Dirk Pitt18-Black Wind

by Cussler, Clive

  hill. The whine of revving engines and squealing tires grew closer,

  punctuated by a popping sound Hatala recognized from his Navy days as

  gunfire. Finally, the cars broke free of the trees as they neared the

  terminal, and Hatala stared in astonishment.

  The big green Chrysler looked like a galloping dragon, complete with

  fire-breathing smoke and steam belching out of its grille. A

  black-haired man, hunched low in the seat, deftly kept the smoking

  behemoth on the road at speeds clearly too high for its means. Thirty

  feet behind, a sleek black Cadillac sedan followed in hot pursuit, a

  young Asian man dangling out the passenger window wildly firing an

  automatic weapon that did more damage to the trees bordering the road

  than to his intended target. To Hatala's complete horror, the green

  convertible spun into the ferry landing entrance and headed onto the

  pier.

  By all rights, the old Chrysler should have up and died long before. A

  withering rain of fire had plastered the car in lead, cutting through

  wires, hoses, and belts, in addition to pasting the body and interior

  with myriad holes. Burning oil mixed with radiator fluid spewed from

  the red-hot motor that was nearly drained of fluids. But with an

  apparent heart of its own, the old Chrysler was not quite ready to give

  up, offering one last gasp of power.

  "Dirk, where are we now?" Sarah asked, unable to see from her spot on

  the floor. A rackety sound of tires on wood told her they were no

  longer traveling on the highway.

  "We have a boat to catch," Dirk grimaced. "Hang on tight."

  He could see a man waving his arms wildly at the end of the pier, some

  fifty yards ahead. Beyond the pier's edge, he could detect a churning

  in the water from the ferry's propellers as the boat began to pull away

  from the dock. It was going to be close.

  Behind him, the Cadillac lost ground briefly, having nearly missed the turn when Dirk whipped onto the pier. The driver was doggedly"

  determined to stay on Dirk's tail and accelerated hard, oblivious to

  the shortening pier and departure of the ferry. The gunman, too, was

  engrossed with the chase, intent on putting a bullet into the obstinate

  driver who had somehow avoided his previous blasts.

  Dirk also kept his foot down hard on the accelerator, but for a

  different reason. He held his breath, hoping the Chrysler would hold

  together for just a few more seconds. Though the end of the pier was

  now just a few yards away, it seemed to take an eternity to reach it.

  Meanwhile, the ferry continued to inch farther into the sound.

  A pair of boys bound for a fishing excursion at the end of the pier ran

  scrambling behind a piling as the two cars tore by, their poles

  sacrificed to the speeding machines when they jumped for cover. To

  Dirk's surprise, the man at the end of the pier stopped waving and

  raised the orange-and-white traffic barrier, apparently realizing the

  futility of trying to stop the barreling mass of Detroit iron that was

  charging his way. As he roared by, Dirk nodded thanks at Hatala and

  threw him a jaunty wave. Hatala simply stared back, dumbfounded.

  The Chrysler's hefty V-8 engine was now knocking like a pounding

  sledgehammer, but the old beast hung on and gave Dirk every last ounce

  of energy it could muster. The big convertible stormed up the ramp at

  the end of the pier and burst into the air like a cannon shot. Dirk

  gripped the steering wheel hard and braced for the impact as he watched

  a forty-foot ribbon of blue water pass beneath the car. Screams filled

  the air as shocked passengers on the rear of the ferry scrambled to

  avoid the path of the green monstrosity hurtling through space toward

  them. The momentum of the car and the angle of the ramp sent the

  Chrysler sailing through the air in an almost picture-perfect arc

  before gravity took hold and pulled the nose of the car down fast. But

  they had cleared the open water and would plunge down onto the ferry.

  Just a few feet inboard on the open stern, the Chrysler's front wheels slammed down onto the deck, the tires immediately bursting from

  the force with a bang. A split second later, the rear wheels dropped

  down, smashing through a low railing just inches from the stern edge. A

  section of the handrail kicked up into a wheel well, where it became

  wedged as the full weight of the car crashed down. It proved to be a

  lifesaver. Rather than skidding wildly into the rows of cars parked on

  the auto deck, the wedged railing dug into the wooden deck like an

  anchor. The massive old car bounded twice, then skidded slowly to a

  stop just twenty feet from where it struck the deck, lightly smacking

  the pea green Volkswagen bus.

  The black Cadillac did not fare as well. Just a few seconds behind,

  its driver saw too late that the ferry had left the dock. Too panicked

  to try to stop, the driver kept his foot down on the accelerator and

  soared off the pier in tandem with the Chrysler. Only by now, the

  ferry had moved beyond its path.

