Black Wind (37 page)

“Good. Our team here will coordinate with the regional Coast Guard surveillance squadrons. Rudi, you'll have to tear yourself out of the headquarters building. I'd like you to fly to San Francisco to set up the
Blue Gill
with the regional Coast Guard squadron and then see that the
Pacific Explorer
is similarly assigned in the Seattle/Vancouver region. Dirk and Summer, I'd like you back on the
Deep Endeavor
in San Diego to assist with surveillance off Southern California,” Pitt directed.

“What about me, boss?” Giordino asked with mock indignation. “Don't I get a boat inspector's pass?”

“Oh, no,” Pitt replied with a mischievous smile. “I have something much higher in store for you.”

44

T
HERE WAS LITTLE FANFARE
when a pair of scruffy tugboats began slowly nudging the Sea Launch platform
Odyssey
away from her home dock. The excitement surrounding a new launch had waned over the years, to the extent that only a handful of family, friends, and corporate managers stood and waved good-bye to the crew. A smaller platform crew also brought out fewer than normal well-wishers. Only forty-two men manned the big platform, roughly twenty fewer than usual, as Launch Director Stamp held back many of the launch engineers to aid the fire repairs being made on the support ship. Captain Christiano watched restlessly from the bridge of the
Sea Launch Commander
as the rocket-laden platform crept away from the pier, offering a farewell to the crew and vessel with a long blast from his ship's horn. Several decks beneath him, an army of electricians and computer technicians worked feverishly around the clock to repair the control room fire damage in hopes that the command ship could follow the platform out to sea in another three or four days.

Christiano's greeting was met by a short horn blast from the
Odyssey
that seemed to come from the clouds. The
Odyssey
's main platform deck towered nearly a hundred feet above the water. An oceangoing vessel in her own right, the floating platform relied on tugboats to get her cleanly in and out of port. Although she could position herself on a dime, visibility of small boats and harbor obstacles was precarious from the pilothouse positioned high atop the structure so tugs were utilized for safe navigation in congested waters.

The massive structure moved slowly past the port entrance jetty, appearing like a mammoth tarantula creeping across the calm waters. The converted North Sea oil platform rode high atop five thick support columns aligned along each flank. Slicing through the waves barely above the surface, the base of the columns rested upon a huge pair of underwater pontoons, each stretching over four hundred feet in length. Affixed to each aft pontoon hull was a pair of four-bladed propellers, which could push the ungainly craft through the swells at speeds of up to 12 knots. At over thirty thousand tons of displacement, the
Odyssey
was the largest self-propelled catamaran vessel in the world and easily the most impressive to the eye. Gliding past the entrance to Long Beach Harbor, the platform crept another two miles offshore before the tugs ground to a halt.

“Stand by to take up towlines,” barked the
Odyssey
's commander, a no-nonsense ex–tanker captain named Hennessey.

The tugs released their towlines, which were quickly reeled in by the
Odyssey
's crew. The platform's four three-thousand-horsepower direct current motors were engaged, and, as the tugs peeled off to the sides, the
Odyssey
moved forward under her own power. Riding high atop its large pair of pontoons, the crew on the elevated platform swayed slowly back and forth as if in a skyscraper during a windstorm. The powerful Zenit rocket, tightly secured in its horizontal berth, was immune to the gentle motion. The experienced crew went casually about their duties, falling into a relaxed routine during the slow journey toward the launch site as the beige coast of California gradually disappeared from view. Hennessey gently increased power until the platform was chugging along at 9 knots, then laid in a course to the southwest toward the designated launch site fifteen hundred miles south of Hawaii at the equator. No one suspected it was to be a destination they would never see.

*  *  *

F
IFTEEN HUNDRED MILES
to the west, the
Koguryo
raced across the Pacific like a greyhound chasing a rabbit. Only a diversionary stop in the Ogasawara Islands to retrieve Tongju had slowed her pace since departing Inchon. After skirting a storm front west of Midway, the vessel had encountered calm seas and a strong tailwind, allowing her to churn east at top speed. Stripped of her bulky cable-laying equipment and the miles of heavy cable normally stored belowdecks, the
Koguryo
rode nine feet higher in the water than usual. Her four diesel engines pushed the lightened ship along at a rapid 21 knots, propelling her across the ocean at nearly six hundred miles a day.

