“Dirk, Summer, you remember Jim Webster from Homeland Security. This is Special Agent Peterson and Special Agent Burroughs, with the FBI's Counterterrorism Division,” Gunn said, motioning a hand toward the two men on the couch. “They've met with Bob Morgan already and are very interested to know what happened to you after the Sea Rover was sunk.”
Dirk and Summer settled into a pair of wingback chairs and proceeded to describe the entire course of events, from their imprisonment on board the Baekje to their escape on the Chinese junk. Summer was surprised to note that three hours rolled by on an antique ship's clock mounted on the wall by the time they finished their saga. The homeland security administrator, she noted, appeared to turn whiter shades of pale as their report progressed.
“I just can't believe it,” he finally muttered. “Every shred of evidence we had pointed to a Japanese conspiracy. Our whole investigative focus has been centered on Japan,” he said, shaking his head.
“A well-designed deception,” Dirk stated. “Kang is a powerful man with considerable resources at his disposal. His means and abilities should not be underestimated.”
“You are certain he aims to target the United States with a biological attack?” asked Peterson.
“That's what he insinuated and I don't believe he was bluffing. The incident in the Aleutians would seem to have been a test application of their technology to disperse a bio weapon into the air. Only now they have boosted the strength of their smallpox virus to a much more virulent form.”
“Not unlike stories I've heard that the Russians may have created a vaccine-resistant strain of smallpox back in the nineties,” Gunn added.
“Only this one's a chimera. A deadly combination of more than one virus that takes on the lethal elements of each,” Summer said.
“If the strain is immune to our vaccines, an outbreak could kill millions,” Peterson muttered, shaking his head. The room fell silent for a moment as the occupants considered the horrifying prospect.
“The attack in the Aleutian Islands proves that they have the means to disperse the virus. The question becomes, where would they target a strike?” Gunn asked.
“If we can stop them before they have the chance to strike, then it doesn't matter. We should be raiding Kang's palace, and his shipyard, and his other sham businesses, and we should be raiding them right now,” Summer said, slapping a hand on her leg for emphasis.
“She's right,” Dirk said. “For all we know, the weapons are still on board the vessel at the Inchon Shipyard and the story can end there.”
“We'll need to assemble more evidence,” the homeland security man said flatly. “The Korean authorities will have to be convinced of the risk before we can assemble a joint investigative force.”
Gunn quietly cleared his throat. “We may be on the verge of providing the necessary evidence,” he said as all eyes shifted his way. “Dirk and Summer had the foresight to contact Navy Special Forces before leaving Korea and briefed them on Kang's enclosed dock facility at Inchon.”
“We couldn't authorize them to act, but a well-placed call by Rudi got them to at least listen to what we had to say,” Summer grinned toward Gunn.
“It's well beyond that now,” Gunn explained. “After you and Dirk departed Osan, we formally requested an underwater special ops reconnaissance mission. Vice President Sandecker went out on a limb to obtain executive approval in hopes we'll be able to locate a smoking gun. Unfortunately, with the ruckus over our military deployment in Korea it's a sensitive time to be nosing around our ally's backyard.”
“All they need to do is snap a picture of the Baekje sitting at Kang's dock and we've got proof positive,” Dirk said.
“That would certainly boost our case. When are they going in?” Webster asked.
Gunn looked at his watch, then mentally calculated the fourteen-hour time difference between Washington and Seoul. “The team will be deployed in about two hours. We should know something early this evening.”
Webster silently gathered his papers, then stood up. “I'll be back after dinner for a full debriefing,” he grumbled, then made his way toward the door. As he left the room, the others could hear just a single word being muttered repeatedly from his lips as he vanished down the hall: “Korea.”
Commander Bruce McCasland looked up at the Korean night sky and grimaced. A heavy bank of low rain clouds had drifted in over Inchon, obscuring the earlier clear skies. With the low clouds came illumination, the optical boomerang of light waves from thousands of the port city's streetlamps, residences, and billboards. Refracting off the clouds, the lights brightened the midnight hour with a fuzzy radiance. For a man whose livelihood depended on stealth, the dark of night was his best friend, the arrival of clouds a curse. Perhaps it will rain, he thought hopefully, which would improve their cover. But the dark clouds silently rolled by, holding their moisture with taunting stubbornness.
