Dirk Pitt18-Black Wind

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Dirk Pitt18-Black Wind Page 19

by Cussler, Clive


  The bear claw now demolished, he applied both hands in a finger dance

  over the keyboard to conjure up his bionic confidante, Max.

  No fellow computer programmer, Max was an artificial intelligence

  system with a virtual interface in the form of a holographic image. The

  brainchild of Yaeger to aid in researching voluminous databases, he had

  cleverly modeled the visual interface after his wife, Elsie, adding a

  sensual voice and saucy personality. On a platform opposite the

  horseshoe console, an attractive woman with auburn hair and topaz eyes

  suddenly appeared. She was dressed in a skimpy halter top that

  revealed her navel and a very short leather skirt.

  "Good morning, gentlemen," the three-dimensional image murmured.

  "Hi, Max. You remember the younger Dirk Pitt?"

  "Of course. Nice to see you again, Dirk."

  "You're looking good, Max."

  "I'd look better if Hiram would stop dressing me in Britney Spears

  outfits," she replied with disdain, rolling her hands down her body.

  "All right. Tomorrow it will be Prada," Yaeger promised.

  "Thank you."

  "Dirk, what is it that you'd like to ask Max?" Yaeger prompted.

  "Max, what can you tell me about the Japanese efforts at chemical and

  biological warfare during World War Two?" Dirk asked, turning

  serious.

  Max hesitated for a moment as the question generated a massive search

  through thousands of databases. Not just limiting it to oceanographic

  resources, Yaeger had wired the NUMA network into a diverse multitude

  of government and public information resources, ranging from the

  Library of Congress to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Sifting

  through the mass of information, Max consolidated the data points into

  a concisely summarized reply.

  "The Japanese military conducted extensive research and experimentation

  into chemical and biological weaponry both during and preceding World

  War Two. Primary research and deployment occurred in Manchuria, under

  the direction of the occupying Japanese Imperial Army after they had

  seized control of northeast China in 1931. Numerous facilities were

  constructed throughout the region as test centers, under the guise of

  lumber mills or other false fronts. Inside the facilities, Chinese

  captives were subject to a wide variety of human experiments with germ

  and chemical compounds. The Qiqihar facility, under the command of

  Army Unit 516, was the largest Japanese chemical weapons research and

  test site, although chemical weapons manufacture actually took place on

  the Japanese mainland. Changchun, under Army Unit 100, and the

  sprawling Ping Fan facility, under my Unit 731, were the major

  biological warfare research and test centers. The facilities were in

  fact large prisons, where local criminals and derelicts were sent and

  used as test subjects, though few of the captives would survive their

  incarceration."

  "I've read about Unit 731," Dirk commented. "Some of their experiments

  made the Nazis look like Boy Scouts."

  "Allegations of inhuman experiments performed by the Japanese,

  particularly in Unit 731, are nearly endless. Chinese prisoners, and

  even some Allied prisoners of war, were routinely injected with an

  assortment of deadly pathogens, as their captors sought to determine

  the appropriate lethal dosage. Biological bombs were dropped on

  prisoners staked to the ground in order to test delivery systems. Many

  experiments took place outside the walls of the facilities. Typhoid

  bacilli germs were intentionally released into local village wells,

  resulting in widespread outbreaks of fever and death. Rats carrying

  plague-infected fleas were released in congested urban areas as a test

  of the speed and ferocity of infection. Children were even considered

  an acceptable target. In one experiment, local village children were

  given

  chocolates filled with anthrax, which they gratefully devoured, with

  horrifying side effects."

  "That's revolting," Yaeger said, shaking his head. "I hope the

  perpetrators paid for their crimes."

  "For the most part, they did not," Max continued. "Nearly to a man,

  those in charge of the chemical and biological army units avoided

  prosecution as war criminals. The Japanese destroyed much of the

  documentation, and the camps themselves, before their surrender.

  American intelligence forces, unaware of the extent of horrors, or, in

  some cases, seeking to obtain the results of the ghastly experiments,

  looked the other way at the atrocities. Many of the Imperial Army

  medical professionals who worked in the death camps went on to become

  respected business leaders in Japan's postwar pharmaceutical

  industry."

  "With blood on their hands," Dirk muttered.

  "No one knows for sure, but experts estimate that at least two hundred

  thousand Chinese died as a result of Japanese chemical and biological

  warfare activity during the thirties and forties. A large percentage

  of the casualties were innocent civilians. It was a wartime tragedy

  that has only recently received much attention from historians and

  scholars."

  "Man's inhumanity to man never ceases to amaze," Yaeger said

  solemnly.