On board, the large team of engineers and technicians readied themselves for the coming Zenit rocket launch. A launch control center, nearly an exact duplicate of the control room on the
Sea Launch Commander
, had been constructed on a lower deck of the
Koguryo
and was the site of continuous activity. The final batch of launch software had been received from the Inchon lab and the software support team loaded up a series of mock launch scenarios for the operations team. Each day, the launch team worked their way through a series of sample test launches until, after a week at sea, the simulations were performed flawlessly. Told only that they would be controlling the launch of a Kang satellite from a floating platform, the team had no idea of the illicit mission they were actually supporting and looked forward to firing off the actual rocket.

Tongju utilized the time at sea to hone his tactics for the assault on the
Odyssey
. He and his commando team pored over blueprints of the launch platform, calculating strike positions and coordinating force movements, until he had a minute-by-minute plan of attack. The commandos memorized their moves, cleaned their weapons, and generally stayed out of sight of the other crewmen as the ship moved closer and closer to its target. After an evening meal with his assault team, Tongju invited his second-in-command Kim back to his cabin. In the privacy of his room, he explained Kang's order to scuttle the
Koguryo
.

“I have provided Captain Lee with the rendezvous position where we are to meet the waiting freighter. I did not inform him, however, of the plan to sink his ship, only that we would be transferring the launch crew to the other vessel for safety.”

“You do not trust his obedience to Kang?” Kim asked, unaffected by the prospect of murdering two hundred of his fellow shipmates.

“No, it is not wise. No sea captain desires to sink his own ship and abandon his crew. We shall make our escape without him.”

“How is the ship to be destroyed?”

Tongju reached under his cot and pulled out a small satchel, which he handed to Kim.

“Semtex plastic explosives with wireless detonators. I intend to activate the charges while the ship is in motion.”

He walked to a bulkhead and pointed at a small cutaway diagram of the
Koguryo
pinned to the wall.

“By blasting a series of holes in the forward hull and bow sections beneath the waterline, the momentum of the ship will force a rapid flooding of the lower decks. The vessel will plunge to the bottom like a submarine before the crew has a chance to react.”

“There may still be the chance for some to escape on the lifeboats,” Kim countered.

Tongju shook his head with a malignant smile. “I have applied a liquid weld compound to all of the lifeboat davits. None of those boats will be leaving this vessel without a considerable effort.”

“And what about us?” Kim asked, a slight uncertainty creeping into his voice.

“You and two others will leave with me on the assault boat. I will convince Lee to let us depart the ship for an advanced surveillance check once the freighter is detected within radar range. When he has brought the
Koguryo
back up to speed, we will detonate the charges.”

Kim let out a quiet sigh and nodded deeply. “It will not be easy to abandon my assault team,” he said quietly.

“They are all good men but expendable. I will leave it to you to pick the two men to join us. But first we must get the explosives planted. Take your demolitions man, Hyun, and set the charges in the forward bow compartments E, F, and G. Don't let any of the ship's crew observe you.”

Kim grasped the satchel tightly and nodded again. “It will be done,” he said, then left the cabin.

After he left, Tongju stared at the diagram of the ship for several minutes. The whole operation was a hazardous mission fraught with risks and hidden dangers. But that was exactly the way he liked it.

45

O
N A COLLISION COURSE WITH EVIL,
the
Odyssey
plodded along from Long Beach at its meager pace, the ungainly assembly churning up ten miles of foam over the course of an hour. Cutting past the California channel island of San Clemente, the
Odyssey
cruised due west of San Diego shortly before midnight and soon after departed the territorial waters of the United States. Fishing boats and pleasure craft gradually vanished from the horizons as the platform pushed farther into a desolate section of the Pacific Ocean west of Baja California. By the end of the third day at sea, cruising some seven hundred miles from the nearest landfall, the
Odyssey
shared the ocean with only a small dot on the northeast horizon.