  With the gunman screaming a bloodcurdling cry, the Cadillac soared

  gracefully into the sky before nosing hard into the stern of the

  ferryboat with a thunderous crash. The front bumper kissed the painted

  letters of the ferryboat's name, Issaquah, just above the waterline

  before the entire car crumpled like an accordion. A large spray of

  water flew up as the mangled wreckage of the car plopped into the water

  and sank to forty feet, carrying its crushed occupants to a watery

  grave.

  In the Chrysler, Dirk shook off the daze of the impact and assessed

  their injuries. He felt a sprained knee and sore hip on himself as he

  wiped away a flow of blood from his lower lip, gashed open on the

  steering wheel. But otherwise all parts seemed to be working. Sarah

  looked up from the floor in a twisted angle, where she forced a smile

  through a painful grimace.

  "I think my right leg is broken," she said calmly, " but otherwise I'm

  okay."

  Dirk lifted her out of the car and gently set her on the deck as a

  crowd of passengers crept in to offer assistance. In front of them,

  a

  door flung open on the VW bus and out popped its overage hippie driver,

  complete with ponytail and beer belly half-hidden under a tie-dyed

  Grateful Dead T-shirt. His eyes bulged as he surveyed the scene behind

  him. Smoke oozed from the smoldering wreckage of the Chrysler,

  tainting the air with the odor of burned oil and rubber. The car's

  metal skin was festooned with bullet holes from front to back, while

  broken glass and shreds of leather upholstery littered the interior.

  The front tires were splayed out from bursting on impact, while a metal

  guardrail poked out oddly from one of the rear wheel wells. A deep

  gash in the deck tailed back from the wreck like some sort of violent

  bread crumb trail. Dirk smiled weakly at the man as he wandered closer

  while surveying the scene.

  Shaking his head, the old hippie finally quipped, "Far out, man. I

  sure hope you have insurance."

  It took only a few hours for the authorities to commandeer a n
earby

  work barge and position it off the ferry landing. Its twenty-ton crane

  easily hoisted the crushed Cadillac from the bottom and dumped it on

  the greasy deck of the old barge. A paramedic crew carefully

  extricated the mashed bodies from the vehicle and transferred them to

  the county morgue. Their cause of death was cited simply as blunt

  injury from motor vehicle accident.

  At NUMA's request, the FBI interceded and opened a federal

  investigation into the incident. Initial attempts to identify the

  gunmen came up empty when no forms of ID were found on the bodies, and

  the Cadillac was discovered to be a stolen rental car. Immigration

  finally ascertained that the men were Japanese nationals who had

  entered the country illegally through Canada.

  At the Seattle/ King County morgue, the chief coroner shook his head in

  irritation as yet another investigator arrived to examine the bodies.

  "Can't get any work done around here as long as we're holding these

  so-called Japanese gangsters," he grumbled to an underling, as yet

  another pair of Feds left the storage facility.

  The assistant medical examiner, an ex-Army doctor who had once been

  stationed in Seoul for a year, nodded in agreement.

  "We might as well install a revolving door on the ice room," he

  joked.

  "I'll just be happy when the paperwork arrives to release them for

  transport back to Japan."

  "I hope that's their right home," the assistant pathologist said,

  slowly sliding the bodies back into a refrigerated locker. "If you ask

  me, I still say they look like a couple of Koreans."

  After twelve hours at Sarah's hospital bedside, Dirk finally convinced the doctors at Seattle's Swedish Providence Medical Center to

  release Sarah the following morning. Though a broken leg didn't

  normally warrant an overnight stay, the cautious medical staff was

  concerned about trauma from the accident and kept her there for

  observation. She was fortunate in that the break to her tibia, or

  shin-bone, did not require any rods or screws to align. The doctors

  wrapped her leg in a heavy plaster cast and pumped her full of

  painkillers, then signed her release.

  "Guess I can't take you dancing anytime soon," Dirk joked as he pushed

  her out the hospital exit in a wheelchair.

  "Not unless you want a black-and-blue foot," she replied, grimacing at

  the heavy cast around her lower leg.

  Despite insisting that she was well enough to work, Dirk took Sarah

  home to her stylish apartment in Seattle's Capitol Hill district.

  Gently assisting her to a leather couch, he propped her broken leg up on

  a large pillow.

  "Afraid I've been called back to Washington," he said, stroking her

  silky hair as she adjusted the pillows behind her back. "Have to leave

  tonight. I'll make sure Sandy checks in on you."

  "I probably won't be able to keep her away," she grinned. "But what

  about the sick crew members of the Deep Endeavor? We need to find out

  if they are all right," she said, struggling to rise from the couch.

  The drugs made her feel as if her mind and body were enshrouded in a

  coat of honey and she fought to remain lucid against the overwhelming

  desire to sleep.

  "Okay," he said, gently pushing her back down and bringing a portable

  phone to her. "You get one phone call, then it's lights out for

  you."

