Dirk Pitt18-Black Wind

by Cussler, Clive

  "Odd choice of attack ship," Sandecker mused. "I take it they

  absconded with the biological bombs that had been recovered from the

  I-411?"

  "Ryan confirmed as much. They had nearly completed the recovery

  operation at the time of the attack. The Starfish was missing when the

  crew escaped from the hold, and Ryan believes it was hoisted onto the

  attack ship, perhaps with the submersible's missing pilots."

  "I'll call the State Department and request an immediate dragnet from

  the Japanese naval resources." Sandecker pulled an enormous Dominican

  Republic cigar out of his breast pocket and. lit the green stogie,

  sending a thick plume of smoke toward the ceiling. "Shouldn't be too

  difficult to peg a cable ship when she slips into port."

  "I've alerted Homeland Security, who is working along those same lines.

  They don't seem to believe the Japanese Red Army has the skill or

  technology to create a domestic threat with the weapons but are now

  looking at possible ties to Al Qaeda and a few other terrorist

  organizations."

  "I wouldn't bet against it," Sandecker replied drily as he rolled the

  cigar between his thumb and forefinger. "I'll brief the president this

  afternoon. Someone is going to damn well pay for destroying an

  American government vessel," he snarled, his eyes ablaze.

  The inhabitants of the conference room nodded in collective agreement.

  Though a large organization, there was a close-knit sense of family

  within the agency and an act of terror against fellow colleagues

  halfway around the world was still felt strongly by those at home.

  "We share your sentiments, Admiral," Gunn replied quietly.

  "By the way, the two crewmen that are missing?" Sandecker asked.

  Gunn swallowed hard. "Summer and Dirk Pitt. Presumed abducted with

  the Starfish"

  Sandecker stiffened in shock. "Good Lord, not them. Does their father

  know?"

  "Yes. He's in the Philippines with Al Giordino trying to contain an

  underwater environmental hazard. I spoke with him by satellite phone

  and he understands that we are doing everything we can right now."

  Sandecker leaned back in his leather chair and gazed at the cloud of

  blue cigar smoke drifting above his head. God have mercy on the fool

  that would harm that man's offspring, he thought.

  Seven thousand miles away, the blue catamaran ripped across the west

  coastal waters of Korea like a top fuel dragster running the traps.

  Summer and Dirk were nudged and rocked in their luxury confinement as

  the speedy yacht tore through the swells at almost 40 knots. A pair of

  Korean fishermen in a rickety sampan cursed vehemently as the cat

  stormed perilously close by, the powerful boat's wake washing waves

  over the sides of the tiny fishing boat.

  After two hours of hard running, the catamaran turned inland and slowed

  its speed as it threaded its way through the sprinkling of small

  islands that dotted the mouth of the Han River. The pilot maneuvered

  the boat upriver another hour until spotting the semi hidden channel

  that curled into Kang's Kyodongdo Island lair. Passing through the

  inlet that he knew was monitored by hidden video cameras, the pilot

  guided the catamaran across the cove to the floating dock at the base

  of the sheer-walled compound. Inching to a stop, the blue catamaran

  was tied up astern of Kang's gleaming white Benetti yacht.

  Dirk and Summer remained locked in their cabin as Tongju strode

  off the craft and rode the elevator up the cliff to Kang's private

  enclave. Kang sat in his cherrywood-paneled executive office with

  Kwan, studying the financial statements of a radio component

  manufacturer that he intended to acquire via hostile takeover. He

  looked up slowly when Tongju entered and bowed.

  "Captain Lee of the Baekje has sent word that your mission was a

  success," Kang stated through tight lips, offering no hint of

  satisfaction.

  Tongju nodded slightly. "We acquired the ordnance after it was

  salvaged by the American vessel. Ten of the devices were still intact

  and have been determined to be usable," he continued, neglecting to

  mention that Dirk had sabotaged the other two canisters.

  "More than a sufficient quantity to proceed with the operation," Kang

  replied.

  "The weapon scientists aboard the Baekje were most pleased. The

  devices were immediately transferred to the biological research

  laboratory upon our arrival at Inchon. The lab chief assured me that

  the necessary refinement and containment will be complete within

  forty-eight hours."

  "At which time I trust the Baekje's reconfiguration will be

  complete?"

  Tongju nodded in reply. "She will be ready to set sail on time."

  "Schedule is critical," Kang continued. "The mission must be achieved

  ahead of the National Assembly referendum vote."

  "As long as there is no delay with the ordnance, we will be ready,"

  Tongju assured him. "The shipyard workers had already made impressive

  progress by the time we departed the dock facility."

  "We cannot tolerate another miscalculation," Kang said coldly.