The Navy SEAL from Bend, Oregon, hunched back down in the rickety sampan and glanced at the three men lying low under the gunwale besides him. Like McCasland, they were clad in black underwater wet suits, with matching fins, mask, and backpack. As their mission was one of reconnaissance, they were armed for only minimal close quarters combat, each carrying a compact Heckler & Koch MP5K 9mm submachine gun. Clipped to their vests were an assorted mix of miniature still and video cameras, as well as a pair of night vision goggles.
The weathered boat putted past the commercial docks of Inchon, trailing a pall of blue smoke from its sputtering outboard motor. To the casual eye, the sampan appeared like a thousand others in the region used by merchants and tradesmen up and down the coastal Korean waters as a common mode of transport. Hidden beneath its aged-appearing exterior, however, was a fiberglass-hulled assault craft. With a high-speed inboard motor, the covert boat was specially built to launch and retrieve small teams of underwater special forces.
Meandering through the quiet north corner of the harbor, the sampan approached within two hundred meters of the Kang Marine Services entry channel. Exactly on cue, the twenty-two-foot boat's motor sputtered and coughed several times, then died. Two SEALs, disguised as a pair of derelict fishermen, began swearing loudly at each other in Korean. While one of the men tugged at the outboard motor to restart it, the other made a loud show of grabbing an oar and splashing it in the water in a clumsy attempt to row them toward shore.
McCasland peered over the gunwale with a pair of night vision binoculars trained on the sentry post at the mouth of the channel. Two men looked back from the interior of their guard hut but made no move toward a black speedboat tied up a few feet away. Satisfied the guards were too lazy to investigate further, he called quietly to the three men beside him.
“In the water. Now.”
With the gracefulness of a Persian cat leaping from a settee, the three men slipped quietly over the side and into the water with barely a gurgle. McCasland adjusted his faceplate, gave a thumbs-up to the two “fishermen,” then followed the frogmen over the side. Having grown hot in the boat wearing the insulated wet suit, he was refreshed by the cool water as it seeped against his skin. Clearing his ears, he submerged to a depth of twenty feet, then leveled off, peering around into the black gloomy murk. The dank polluted harbor water offered only a few feet of visibility, which fell to zero at night without a flashlight. McCasland ignored the blind diving conditions and spoke into a wireless underwater communication system attached to his face mask.
“Audio and nav check,” he barked.
“Bravo here. Nav confirmed. Out,” came one voice.
“Charlie here. Nav confirmed. Out,” followed a second voice, this one with a slight Georgia twang.
“Delta here. Nav confirmed. Out,” the third diver's voice copied.
“Roger, stand by,” McCasland replied.
Above them, the two SEALs in the sampan had beached the boat next to a battered and abandoned pier within sight of Kang's security men. Making a show of repairing the boat, the two men clanged tools togethe
r and cursed loudly as they pretended to fumble with the motor while the men in the water carried out their mission.
Below the surface, McCasland activated his Miniature Underwater GPS Receiver (MUGR), or “Mugger” as it was nicknamed. No larger than a Palm Pilot, the small device contained a navigation system that was calibrated by signals from the GPS satellite system. McCasland briefly kicked up to a depth of ten feet, where the underwater receiver could pick up the GPS signal and establish a fixed base point. A muted green display screen popped on, displaying an animated trail that zigzagged through and around a series of obstacles. Based on aerial survey photographs and the description provided by Dirk and Summer, McCasland had programmed a series of GPS way points into the Mugger. The aggregate points created a path to the covered dock entrance they could follow while completely submerged. All four divers held one of the devices, which also showed one another's relative position with a tiny flashing light. Swimming in complete darkness, they could follow the path to the covered dock while staying within just a few feet of one another.
“Okay, let's move,” he spoke into his faceplate after descending again.