  "Max, exactly what pathogens and chemicals did the Japanese work with?"

  Dirk asked.

  "It might be easier to ask which agents they didn't experiment with.

  Their known research in bacteria and viruses ranged from anthrax,

  cholera, and bubonic plague to glanders, smallpox, and typhus, with

  experiments conducted in pretty much everything else in between. Among

  the chemical agents employed in weaponry were phosgene, hydrogen

  cyanide, sulfur mustard, and lewisite. It is unknown how much was

  actually deployed in the field, again due to the fact that the Japanese

  destroyed most of their records as they retreated from China at the end

  of the war."

  "How would these agents have been used on the battlefield?"

  "Chemical agents, possessing a long shelf life, are perfectly suitable

  for munitions. The Japanese manufactured a large quantity of chemical

  munitions, mostly in the form of grenades, mortars, and a wide range of

  artillery shells. Thousands of these weapons were even left behind in

  Manchuria at the war's end. The Japanese biological delivery systems

  were less successful due to the sensitive nature of the arming agents.

  Development of a practical biological artillery shell proved difficult,

  so much of the Japanese effort at fabricating the release of biological

  agents was focused on aerial bombs. Known records seem to indicate

  that the Japanese scientists were never completely satisfied with the

  effectiveness of the bio bombs they developed."

  "Max, are you aware of the use of porcelain as a bomb-casing material

  for these chemical or biological agents?"

  "Why, yes, as a matter of fact. Steel bombs generated excessive heat

  upon explosion that would destroy the biological pathogens, so the

  Japanese turned to ceramics. It is known that a variety of porcelain

  bomb canisters were tested in China as aerial del
ivery systems for the

  biological agents."

  Dirk felt a lump in his stomach. The I-403 had indeed been on a

  mission of death with its biological bombs back in 1945. Fortuitously,

  the submarine had been sunk, but was that, in fact, the last of its

  failed mission?

  Yaeger broke his concentration. "Max, this is all new history to me. I

  had no idea the Japanese actually used chemical and biological weapons

  in battle. Were they ever employed outside of China, against American

  forces?"

  "The Japanese deployment of chemical and biological weapons was

  primarily restricted to the Chinese theater of war. Limited instances

  of their usage were also reported in Burma, Thailand, and Malaysia. My

  data sources show no recorded use of biochemical agents in battle with

  Western Allied forces, perhaps due to Japanese

  fear of reprisal. It is suspected that chemical weapons would have

  been employed in defense of the homeland, had an invasion of Japan been

  necessary. Of course, your father's discovery proves that chemical

  munitions were to be stockpiled in the Philippines for possible

  deployment in defense of the islands."

  "My father's discovery?" Dirk asked. "I don't understand."

  "I'm sorry, Dirk, let me explain. I received a toxin assessment from

  the Mariana Explorer taken from an ordnance sample recovered by | your

  father and Al Giordino."

  "You've completed your database search on the arsenic sample already? I

  thought you said you wouldn't have that completed until after lunch,"

  Yaeger asked the hologram.

  "Sometimes, I can just be brutally efficient," she replied, throwing

  her nose in the air.

  "What's the connection?" Dirk asked, still confused. "Your father and

  Al traced a toxic arsenic leak to an old cargo ship that apparently

  sank on a coral reef near Mindanao during World War Two. The arsenic

  was leaking from a shipment of artillery shells carried in the ship's

  hold," Yaeger explained.

  "One-hundred-five-millimeter shells, to be precise," Max added.

  "Ammunition for a common artillery gun used by the Japanese Imperial

  Army. Only the contents weren't arsenic, per se." "What did you

  find?" Yaeger asked.

  "The actual contents were a mixture of sulfur mustard and lewisite. A

  popular chemical munitions concentrate from the thirties, it acts as a

  fatal blistering agent when released as a gas. Lewisite is an arsenic

  derivative, which accounts for the toxic readings found in the

  Philippines. The Japanese produced thousands of mustard lewisite

  shells in Manchuria, some of which were deployed against the Chinese.

  Some of these old buried chemical munitions are still being dug up

  today.

  "Was the Japanese Navy connected with the deployment of these weapons?"

  Dirk asked.

  "The Japanese Imperial Navy was actively involved with chemical weapons

  production at its Sagami Naval Yard, and was believed to have had four

  additional storage arsenals at Kure, Yokosuka, Hiroshima, and Sasebo.

  But the Navy possessed only a fraction of the estimated 1.7 million

  chemical bombs and shells produced during the war, and no records

  indicate they were ever used in any naval engagements. The biological

  weapons research was funded through the Imperial Army and, as I

  mentioned, centered in occupied China. A primary conduit for the

  research activity was the Army Medical School in Tokyo. It is unknown

  whether the Navy had any involvement through the medical school, as the

  college was destroyed by wartime bombing in 1945."

