Black Wind (38 page)

46

I
T TOOK THE LAUNCH
vehicle engineers just under twenty-four hours to convert the rocket's payload into a weapon of mass horror. Like surgeons conducting a transplant operation, the engineering team carefully removed several sections of the outer payload fairing and delved into the inner workings of the mock satellite. Fake components, built to resemble communication transponders, were removed and replaced with small electric pumps, which would drive the aerosol system. Lines and fittings were attached to the phony solar panels, which would open in flight to spread the rejuvenated virus, disseminating it as a fine mist across the California sky.

Working in protective clean room bunny suits, the technicians performed a final test on the dispensing system, ensuring it was fully functional for the short rocket flight. The final step of the operation was then reached: inserting the chimera virus into the payload vehicle. The canisters from Inchon containing the freeze-dried germs were carefully mounted to the satellite frame and steel braided lines from the hydrogenation tanks were connected to the aerosol system. When activated, a software-controlled program would vacuum-mix the powdered substance with purified water, then transfer the live fluid through the vaporizer and out into the atmosphere.

With the deadly cocktail loaded aboard, the payload fairing was reassembled around the satellite. Propellant explosives were inserted at key points inside the fairing to blast the payload doors away at the appointed moment during flight. When the final section of the nose cone housing was sealed into place, the tired engineering team congratulated one another briefly and then staggered toward the crew's quarters. A few precious hours of sleep was all they could ask for before it would be time to start the final launch countdown.

*  *  *

W
ITHOUT PUBLICLY
raising the color-coded Threat Advisory System, the Department of Homeland Security quietly issued an elevated marine port and airport security alert. Stepped-up screening and random searches were performed on all aircraft and vessels originating from an Asian locale, with special inspections for biological and chemical agents. At Vice President Sandecker's insistence, the Coast Guard was ordered to stop, board, and search all Japanese- or Korean-flagged inbound ships with a fully armed security contingent. All available Coast Guard cutters were put to sea along the West Coast, concentrated around the commercial hubs of Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

In San Francisco, Rudi Gunn coordinated NUMA's interdiction support with the local Coast Guard commandant. When the research vessel
Blue Gill
arrived from Monterey, Gunn immediately assigned her picket duty ten miles off the Golden Gate Bridge. He then jumped up to Seattle, where he directed local NUMA resources in support of coastal screening, and enlisted the aid of the Canadian Coast Guard in Vancouver to search all British Columbia–bound ships.

Dirk and Summer flew to San Diego, where they were welcomed by the city's trademark seventy-two-degree balmy weather. Taking a short cab ride from San Diego International Airport's Lindbergh Field to Shelter Island, it took them only a few minutes to locate the
Deep Endeavor
tied up at the end of a large municipal dock. As they approached the ship, Dirk noticed that an odd-shaped submersible painted a metallic burnt orange sat on the vessel's stern deck.

“Well, if it isn't the Prisoners of Zenda,” Jack Dahlgren called from the bridge wing upon spotting the twosome boarding the ship. Dirk's close friend hopped down a stairwell and met them at the head of the gangway.

“Heard you two enjoyed a seaside tour of the Korean Peninsula,” Dahlgren laughed as he shook Dirk's hand firmly, then gave Summer a hug.

“Yes, but we somehow missed the Michelin-rated attractions,” Summer grinned back.

“Now, wait, that DMZ tour was pretty stimulating,” Dirk said, feigning seriousness. Turning to Dahlgren, he asked, “You and the crew ready to do a little search-and-seizure work?”

“Yep. A Coast Guard team joined us an hour ago so we're ready to shove off at any time.

“Good. Let's get after it, then.”

Dahlgren escorted Dirk and Summer up to the bridge, where they were greeted by Leo Delgado and Captain Burch, then introduced to a uniformed Coast Guard sea marshal named Aimes.

“What's our intercept procedure, Lieutenant?” Dirk asked, noting the insignia on Aimes's uniform.