With a deep thrust of his fins, McCasland kicked forward into the inky water, his eyes glued to the electronic compass and depth gauge, which he ensured never wavered from the twenty-foot mark. Reaching the entrance to the private ship channel, he turned and swam into the narrow inlet, passing almost directly beneath the security guards' speedboat, which bobbed on the surface well above him. Over McCasland's shoulder, the three other SEALs followed in a triangular pattern a few feet behind.
Day or night, the SEAL divers would have been nearly impossible to detect due to their use of rebreathers. Forgoing the standard dive tank of compressed air, which generates telltale exhaust bubbles visible on the surface, the Navy divers utilized a Carleton Technologies VIPER system for their air supply. Embedded within a sleek-looking backpack, the VIPER rebreather provided pure oxygen to the divers that was recirculated through a chemical scrubber, which removed harmful carbon dioxide while dispelling only a minute amount of exhaust. The streamlined system could enable the divers to remain underwater for up to four hours should the need arise. But with no visible exhaust bubbles rising to the surface, their whereabouts were safely concealed from the naked eye.
Following the Mugger's imaginary trail, the four divers swam through the winding inlet, kicking through the black water until they approached the entrance to the enclosed dock. The quarter-mile submerged swim would have exhausted most sport divers, but years of demanding physical training made it seem like crossing the street to the hardened SEALs. Their heartbeats thumped just above resting as they regrouped in front of the massive door to the enclosed dock. McCasland then swam in a circular pattern until his hands found a pylon that supported one side of the entrance. Following the pylon up, he ascended slowly until finding the lower edge of the sliding door, which hung three feet beneath the water's surface. Confident he was at the proper location, he descended again to the depth of the other divers.
“Proceed with preliminary recon. Regroup this position in three-zero. Out.”
From this point on, each diver had a different trail to follow inside the covered dockyard. Dirk and Summer had drawn a detailed map of the dock layout from memory, which was used to establish a different reconnaissance point for each diver. McCasland had the farthest and most dangerous assignment, to swim to the land's-end side of the dockyard for a frontal view of the facility. Two other divers would reconnoiter the main dock to verify and film the Baekje, while the fourth diver would stand by as backup near the entrance door.
The bright overhead lights of the hangar illuminated the upper water shallows, casting a dark shadow from the dock's supporting concrete pilings. McCasland found that at a depth of fifteen feet, he could just make out the dark outline of the pilings in the water ahead of him. He held the Mugger to his chest and kicked harder, using his vision to guide him quickly down the length of the dock. After passing dozens of pilings, a solid wall of concrete suddenly rose up before him and he knew that he had reached the end of the pier. Resting against a pylon, he readied a digital camcorder and prepared to surface, fighting back an uneasy feeling of defeat. He had felt a strange void while swimming beneath the pier, sensing an absence of the mass he thought he should feel nearby even though it was out of sight.
Quietly breaking the water's surface beneath the edge of the dock, his eyes confirmed the empty feeling in his stomach. The giant covered dockyard was bare. There was no four-hundred-foot cable ship tied up in front of him. In fact, the main dock was completely empty. McCasland silently scanned the facility with his camera, finding only one vessel in the entire structure, a beat-up tugboat perched on a dry-dock. Nearby, a group of bored dockworkers on the graveyard shift were chasing each other around in a forklift, the only signs of life in the massive structure.
His filming complete, McCasland ducked underwater and kicked back along the dock toward the main entrance door. Reaching the support pylon, he pulled up the Mugger and saw that the other three divers had already returned and were waiting in the surrounding waters a few feet away.
“Mission complete,” he said curtly, then swam off into the inlet.
The four SEALs made their way back to the beached sampan and silently crawled inside. The mock fishermen suddenly found the cure to the ailing motor and restarted the outboard engine. With more vocal cursing, they cruised past Kang's inlet and motored off into the night.
Once out of sight, McCasland sat up and took off his faceplate, taking a breath full of the dank port air while staring at the twinkling waterfront lights. A drop of rain struck him on the face, then another and another. Shaking his head, he sat silently while a healthy deluge opened up from the skies on the frustrated commando.
