time, he

  counted five bombs, not six. One of the casings was empty. Dirk

  shined his light around and surveyed the area. The deck was clear in

  all directions, and no fragments were evident in the empty slot. One

  of the bombs was missing.

  "Elevator, going up," Dahlgren's voice suddenly crackled.

  "Hold the door, I'll be right there," Dirk replied, glancing at his

  watch to see that they had overrun their bottom time by almost five

  minutes. Examining the smashed crates a last time, he tugged on one of

  the less mangled bombs. The ordnance slipped out of its case but fell

  apart into three separate pieces in Dirk's hands. As best he could, he

  gently placed the pieces into a large mesh dive bag, then, holding

  tight, he kicked toward the open hatch above. Pulling the bag through

  the hatch after him, Dirk found Dahlgren hovering above the sub's bow a

  few yards in front of him. Joining hi
s dive partner, the two wasted no

  time in kicking toward their decompression stop.

  Tracking their depth as they rose, Dirk flared his body out like a

  sky-diver at forty feet to slow his ascent and purged a shot of air out

  of his BC. Dahlgren followed suit and the two men stabilized

  themselves at a depth of twenty feet to help rid their bodies of

  elevated levels of nitrogen in their blood.

  "That extra five minutes on the bottom cost us another thirteen of

  decompression time. I'll be sucking my tank dry before thirty-eight

  minutes rolls around," Dahlgren said, eyeing his depleted air gauge.

  Before Dirk could answer, they heard a muffled metallic clang in the

  distance.

  "Never fear, Leo is here," Dirk remarked, pointing at an object forty

  feet to their side.

  A pair of silver scuba tanks with attached regulators dangled at the

  twenty-foot mark, tied to a rope that ascended to the surface. At the

  other end of the rope, Delgado stood munching a banana on the back deck

  of the Grunion, tracking the men's air bubbles and making sure they

  didn't stray too far from the boat. After hovering for a

  fifteen-minute decompression stop at twenty feet, the men grabbed the

  regulators affixed to the dangling tanks and floated up to ten feet for

  another twenty-five-minute wait. When Dirk and Dahlgren finally

  surfaced and climbed aboard the boat, Delgado acknowledged the men with

  just a wave as he turned the boat for landfall.

  As the boat motored into the calmer waters of the Strait of Juan de

  Fuca, Dirk unwrapped the bomb canister fragments and laid them on the

  deck.

  "No sign of one of these on the aircraft, or in the hangar?" Dirk

  asked.

  "Definitely not. There was plenty of parts, tools, and other debris in

  the hangar, but nothing that looked like that," Dahlgren replied,

  eyeing the pieces. "Why would a canister crack open like that?"

  "Because it's made of porcelain," Dirk replied, holding a shard up for

  Dahlgren's closer inspection.

  Dahlgren ran a finger over the surface, then shook his head. "A

  porcelain bomb. Very handy for attacking tea parties, I presume."

  "Must have something to do with the payload." Dirk rearranged the

  fragments until they fit roughly together, like pieces of a jigsaw

  puzzle. The payload armament had long since washed away in the sea,

  but several compartmentalized sections formed in the interior were

  clearly evident.

  "Looks like different combustibles were to react together when

  detonated."

  "An incendiary bomb?" Dahlgren asked.

  "Perhaps," Dirk replied quietly. He then reached into the side

  pocket of his BC and pulled out the digital timer. "Someone went to a

  fair amount of trouble to retrieve one of these bombs," he said,

  tossing the timer over to Dahlgren.

  Dahlgren studied the device, turning it over in his hands.

  "Maybe it was the original owner," he finally said with seriousness.

  Raising his arm with the timer in his palm, he showed Dirk the backside

  of the clock. In raised lettering on the plastic case was an

  indecipherable line of Asian script.

  Like A pack of hyenas fighting over a freshly killed zebra, the

  president's security advisers were biting and yipping at each other in

  a self-serving attempt to dodge responsibility over the events in

  Japan. Tempers flared across the Cabinet Room, situated in the West

  Wing of the White House.

  "It's a breakdown of intelligence, clear and simple. Our consulates

  are not getting the intelligence support they need and two of my people

  are dead as a result," the secretary of state complained harshly.