“Call me Bill,” replied Aimes. A studious man with cropped blond hair, Aimes took his duty seriously but hated unnecessary formality. “We'll be assisting the regional Coast Guard vessels as a backup, when and if commercial traffic gets particularly heavy. Otherwise, we'll be assigned to ad hoc survey and reconnaissance. Under legislative rule, we can intercept and board all inbound commercial vessels up to twelve miles offshore. As NUMA's Coast Guard representative, I will lead all boardings and searches with my team but will be assisted by several of your crewmen who have undergone a brief training session.”

“What are the chances we could actually locate a weapons cache or bomb hidden on a large containership?” Summer wondered.

“Better than you might think,” Aimes replied. “As you know, we work closely with the Customs Department under the direction of the Homeland Security Department. Our customs agents are located at foreign ports around the globe and are on-site to inspect and seal all cargo containers before the goods are allowed to ship. Upon arriving in U.S. ports, containers are verified by customs agents as having not been opened or tampered with before acceptance into this country. The Coast Guard provides an advance check of the ship and containers before they have a chance to reach port.”

“There's plenty of places on a ship outside of the cargo containers where somebody could hide a bomb,” Dahlgren stated.

“That's a more difficult problem, but it's where the dogs come into play,” Aimes replied, nodding his head toward the far end of the bridge. Dirk noticed for the first time that a pair of yellow Labrador retrievers were tied to a bulkhead stanchion and lay asleep on the deck. Summer had already made her way over to the dogs and begun scratching them contentedly behind the ears.

“The dogs are trained to sniff out a variety of explosive compounds commonly used in bomb manufacture. Best of all, they can run through a ship in quick order. If a biological bomb is being smuggled in on a containership, there's a good chance those boys could sniff out the explosives component of it.”

“That's what we're looking for,” Dirk said. “So, we'll be working off of San Diego?”

“No,” Aimes replied, shaking his head. “There's only minimal commercial traffic that moves through San Diego and the regional Coast Guard vessels are more than adequate to handle the volume. We've been ordered to patrol a quadrant southwest of the Port of Los Angeles in support of the L.A.–Long Beach Coast Guard Marine Safety Group. Once on-site, we'll coordinate local positioning and boarding through
Icarus
.”

“
Icarus
?” Dahlgren asked.

“Our all-seeing eye in the sky on the project,” Dirk said with a knowing smile.

*  *  *

A
S THE
Deep Endeavor
chugged toward the Pacific, cruising past Coronado Island and a Navy aircraft carrier inbound from the Indian Ocean, Dirk and Summer went aft and studied the strange submersible that faintly resembled a steroid-augmented earthworm. The bullet-shaped vessel was dotted with a series of bladed propulsion units mounted irregularly about the main body like glued-on heat pumps. Strutted beneath the front of its bullet nose stood a giant coring device that stood ten feet long, protruding upward like a unicorn's horn. Bathed in its garish orange/red metallic hue, the submersible reminded them of a giant insect from a fifties horror film.

“What's the story on this contraption?” Summer asked of Dahlgren.

“Your father didn't tell you about the
Badger
? It's a prototype that he authorized. That's why we were here in San Diego. Some of our engineers have been working on a joint venture with Scripps Institute to develop this hot rod. It's a deep-water corer designed to gather sediment samples from the seabed. The scientific community is anxious to gather sediment and organism samples around volcanic hydrothermal vents, many of which are located ten thousand feet or deeper.”

“What's with all the propulsion units?” Dirk asked.

“To get to the bottom in a hurry. She's a real speed buggy. Rather than waiting for gravity to pull her to the seafloor, she has a hydrogen fuel cell power plant that allows her to submerge at speed to the bottom. She allows you to descend, take a core sample, and then pop back to the surface without twiddling your thumbs all day. Less time spent diving and surfacing means more core samples for the geologists to pick through.”

“And the boys at Scripps were actually willing to trust you behind the wheel?” Summer asked with a laugh.

“They didn't ask how many speeding tickets I have on land so I didn't feel compelled to tell them,” Dahlgren replied with mock innocence.

“Little do they know,” Dirk grinned, “that they just loaned their new Harley-Davidson to Evel Knievel.”