Webster, Peterson, and Burroughs returned to the NUMA headquarters building at exactly six o'clock and found a subdued scene when they arrived at Gunn's office. The results of the SEAL team's reconnaissance mission had just been received, and Gunn, Dirk, and Summer sat morosely discussing the report.
“Disappointing news, I'm afraid,” Gunn said. “The cable ship wasn't there.”
“How could it come and go without being seen?” Webster wondered. “We've got Interpol and customs authorities on the lookout for that vessel all throughout Asia Pacific.”
“Perhaps a few of them are on Kang's payroll,” Summer said.
Webster brushed aside the suggestion. “We're certain the reconnaissance team didn't misidentify anything?”
“There apparently was nothing in the enclosed dock to see. A video feed of the surveillance is being sent by satellite right now. We can take a look for ourselves on the admiral's viewing monitor,” Gunn replied.
For the second time that day, he led a procession to the admiral's former office. As he approached the corner suite, he was surprised to hear a familiar laugh emanating from the office as a hazy cloud of smoke drifted out the open door.
Entering the threshold, Gunn was shocked to find Al Giordino sitting on the couch. With a wild wave of his dark curly hair askew, the newly appointed NUMA director of underwater technology sat reclining with his legs up on the coffee table, a stubby cigar dangling from his lips. He was dressed in a worn NUMA jumpsuit and looked like he just stepped off a boat.
“Rudi, my boy, here flogging the crew a little late tonight, aren't we?” Giordino asked before blowing a puff of smoke from the cigar skyward.
“Somebody's got to mind the store while you're out basking on a warm tropical beach.”
Dirk and Summer grinned as they entered the room and spotted Giordino, who was like a favorite uncle to them. They didn't immediately see their father, who stood at the opposite end of the office gazing at the lights across the Potomac. His six-foot-three frame stood tall against the window, having lost little of its younger muscular leanness. A touch of gray at the temples and a few slight wrinkles around the eyes hinted at his age. The weathered, tan face of Dirk Pitt
, the legendary special projects director and now head of NUMA, broke into a broad grin at the sight of his children.
“Dirk, Summer,” he said, his sparkling green eyes glowing with warmth as he threw his arms around his two kids.
“Dad, we thought you and Al were still in the Philippines,” Summer said after giving her father a hug and a peck on the cheek.
“Are you kidding?” Giordino piped in. “The old man practically swam across the Pacific to get back here when he heard you were missing.”
The elder Pitt smiled. “I was just jealous of you two taking a tour of Northeast Asia without me,” he grinned.
“We made some notes of places to avoid,” Dirk laughed in reply.
Pitt visibly warmed in the presence of his two kids. The veteran marine engineer brimmed with a radiant serenity at the world that had recently changed around him. His personal life had been completely jarred by the sudden appearance of his two grown children just a few years earlier whom he never knew existed. But they quickly became a close part of his life, joining him in his underwater work, as well as sharing personal time with him and his new wife. The sudden dose of responsibility had nudged him to take stock of his life and he had finally married his longtime love, Colorado congresswoman Loren Smith. But the changes continued, as even his professional life saw an upheaval. With Admiral Sandecker unexpectedly taking the vice presidency, Pitt was suddenly thrust into the top spot at NUMA. While special projects director, he experienced several lifetimes' worth of adventure and challenges that took him to the four corners of the globe. The hazards had taken a toll on him, both physically and mentally, and now he was glad to ease back on the more vigorous demands of the job. As NUMA's chief director, his administrative and political duties often exceeded his interests, but he still ensured that he and Al spent plenty of time in the field, testing new equipment, exploring prospective marine sanctuaries, or just pushing the limits of the deep. Deep inside, the flame still burned brightly when it came to exploring the unknown or solving an ancient mystery and his old-fashioned sense of propriety never waned. The kidnapping of his children and the sinking of the Sea Rover triggered an anger inside that brought back the old resolve he'd felt time and again to make right in the world.
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