  Tongju squinted slightly, unsure of his boss's meaning. Ignoring the

  comment, he continued speaking.

  "I have brought two of the captives from the American vessel with me.

  The pilots who operated their submersible. One of them is the

  man responsible for the death of our two agents in America. I thought

  perhaps you might wish to entertain him personally," he said, placing a

  sinister emphasis on the word entertain.

  "Ah, yes, the two missing crew members from the NUMA ship."

  "Missing crew members?"

  Kwan stepped forward and thrust a news story gleaned from the Internet

  into Tongju's hands.

  "It is all over the news," Kwan said. "Research vessel sunk in East

  China Sea; all but two saved," he quoted from a headline in Chosun

  I/bo, Korea's largest newspaper.

  Tongju's face went pale but he didn't move a muscle. "That is

  impossible. We sank the vessel with the crew sealed in a storage hold.

  They could not have all escaped."

  "Escape they did," Kang said. "A passing freighter picked up the crew

  and took them to Japan. Did you not watch the ship go under?"

  Tongju shook his head. "We were anxious to return with the salvaged

  material at the earliest possible moment," he said quietly.

  "It is being reported that the ship suffered an accidental fire on

  board. Apparently, the Americans are afraid of publicizing yet another

  terrorist incident," Kwan said.

  "As well as revealing the true nature of their presence in the East

  China Sea," Kang added. "Perhaps the lack of media reporting will

  temper their investigation into the incident."

  "I am confident that we maintained our false identity. My assault team

  was of mixed ethnicity and only English or Japanese was spoken while on

  the American ship," Tongju replied.

  "Perhaps your failure to dispose of the crew was not a bad thing," Kang

  stated with a slight glare. "It will further embarrass the Japanese

  and keep the American inte
lligence effort focused on Japan. They will,

  of course, be searching for the Baekje. The sooner she can be put back

  to sea, the better."

  "I will provide a continuous update from the shipyard," Tongju replied.

  "And the two Americans?"

  Kang perused a leather-bound schedule book. "I am traveling to Seoul

  for an engagement with the minister of unification this evening and

  shall return tomorrow. Keep them alive until then."

  "I shall give them a last supper," Tongju replied without humor.

  Kang ignored the comment and stuck his nose back into a stack of

  financial documents. Taking the clue, the assassin turned and departed

  Kang's office without making a sound.

  A half mile from the Inchon enclosed dock where Baekje was undergoing

  its cosmetic refit, two men in a dingy pickup truck slowly circled a

  nondescript shipyard building. Empty pallets and rusting flatbed

  carriers littered the grounds around the windowless structure, which

  was marked by a faded kang shipping company sign perched over the main

  entrance. Dressed in worn coveralls and grease-stained baseball caps,

  the two men were part of a heavily armed undercover security team

  numbering two dozen strong who patrolled the supersecret facility

  around the clock. The dilapidated exterior of the building hid a

  high-tech engineering development center filled with the latest super

  computing technology. The main and upper floors were dedicated to

  developing satellite payloads for Kang's satellite communications

  business. A small team of crack engineers worked to incorporate

  concealed eavesdropping and reconnaissance capabilities into

  conventional telecommunication satellites that were sold for export and

  launched by other regional governments or commercial companies. Hidden

  in the basement, and heavily guarded, was a small microbiology

  laboratory whose very existence was known by only a handful of Kang

  employees. The small cadre of scientists who worked in the lab had

  mostly been smuggled in from North Korea. With their families still

  living in the northern provinces, and forceful patriotic mandates

  placed upon them, the microbiologists and immunologists had little

  choice in accepting the nature of their work with hazardous biological

  agents.

  The I-411's deadly bombs had been quietly transferred into the lab,

  where an ordnance expert had assisted the biologists in separating the

  powdery smallpox virus from the sixty-year-old compartmentalized aerial

  bombs. The viruses had been freeze-dried by the Japanese, allowing the

  pathogens to remain inert for storage and handling. The smallpox-laden

  bombs were designed to maintain their deadly efficacy for the duration

  of the submarine's voyage until hydrogenated upon deployment. Over

  sixty years later, their porcelain casings had repelled all destructive

  effects from decades of submersion. The aged bomb payloads were still

  every bit as potent as when they were loaded.

  Placing samples of the cream-colored powder into a bio safe container,

  the biologists carefully initiated a controlled reconstitution of the

  viruses using a sterile water-based diluent. Under a microscopic eye,

  the dormant, block-shaped microorganisms could be seen waking from

  their long slumber and bouncing off each other like bumper cars as they

  resumed their lethal state. Despite the long period of dormancy, only

  a small percentage of the viruses failed to rejuvenate.