  "We had no advance knowledge of an increase in terrorist activity in

  Japan. Diplomatic feeds from State reported that Japanese security

  forces were in the dark as well," the deputy CIA director fired back.

  "Gentlemen, what's done is done," the president interjected as he

  attempted to light a large old-fashioned smoking pipe. Bearing the

  physical appearance of Teddy Roosevelt and the no-nonsense demeanor of

  Harry Truman, President Garner Ward was widely admired by the public

  for his common sense and pragmatic style. The

  first-term president from Montana welcomed spirited debate among his staff

  and cabinet but had a low tolerance for finger-pointing and

  self-serving pontification.

  "We need to understand the nature of the threat and the motives of our

  opponent, and then calculate a course of action," the president said

  simply "I'd also like a recommendation as to whether Homeland Security

  should issue an elevated domestic security alert." He nodded toward

  Dennis Jimenez, sitting across the Cabinet Room conference table, who

  served as secretary of the homeland security department. "But first,

  we need to figure out who these characters are. Martin, why don't you

  fill us in on what we know so far?" the president said, addressing FBI

  Director Martin Finch.

  An ex-Marine Corps MP, Finch still sported a crew cut and spoke with

  the blunt voice of a basic training drill sergeant.

  "Sir, the assassinations of Ambassador Hamilton and Deputy Chief of

  Mission Bridges appear to have been performed by the same individual.

  Surveillance video from the hotel where Bridges was killed exposed a

  suspect dressed as a waiter who was not known to be an employee of the

  hotel. Photographs from the video were matched to eyewitness accounts

  of an individual seen at the Tokyo area golf course shortly before

  Ambassador Hamilton was shot."

  "Any tie-in to the killing of the executive Chris Gavin and the Sem-Con

  plant explosion?" the president inquired.

  "None that we have been able to identify, although there is a potential

  indicator in the note left with Bridges's body. We are, of course,

  treating it as a related incident."

  "And what of the suspect?" the secretary of state asked.

  "The Japanese authorities have been unable to make a match in their

  known criminal files, or provide a possible identification, for that

  Matter. He was not a previously recognized member of the Japanese Red

  Army cell. He is apparently something of an unknown. The Japanese law

  enforcement agencies are cooperating fully in the manhunt and have

  placed their immigration checkpoints on high alert."

  "Despite no prior connection, there would seem to be little doubt that

  he is operating under the auspices of the Japanese Red Army," the CIA

  deputy added.

  "The note left with Bridges. What did it say?" asked Jimenez.

  Finch rifled through a folder, then pulled out a typewritten sheet.

  "Translated from Japanese, it says: "Be vanquished, American

  imperialists who soil Nippon with greed, or death will blow her cold,

  sweet breath to the shores of America. JRA." Classic fringe cult

  hyperbole."

  "What is the state of the Japanese Red Army? I thought they were

  essentially dissolved a number of years ago," President Ward asked.

  Waiting for the reply, he tilted his head back and blew a cloud of

  cherry-scented tobacco smoke toward the paneled ceiling
before Finch

  answered.

  "As you may know, the Japanese Red Army is a fringe terrorist group

  that grew out of a number of communist factions in Japan during the

  seventies. They promote an anti-imperialist rant and have supported

  the overthrow of the Japanese government and monarchy by both

  legitimate and illegitimate means. With suspected ties to the Middle

  East and North Korea, the JRA was behind a number of bombings and

  hijackings, culminating in the attempted takeover of the U.S. embassy

  in Kuala Lumpur in 1975. They seemed to lose support in the nineties,

  and by 2000 the known leadership of the organization had been largely

  apprehended. Though many believed the organization was dead,

  indications of the group's stirrings have been seen again in the last

  two years. Published doctrines and active media reporting in Japan

  have provided a new sounding board, gaining more reception in the

  country's declining economic climate. Their message has focused on

  anti-American and anticapitalist tenets, rather than the anarchistic

  overthrow of the government, which has found a degree of support within

  a fragment of the population's youth. Oddly, there is no visible front

  man, or poster child, for the group."

  "I can endorse Marty's comments, Mr. President," the deputy CIA

  director offered. "Until the hits on our people, we've had no overt

  record of activity from these people in a number of years. The known

  leadership is behind bars. Quite frankly, we don't know who is now

  calling the shots."

  "Are we confident there is no Al Qaeda connection here?"