Dirk Pitt18-Black Wind

by Cussler, Clive

  followed by three years of Japanese oppressive rule, until American

  advances across the Pacific led to the invasion of the southern island

  of Leyte in October 1944.

  Just over a hundred miles from Panglao, the province of Leyte and its

  adjoining gulf was the site of the largest air sea battle in history.

  Days after MacArthur and his invasion force landed on "Leyte, the

  Japanese Imperial Navy appeared and successfully divided the American

  supporting naval force. The Japanese came within a hair of destroying

  the Seventh Fleet, but were ultimately turned back in a devastating

  defeat, losing four carriers and three battleships, including the

  massive battlewagon Musashi. The crippling losses finished the

  Imperial Navy's brief dominance in Pacific waters and led to the

  country's military collapse within a year.

  The sea channels surrounding the southern Philippine islands of Leyte,

  Samar, Mindanao, and Bohol were littered with sunken cargo transport,

  and warships from the conflict. It would be no surprise to Pitt if the

  toxins were related to combat wreckage. Eyeing the gash in the cargo

  ship's hull, it was easy to presume that the vessel was a victim of

  war.

  Pitt mentally envisioned the Japanese-flagged freighter under air

  attack, the desperate captain electing to run the ship aground in a

  perilous attempt to save the crew and cargo. Slicing into the coral

  reef, the bow quickly filled with water as the ship ricocheted off the

  sides of the crevasse. With a full head of steam, the ship literally

  drove itself over onto its port side. Whatever cargo the captain had

  tried to save lay hidden and dormant for decades to follow.

  "I think we definitely hit the jackpot," Giordino said in a morose

  tone.

  Pitt turned to see Giordino's gloved hand pointing away from the hull

  and toward the adjacent reef Gone was the vibrant red-, blue-, and

  green-colored corals they had witnessed earlier. In a fan-shaped

  pattern stretching around the ship's bow, the coral was uniformly

  tinted a dull white. Pitt grimly noted that no fish were visible in

  the area as well.

  "Bleached dead from the arsenic," he noted.

  Turning back to the wreck, he grabbed a small flashlight clipped to his

  buoyancy compensator and ducked toward the gap in the hull. Edging his

  way slowly into the ship's underside, he flicked on the light and

  sprayed its beam across the black interior. The lower bow section was

  empty but for a mass of thick anchor chain coiled in a huge pile like

  an iron serpent. Creeping aft, Pitt moved toward the rear bulkhead as

  Giordino slipped through the gash and followed behind him. Reaching

  the bulkhead, Pitt panned his light across the steel wall that

  separated them from the forward cargo hold. At its lower joint with

  the starboard bulkhead, he found what he was looking for. The pressure

  from the outer hull's collision with the reef had buckled one of the

  plates on the cargo hold's bulkhead. The bent metal created a

  horizontal window to the cargo hold several feet wide.

  Pitt eased up to the hole, careful not to kick up silt around him, then

  stuck his head in and pulled in the flashlight. A huge lifeless eye

  stared back at him just inches away, nearly causing him to recoil until

  he saw that it belonged to a grouper. The fifty-pound green fish

  drifted back and forth across the compartment in a slow maze, its gray

  belly pointing up toward the trail of Pitt's rising exhaust bubbles.

  Peering past the dead fish into its black tomb, Pitt's blood went cold

  as he surveyed the hold. Scattered in mounds like eggs in a henhouse

  were hundreds of decaying artillery shells. The forty-pound

  projectiles were ammunition for the 105mm artillery gun, a lethal field

  weapon utilized by the Imperial Army during the war.

  "A Welcome-to-the-Philippines present for General MacArthur?" Giordino

  asked, peering in.

  Pitt silently nodded, then pulled out a plastic-lined dive bag.

  Giordino obliged by reaching over and grabbing a shell and inserting it

  in the bag as Pitt sealed and wrapped it. Giordino then reached over

  and picked up another highly corroded shell, holding it just a few

  inches off the bottom. Both men looked on curiously as a brown oily

  substance leaked out of the projectile.

  "That doesn't resemble any high-explosives powder I've ever seen," 'is

  said, gingerly setting the weapon down.

  "I don't think they are ordinary artillery shells," Pitt replied as he

  noted a pool of brown ooze beneath a nearby pile of ordnance. "Let's

  get this one back to the shipboard lab and find out what we've got," he

  said, carrying the wrapped ordnance under his arm like a football.

  Gliding forward along the bow section, he slipped through the open hull

  and back into the bright sunlit water.

  Pitt had little doubt that the armament was a lost World War II cache.

  Why the arsenic, he did not know. The Japanese were innovative in

  their weapons of war and the arsenic-laced shells might have been

  another device in their arsenal of death. The loss of the Philippines

  would have effectively spelled the end of the war for the Japanese and

  they may have prepared to use the weapons as part of a last-gasp

  measure against a determined enemy.