  The research lab was run by a highly paid Ukrainian microbiologist

  named Sarghov. A former scientist with Biopreparat, the old Soviet

  Union civilian agency that fronted the republic's military biological

  weapons program, Sarghov had taken his knowledge of bio weapon genetic

  manipulation and sold his skills in the marketplace to the highest

  bidder. Though he never desired to leave his homeland, his stock as a

  budding scientific leader in the agency was tarnished when he was

  caught in bed with the wife of a politburo member. Fearing for his

  life,

  he made his way through Ukraine to Romania, where he hopped a Kang

  freighter in the Black Sea. A hefty bribe to the ship's captain led

  him to higher contacts in the company, where his scientific skills were

  recognized and soon put to illicit use.

  With ample resources, Sarghov quietly compiled a high-tech DNA research

  laboratory stocked with the equipment and tools necessary for a skilled

  bioengineer to splice, dice, isolate, or recombine the genetic material

  of one microorganism to another. In the confines of Sarghov's secret

  laboratory, a smorgasbord of dangerous bacterial and viral agents was

  littered about the facility, the seeds he cultivated to create a garden

  of death. But he still felt impotent. His stock was a commoner's

  cache of easily acquired agents, such as the hepatitis B virus and

  tuberculosis mycobacterium. Potentially lethal agents in their own

  right, they were nothing like the deadly Ebola, smallpox, and Marburg

  viruses he had worked with during his days at the Russian facility in

  Obolensk. Sarghov's feverish attempts at creating a knockout killer

  agent with the resources at hand had failed. He felt like a boxer with

  one hand tied behind his back. What he needed and desired was a truly

  lethal pathogen, one from the A-list.

  His gift to evil science came from an unexpected source. A North

  Korean agent in Tokyo had infiltrated a government records disposal

  center and intercepted a cache of classified Japanese documents.

  Expecting to find a bonanza of current Japanese security secrets, the

  agent's handlers in Pyongyang were angered to find that the records

  were old World War II classified documents. Included in the heist were

  reports relating to Imperial Army experiments with biological weapons,

  records that were to be destroyed for fear of embarrassing the

  government. A sharp intelligence analyst stumbled upon the Imperial

  Army's involvement with the final missions of the I-403 and I-411,

  however, and Sarghov was soon on his way to his own supply of Variola

  major.

  In the Frankenstein world of genetic engineering, biologists have found

  it a daunting task to create an entirely new organism from

  scratch. But manipulating existing microorganisms through deliberate

  mutation, then prompting their reproduction to useful quantities, has

  been an ongoing art since the seventies. Laboratory-formulated

  agricultural crops that are resistant to pestilence and drought have

  been a major societal benefit of such bioengineering, along with the

  more controversial creation of super developed livestock. But the dark

  side of genetic surgery has always been the potential creation of a new

  strain of virus or bacteria with unknown, and possibly catastrophic,

  consequences.

  For a man of his propensity, Sarghov was not content simply to

  regenerate the supply of smallpox. He had much more up his sleeve.

  With help from a Finnish research assistant, Sarghov acquired a sample

  of the HIV-1 virus, the most common source of acquired immune

  deficiency syndrome. Delving into the HIV-1 vira
l makeup, Sarghov

  synthesized a key genetic element of the horrifying AIDS virus. Taking

  his freshly reconstituted batch of smallpox virus, the scientist

  attempted to grow a new mutated bug, integrating the highly unstable

  HIV-1 virus. Boosted by the synthetic element that acted to stimulate

  recombination, mutant viruses were soon cultivated and then reproduced

  in mass. The result was a new microorganism that contained the

  attributes of both individual pathogens. Microbiologists sometimes

  refer to the process as a "chimera." Sarghov's chimera combined the

  highly contagious lethality of smallpox with the immunitive destroying

  abilities of HIV-1 into one deadly super virus

  Reproducing the mutant pathogen in large quantities from scratch was a

  time-consuming process despite the ferocity of the virus. Limited by

  Kang's schedule, Sarghov maximized the quantities as best he could,

  then freeze-dried the resulting mutant viruses much as the Japanese had

  years before. The crystallized super virus was then mixed into the

  larger stores of freeze-dried smallpox virus from the aerial bombs,

  creating a diversified toxic compound. The entire batch was processed

  and refined a second time with boosters that would accelerate the

  rejuvenation process.

  The now easily disseminated mixture was delicately packed into a series

  of lightweight tubular containers resembling the insert to a roll of

  paper towels, which were then stacked on a gurney and transported out

  of the lab. The packaged viral amalgamate was rolled upstairs to the

  satellite payload assembly bay, where a team of mechanical engineers