  "So no wartime records exist that show chemical or biological weapons

  were ever assigned onboard Navy vessels?"

  "None that were publicly released," Max said, shaking her holographic

  head. "The bulk of the captured Japanese wartime records, including

  those of the Navy Ministry, were consigned to the National Archives. As

  a gesture of goodwill, most of the documents were later returned to the

  Japanese government. Only a fraction of the records were copied,

  however, and even a smaller portion have ever been translated."

  "Max, I'd like to explore the Naval Ministry records for information on

  the mission of a particular Japanese submarine, the I-403. Can you

  determine whether these records might still exist?"

  "I'm sorry, Dirk, but I don't have access to that portion of the

  National Archives' data records."

  Dirk turned to Yaeger with an arched brow and gave him a long, knowing

  look.

  "The National Archives, eh? Well, that should be a lot less dangerous

  than tapping into Langley," Yaeger acceded with a shrug.

  "That's the old Silicon Valley hacker I know and love," Dirk replied

  with a laugh.

  "Give me a couple of hours and I'll see what I can do."

  "Max," Dirk said, looking at the transparent woman in the eye, thank

  you for the information."

  "My pleasure, Dirk," she replied seductively. "I'm happy to be at your

  service any time."

  Then, in an instant, she vanished. Yaeger already had his nose against

  a computer monitor, fingers flying over a keyboard, completely

  engrossed in his subversive mission at hand.

  At promptly ten o'clock, Dirk entered a plush executive conference

  room, still carrying the large duffel bag over his shoulder. Thick

  azure carpet under his feet complemented the dark cherrywood conference

  table and matching wood paneling on the walls, which were dotted with

  ancient oil paintings of American Revolutionary warships. A thick pane

  of glass stretched the length of one wall, offering a bird's-eye view

  of the Potomac River and the Washington Mall across the water. Seated

  at the table, two stone-faced men in dark suits listened attentively as

  a diminutive man in horn-rimmed glasses discussed the Deep Endeavor's

  recent events in the Aleutian Islands. Rudi Gunn stopped in

  mid-sentence and popped to his feet as Dirk entered the room.

  "Dirk, good of you to return to Washington so quickly," he greeted

  warmly, his bright blue eyes beaming through the thick pair of

  eyeglasses. "Glad to see your ferry landing injuries were minor," he

  added, eyeing Dirk's swollen lip and bandaged cheek.

  "My companion broke her leg, but I managed to escape with just a fat

  lip. We fared a little better than the other guys," he said with a

  smirk, "whoever they were. It's good to see you again, Rudi," he

  added, shaking the hand of NUMA's longtime assistant director.

  Gunn escorted him over and introduced him to the other two men.

  "Dirk, this is Jim Webster, Department of Homeland Security special

  assistant, Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection," he

  said, waving a hand toward a pale-skinned man with cropped blond hair,

  "and Rob Jost, assistant director of Maritime and Land Security)

  Transportation Security Administration, under DHS." A rotund,

  bearish-looking man with a flush red nose nodded at Dirk without

  smiling "We were discussing Captain Burch's report of your rescue of

  the

  CDC team on Yunaska Island," Gunn continued.

  "A fortunate thing we hap
pened to be in the area. I'm just sorry we

  weren't able to reach the two Coast Guardsmen in time."

  "Given the apparently high levels of toxins that were released near the

  station, they really didn't have much of a chance from the beginning,"

  Webster said.

  "You confirmed that they died from cyanide poisoning?" Dirk asked.

  "Yes. How did you know? That information hasn't been made public."

  "We recovered a dead sea lion from the island, which a CDC team in

  Seattle examined after we returned. They found that it had been killed

  by cyanide inhalation."

  "That is consistent with the autopsy reports for the two Coast

  Guardsmen."

  "Have you uncovered any information on the boat that fired at us, and

  presumably released the cyanide?"

  After an uncomfortable pause, Webster replied, "No additional

  information has been obtained. Unfortunately, the description provided

  matches a thousand other fishing boats of its kind. It is not believed

  to have been a local vessel, and we are now working with the Japanese

  authorities to investigate leads in their country."

  "So you believe there is a Japanese connection. Any ideas on why

  someone would launch a chemical attack on a remote weather station in

  the Aleutians?"

  "Mr. Pitt," Jost interrupted, "did you know the men who tried to kill

  you in Seattle?"

  "Never saw them before. They appeared to be semiprofessionals, more

  than just a pair of hired street hoods."

 

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