  As they surfaced with the mysterious shell, Pitt felt a strange sense of

  relief. The deadly cargo that the ship carried so many years ago had

  never reached port. He was somehow glad that it had ended up sunk on

  the reef, never to be fielded in the face of battle.

  Japanese Imperial submarine I-413 and Numa submersible Starfish

  June 4, 2007 Kyodongdo Island, South Korea

  At fifty-five meters in length, the steel-hulled Benetti yacht was

  impressive even by Monte Carlo affluent standards. The custom-built

  Italian yacht's lush interior featured an array of marble flooring,

  Persian carpets, and rare Chinese antiques, which filled the cabins and

  salons with warm elegance. A collection of fifteenth-century oil

  paintings by the Flemish master Hans Memling dotted the walls, adding

  to the eclectic feel. The glistening maroon-and-white exterior, which

  featured a wide band of wraparound dark-tinted windows, was given a

  more traditional appearance, with inlaid teak decking and brass

  fittings on the outside verandas. The entire effect was a tasteful mix

  of old-world charm combined with the speed and function of modern

  design and technology. Always turning heads as it roared by, the

  vessel was an admired fixture on the Han River in and about Seoul. To

  the local society crowd, an invitation aboard was a highly desired mark

  of prominence, providing the rare opportunity to sil with the boat's

  enigmatic owner.

  Dae-jong Kang was a leading icon of South Korean industry and he seemed

  to have his hands in everything. Little was known of the mercurial

  leader's early background, aside from his sudden appearance during

  the economic boom of the nineties as the head of a regional

  construction company. But upon his taking over the reins, the low-tech

  firm became a
corporate Pac-Man, gobbling up companies in the shipping, electronics, semiconductor, and telecommunications industries in

  a series of leveraged buy outs and hostile takeovers. The businesses

  were all rolled under the umbrella of Kang Enterprises, a privately

  held empire entirely controlled and directed by Kang himself. Unafraid

  of the public spotlight, Kang mixed freely with politicians and

  business leaders alike, wielding additional influence on the board of

  directors of South Korea's largest companies.

  The fifty-year-old bachelor held a veil of mystery over his private

  life, however. Much of his time was spent sequestered at his large

  estate on a secluded section of Kyodongdo Island, a lush mountainous

  outpost near the mouth of the Han River on the western Korean coast.

  There he dabbled with a stable of Austrian show horses or worked on his

  golf game, according to the few who had been invited inside the private

  enclave. More carefully hidden was a dark secret about the

  iconoclastic businessman that would have completely shocked his

  corporate cronies and political patrons. Unknown to even his closest

  associates, Kang had operated for over twenty-five years as a sleeper

  agent for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or North Korea, as

  it was known by the rest of the world.

  Kang was born in the Hwanghae Province of North Korea shortly after the

  Korean War. At the age of three, his parents were killed in a railroad

  derailment, blamed on South Korean insurgents, and the infant boy was

  adopted by his maternal uncle. The uncle, a founding member of the

  Korean Workers' Party in 1945, had fought with Kim Il Sung and his

  anti-Japanese guerrilla forces based in the Soviet Union during World

  War II. When Kim Il Sung later rose to power in North Korea, the uncle

  was richly rewarded with a series of provincial government

  appointments, brokering himself into ever more important spheres of

  influence until, ultimately, gaining a seat as an elite ruling member

  of the Central People's Committee, the top executive decision-making

  organization in North Korea.

  During his uncle's ascension, Kang received a thorough indoctrination

  in the Korean Workers' Party dogma while obtaining the best

  state-sponsored education the fledgling country could offer. Recognized

  early as a fast learner who excelled at his studies, Kang was groomed

  as a foreign operative, with sponsorship from his uncle.

  Blessed with a keen financial mind, command like leadership skills, and

  a ruthless heart, Kang was smuggled into South Korea at the age of

  twenty-two and set up as a laborer at a small construction company.

  With brutal efficiency, he quickly worked his way up to foreman, then

  arranged a series of "accidental" work site deaths that killed the

  firm's president and top managers. Forging a series of ownership

  transfer documents, Kang quickly took control of the business within

  two years of his arrival. With secret direction and capital infusion

  from Pyongyang, the young communist entrepreneur slowly expanded his

  network of commercial enterprises over the years, focusing on products

  and services most beneficial to the North. Kang's forays into

  telecommunications provided access to Western network communications

  hardware valuable to the military's command and control systems. His

  semiconductor plants secretly built chips for use in short-range

  missiles. And his fleet of cargo ships provided the means for covertly

  transferring defense technology to the government of his homeland. The

  profits from his corporate empire that were not smuggled north in the

  form of Western goods and technology were spent bribing key politicians

  for government contracts or utilized for the hostile acquisition of

  other companies. Yet Kang's zealous appropriation of power and

  technology was almost peripheral to his primary objective, set forth by

  his handlers so many years before. Kang's mission, in the simplest of

  provisions, was to promote the reunification of the two Korean

  countries, but on North Korea's terms.