Captain Hennessey watched with mild interest as the distant speck slowly grew larger, bearing down on a southerly heading. When it approached within five miles, he aimed his binoculars at the vessel, eyeing a stout blue ship with a yellow funnel. In the fading evening dusk, Hennessey made it out to be a research vessel or special-purpose ship rather than a commercial freighter. He noted with annoyed curiosity that the ship was on a perfect collision course with the
Odyssey
's current heading. Hennessey stuck close to the helm for the next hour, watching the other vessel as it inched to within a mile of his starboard flank before appearing to slow and nose toward the southwest behind him.

“He's slowing to cross our wake,” Hennessey said to the helmsman, dropping his binoculars from the mysterious blue ship. “The whole empty Pacific Ocean and he's got to run right down our path,” he muttered, shaking his head.

The thought never occurred to him that it was anything more than a coincidental encounter. Nor would he ever suspect that a trusted crewman, one of a handful of Kang's men working on board as launch technicians, was feeding their exact position to the ship using a simple GPS receiver and portable radio transmitter. After crossing the length of the Pacific, the
Koguryo
had picked up the radio transmission twenty-four hours earlier and vectored in on the
Odyssey
's path like a homing pigeon to roost.

As the lights of the unknown ship twinkled off the
Odyssey
's port stern in the evening darkness, Hennessey put the ship out of his mind and focused on the empty blackness before him. They were still nearly ten days to the equator and there was no telling what other obstacles might cross their path.

*  *  *

T
HE EXPERIENCED
assault team came quickly, in the dark of night and with complete surprise. After shadowing the
Odyssey
for most of the evening, the
Koguryo
had suddenly stopped its engines, letting the self-propelled platform churn on toward the horizon. In the pilothouse of the
Odyssey
, the night shift helmsman and watch officer relaxed as the lights of the other ship fell away. With an autopilot steering the platform, their only concerns were monitoring the radar screen and weather forecast. But on an empty sea in the dead of night, there was little cause for concern. Focus on duty waned as the two men paced the bridge, engaging in a tireless debate about World Cup soccer rather than studying the electronic monitors about them. Had either man watched the radarscope more closely, they would have had an inkling of things to come.

Far from changing course or making repairs, the
Koguryo
had stopped to launch its high-speed tender. The open-decked, thirty-foot boat was a spacious and luxurious assault craft for Tongju, Kim, and the dozen other men dressed in black commando outfits who sat brandishing their assault rifles on leather-cushioned seats. Though low on stealth, the boat provided a fast and stable means of crossing open water to strike the platform with an ample attack force.

The tender bounded in darkness across the rolling waves, racing across the open sea under a bright canopy of stars that spread from horizon to horizon. The speedy boat quickly gobbled up ground between itself and the moving platform, which was lit up against the night sky like a Times Square marquee. As the tender's pilot approached the shadow of the massive platform, he steered the boat dead center under the structure, threading the boat between the
Odyssey
's twin pontoons. Holding its speed, the boat darted under the platform and past the thick support columns, barely skimming under a set of massive triangular supports that horizontally crisscrossed the columns just twelve feet above the water. Slowing to match speeds with the
Odyssey
, he inched toward the forward starboard column, where a salt-encrusted steel stairway led up to the heights above. When he edged to within a few feet, one of the commandos leaped from the bow with a small line and quickly tied it to the stairwell post. One by one, the remaining commandos jumped onto the stairwell and began the long climb to the platform above. Pausing at the top steps to catch their breath, the team paused for a moment to regroup before Tongju nodded his head to proceed. The secure door to the stairwell had been left unlocked by one of Kang's crewmen already aboard and the commandos quickly slipped through and fanned out across the deck.

Though Tongju had studied photos and plans of the
Odyssey
, he was still overwhelmed by the massive scale of the launch deck, which stretched well over a football field in length. At the far end stood the launch tower, separated by a large tract of open deck that led to the launch vehicle hangar. Along the recessed starboard beam sat the massive fuel storage tanks, which would gas up the rocket shortly before launch. On either side of the launch vehicle hangar stood two small buildings that housed the crew's quarters, offering accommodations for sixty-eight men plus a galley and medical station. That would be the first target.