  As she called the Public Health Lab, he checked to see that her kitchen

  was stocked with groceries. Peering into a scantly filled

  refrigerator, he idly wondered why unmarried women always seemed to

  have less food in the house than the single men he knew.

  "Great news," she called in a slurred voice after hanging up the phone.

  "The tests on the sick crewmen all came back negative. No sign of the

  smallpox virus."

  "That is great news," Dirk said, returning to her side. "I'll let

  Captain Burch know before I leave for the airport."

  "When will I see you again?" she asked, squeezing his hand.

  "Just a quick trip to headquarters. I'll be back before you know

  it."

  "You better," she replied, her eyelids drooping low. Dirk leaned over

  and brushed her hair aside, then kissed her gently on the forehead. As

  he stood up, he could see that she had already fallen asleep.

  He slept soundly on his cross-country red-eye flight, popping awake well

  rested as the wheels of the NUMA jet touched down at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport just after eight in the

  morning. An agency car was left waiting for him at the government

  terminal, and he drove himself out of the parking lot under a light

  drizzle. As he exited the airport, he cast a long glance toward a

  dilapidated-looking hangar situated off one of the runways. Though his

  father was out of the country, he still had the urge to visit the old

  man's hideout and tinker with one of his many antique autos stored

  there. Business before pleasure, he told himself, and wheeled the

  loaner car onto the highway.

  Following the George Washington Memorial Parkway out of the airport, he

  drove north, passing the Pentagon on his left as he followed the banks

  of the Potomac River. A short distance later, he turned off the

  highway and angled toward a towering green glass building that housed

  the NUMA headquarters. Passing through an employee security gate, he

  pulled into an underground garage and parked. Opening the car trunk,

  he hoisted a large duffel bag over his shoulder, then rode the

  employees' elevator to the tenth floor, where the doors opened onto an

  elaborate maze of quietly humming computer hardware.

  Established with a budget that would make a third world dictator

  whimper, the NUMA Ocean Data Center computer network was a marvel of

  state-of-the-art computer processing. Buried within its massive data

  storage banks was the finest collection of oceanographic resources in

  the world. Real-time inputs of weather, current, temperature, and bio

  diversity measurements were collected via satellite from hundreds of

  remote sea sites from around the world, giving a global snapshot of

  ocean conditions and trends at any given moment. Links to the leading

  research universities provided data on current investigations in

  geology, marine biology, and undersea flora and fauna research, as well

  as engineering and technology. NUMA's own historical reference library

  contained literally millions of data sources and was a constant

  reservoir of information for research institutes the world over.

  Dirk found the maestro behind the vast computer network, sitting behind

  a horseshoe console munching a bear claw with one hand while tapping a

  keyboard with the other. To a stranger, Hiram Yaeger resembled a

  groupie from a Bob Dylan concert. His lean body was clad in faded

  Levi's and matching jeans jacket over a white T-shirt, complemented by

  a pair of scuffed cowboy boots on his feet. With his long gray hair

  tied in a ponytail, his appearance belied the fact that he lived in a

  high-end Maryland suburb with an ex-model wife and drove a BMW 7

  Series. He caught sight of Dirk over a pair of granny glasses
and

  smiled in greeting.

  "Well, the young Mr. Pitt," he grinned warmly.

  "Hiram, how are you?"

  "Not having smashed my car, nor destroyed an agency helicopter, I'd

  have to say I'm doing quite well," he joked. "By the way, has our

  esteemed director been advised of the loss of one of NUMA's flying

  assets?"

  "Yes. Fortunately, with Dad and Al still over in the Philippines the

  bite was tempered somewhat."

  "They've had their hands full with a toxic spill they ran across near

  Mindanao, so your timing was good," Yaeger said. "So tell-me, to what

  do I owe the pleasure of your visit?"

  "Well," Dirk hesitated, "it's your daughters. I would like to go out

  with them."

  The color drained from Yaeger's thin boyish face for a moment as he

  took Dirk's proposal seriously. Yaeger's twin daughters, finishing

  their last year of private high school, were his pride and joy. For

  seventeen years, he had successfully scared away any male suitors who

  had the remotest inkling of touching his girls. God forbid the

  giddiness they'd show over the rugged and charismatic Dirk.

  "You so much as mention their names around me and I'll have you off the

  payroll with a ruined credit rating that will take five lifetimes to

  fix' Yaeger threatened.

  It was Dirk's turn to laugh, chuckling loudly at Yaeger's vulnerable

  soft spot. The computer genius softened and grinned as well at Dirk's

  idle ploy.

  "Okay, the girls are off-limits. But what I really want is a little

  time with you and Max before my meeting with Rudi later this

  morning."

  "Now, that I can approve," Yaeger replied with a firm nod of the head.