  The sleek Benetti yacht slowed its engines as it entered a narrow

  inlet off the Han River that wound snakelike into a protected cove. As

  the boat eased through the inlet, the pilot increased the throttle

  again, racing the boat smoothly across the calm waters of the interior

  lagoon. A yellow floating dock bobbed gently on the opposite side of

  the | cove, which quickly grew larger in size as the yacht drew near.

  The big; vessel stormed toward the dock, swinging parallel at just the

  last, minute as its engines were cut. A pair of black-uniformed men

  grabbed the bow and stern lines and tied off the vessel as the pilot

  finessed her the last few feet to the dock. The shore crew quickly

  rolled a stepped platform against the yacht's side, the upper step

  matching the foot level of the first deck.

  A cabin door popped open and three gray-looking men in dark blue suits

  stepped down onto the dock and instinctively peered up at the large

  stone structure perched above them. Jutting from a cliff that rose

  nearly vertically above the dock nestled an immense stone house that

  was half-carved into the crown of the bluff. Thick walls surrounded

  the house, lending a medieval look to the compound, although the house

  itself was clearly of Asian design, with a deep angular tiled roof

  capping the brownstone walls. The entire structure sat two hundred

  feet above the water, accessible by a steep set of stairs carved into

  the rock on one side. The three men noted that twelve-foot-high stone

  walls ran all the way down to the water's edge, ensuring a high degree

  of privacy. A tight-lipped guard standing at the dock's footing with

  an automatic rifle slung over his shoulder ensured even more.

  As the men in suits made their way along the dock, a door opened from a

  small structure near the landing and out walked their host to greet

  them. There was no question that Dae-jong Kang had an imposing air

  about him. At an even six feet tall and weighing two hundred pounds,

  his physical mass was large by Korean standards. But it was his stern

  face and penetrating eyes that indicated a willful presence. Under the

  right circumstances, his piercing glare could almost cut a

  man in two. A practiced but insincere smile helped break down barriers

  when he needed to, but an icy-cold aloofness always lingered over him

  like a cloud. He was a man who reeked of power and was not afraid to

  use it.

  "Welcome, gentlemen," Kang said in a smooth voice. "I trust your

  voyage from Seoul was enjoyable?"

  The three men, all leading party members in the South Korean National

  Assembly, nodded in unison. The senior member of the political trio, a

  balding man named Youngnok Rhee, replied for the group: "A trip down

  the Han River is a delight in such a beautiful boat."

  "It is my preferred means of commuting to Seoul," Kang replied,

  implying the boredom he found flying in his private helicopter. "Right

  this way," he motioned toward the small building at the base of the

  cliff.

  The po
liticians followed him obediently past a small security station

  and down a narrow passageway to a waiting elevator, the shaft of which

  had been carved directly into the cliff. The visitors admired an

  ancient painting of a tiger hung on the elevator's back wall as it rose

  rapidly to the main house. When the doors opened, the men stepped out

  into an expansive, ornately decorated dining room. Beyond an elegant

  mahogany dining table, floor-to-ceiling glass walls offered a

  breathtaking view of the Han River delta, where the grand river's

  waters emptied into the Yellow Sea. A sprinkling of worn sampans and

  small cargo boats dotted the horizon, fighting their way upriver toward

  Seoul with a supply of trade goods. Most of the boats clung to the

  south bank of the river, well away from the imaginary demarcation line

  with North Korea that ran down the river's center.

  "An incredible view, Mr. Kang," offered the tallest of the three

  politicians, a man named Won Ho.

  "I enjoy it, for the vista encompasses both our countries," Kang

  replied with intent. "Please be seated." He waved a hand as he spoke,

  then took a seat at the head of the table. A cadre of uniformed

  servants began shuttling in an array of fine wines and gourmet

  dishes,

  while the conversation among the seated men drifted toward politics..;

  A medley of spicy fragrances filled the air as they dined on

  daiji-bulgog^l or pork marinated in a spicy garlic sauce, accompanied

  by jachae guij, an assortment of marinated vegetables. Kang played the

  gregarious host to his guests until they had comfortably imbibed,

  then he applied the knife.

  "Gentlemen, it's high time we take seriously the effort to unify our

  two countries," he spoke slowly, for effect. "As a Korean, I know that

  we are one country in language, in culture, and in heart. As a

  businessman, I know how much stronger we could be economically in the