The assault team was primed to strike simultaneously, five men to the hangar, three to the bridge, and the balance to the crew's quarters. Most of the forty-two-man crew aboard the
Odyssey
had little to do until the platform reached the launch site and spent the hours reading, playing cards, or watching movies. By 3
A.M.,
only a handful of men were still awake, mostly crewmen assigned to sail the platform or monitor the launch vehicle. When the commandos struck the crew's quarters with drill precision, the confused technicians and engineers were too stunned to react. With a blast of light and prodding from the muzzles of AK-74 assault rifles, the sleeping men were quickly roused at gunpoint. Two men playing cards in the galley thought it was some sort of equatorial prank before a swinging rifle butt knocked one to the floor. A startled chef in the kitchen dropped a stack of pans at the sight of the armed men, doing more to wake the disbelieving crew than the gunmen themselves.

In the launch vehicle hangar, it was a similar story. The small commando team rapidly swept through the air-conditioned building that housed the cradled Zenit rocket, rounding up a handful of engineers without a fight. On the bridge situated high atop the launch vehicle hangar, the two men manning the helm couldn't believe their eyes when Tongju walked in and calmly leveled his Glock pistol at the executive officer's ear. In less than ten minutes, the entire platform was secured by Tongju's men. Not a shot fired, the Sea Launch crew never expected to be commandeered in the middle of the Pacific.

The commandos were surprised to find that most of the platform's marine crew were Filipino while the launch team was an assorted mix of American, Russian, and Ukrainian engineers. The subdued multinational crew was herded to the galley where they were held at gunpoint, except for the dozen of Kang's planted crew members and satellite company representatives, who took over operational control of sailing the platform. Even Captain Hennessey, captured and roughly bound by one of Kim's men, was forced to the galley in shock, with the rest of his crew.

On the bridge, Tongju radioed the
Koguryo
that the platform was taken with no resistance. Examining an unfurled navigation chart left on a side table, he barked at one of Kang's crewmen now manning the helm.

“Revise bearing to fifteen degrees north-northeast. We are diverting to a new launch site.”

*  *  *

A
S THE CRACK OF DAWN
approached, the
Koguryo
maneuvered alongside the northbound
Odyssey
and slowed to match speeds with the platform as it mashed through five-foot swells. Edging to within twenty feet of the
Odyssey
, Captain Lee held the
Koguryo
perfectly in tandem with the moving platform's starboard beam. In the wheelhouse of the
Odyssey
, a nervous helmsman ensured that the autopilot was properly engaged as the ex-cable-laying ship hove to alongside.

On the top deck of the hangar, Tongju supervised the movement of a large crane as it was swung out over the starboard edge of the platform. A heavy block and hook swung wildly from the end of the crane for a moment before being lowered to the rear deck of the
Koguryo
. A ready signal was relayed over the marine radio and the crane began hoisting up a square metal container the size of a sofa, which was swung over and lowered to the platform's main deck. Stored inside were the special canisters containing the freeze-dried chimera cultures ready to be inserted into the payload aerosol dispenser.

While the deadly virus was being hoisted to the platform, the
Koguryo
's tender ferried over a dozen launch and payload specialists, who immediately swarmed into the rocket hangar and began dissecting the Zenit's payload section. An additional security contingent was also ferried over to help relieve Tongju's assault commandos.

Tongju returned to the pilothouse and peered out the heavy-paned windows at the rolling sea two hundred feet beneath him. The swaying of the platform was slight as the motion rolled up from the distant pontoons beneath the surface. Gazing to his right, he saw the
Koguryo
begin to peel away from the
Odyssey
, its ferrying services complete for the time being.

“Increase speed to maximum,” his said to the helmsman.

The nervous Filipino adjusted the propulsion controls on both pontoons and then watched as the digital speed indicator slowly counted upward.

“Twelve knots, sir. Maximum cruising speed,” the seaman replied, his eyes twitching back and forth.

Tongju nodded in satisfaction, then reached for an overhead radio transmitter and called Captain Lee on the
Koguryo
.

“We are progressing on schedule. Please notify Inchon that we are in control of the launch vessel and intend to initiate launch countdown in approximately thirty hours. Out.”

The apprehensive helmsman stared straight ahead, avoiding the gaze of Tongju. Whatever fearful thoughts tumbled around his head about Tongju's intent were minuscule compared to the commando leader's true objective.