*  *  *

T
HE
D
EEP
E
NDEAVOR
steamed up the California coast for three hours before turning out to sea just before darkness. Dirk stood on the bridge watching the ship's progress on a colored navigation map displayed on an overhead monitor. As the coastline fell away behind them, he observed the island of San Clemente scroll up on the map to the west of their aligned path. He studied the map for a moment, then turned to Aimes, who stood nearby examining a radarscope.

“I thought your interdictions were restricted to no more than twelve miles from the coast? We're headed by San Clemente Island, which is over fifty miles from the mainland.”

“For normal coastal duty, we recognize the twelve-mile limit from the mainland. The Channel Islands are technically a part of California, however, so, legally, we can operate from the islands as an origination point. For this mission, we have been given temporary authorization to expand our normal interdiction zone, with the Channel Islands as a baseline. We'll set up position about ten miles west of Santa Catalina as our base monitoring position.”

Two hours later, they cruised beyond the large island of Catalina and the engines slowed as they neared their station point. At a slow crawl, the
Deep Endeavor
began patrolling a large north-to-south loop west of the island, using the ship's radar as surveillance eyes. A sprinkling of pleasure craft and fishing boats was all the radar detected, along with a Coast Guard cutter on patrol nearby to the north.

“We are positioned well south of the main shipping lane to L.A. and not likely to catch much night traffic in this quadrant,” Aimes said. “We'll get tossed into the fray in the morning when
Icarus
shows up for work. In the meantime, I suggest we take shifts and get some sleep.”

Dirk took the hint and walked out onto the bridge wing, inhaling a deep breath of sea air. The night was still and damp and the seas almost as flat as a pancake. As he stood in the darkness, his mind tumbled over his meeting with Kang and the less-than-implicit threat that the mogul had delivered to Summer and him. Another week and the South Korean Assembly vote would be history and the legal authorities could pursue Kang with full fury. That's all they needed. A week without incident. As he stared at the sea, a chilled gust of wind suddenly whisked his face, then fell away again just as suddenly, leaving a tranquil and seeming calm.

47

B
Y 9 P.M., THE
Odyssey
had backtracked some three hundred miles and was now approaching the designated launch position calibrated in Inchon. Tongju, catching up on some lost sleep in Captain Hennessey's cabin, was startled awake by a rapid pounding at the door. An armed commando entered the room and bowed as Tongju sat up and began pulling on his boots.

“So sorry to intrude,” the commando said apologetically. “It's Captain Lee. He has requested that you return to the
Koguryo
at once. There is some sort of dispute with the Russian launch engineers.”

Tongju nodded, then shook off the cobwebs and made his way to the pilothouse, where he verified that the platform was still cruising north-northeast at 12 knots. Radioing for the
Koguryo
's tender, he made his way down the long flight of stairs on the forward piling and hopped into the idling boat that awaited him. A short ride took him to the nearby support ship, where Captain Lee was waiting for him.

“Come with me to the Launch Control Center. It's those damn Ukrainians,” the captain cursed. “They can't agree on where to position the platform for launch. I think they're going to kill one another.”

The two men made their way down a flight of stairs and along an interior passageway to the expansive Launch Control Center. As Lee opened a side entry door, a loud staccato of foreign swearing burst upon their ears. At the center of the room, a group of launch engineers were huddled loosely around the two Ukrainian launch specialists, who stood toe-to-toe with their arms in the air arguing violently with each other. The crowd of engineers parted as Tongju and Lee approached, but the Ukrainians didn't skip a beat. Looking on in disgust, Tongju turned and grabbed a padded console chair, then lifted it over his head and hurled it at the two jabbering engineers. The gathered spectators gasped as the chair flew into the two men, smashing into their heads and chests before ricocheting to the floor with a crash. The stunned Ukrainians finally fell silent as they shook off the blow from the flying chair and turned toward the two men.

“What is the issue here?” Tongju growled.

One of the Ukrainians, a goateed man with shaggy brown hair, cleared his throat before speaking.

“It is the weather. The high-pressure front over the eastern Pacific, specifically off North America, has stalled due to the push from a low-pressure system in the south.”

“And what does this mean?”

“The normally prevailing high-altitude easterly winds have, in fact, reversed and we are instead facing a strong headwind at the moment. This has thrown off our planned mission flight profile by a considerable margin.” Shuffling through a file of papers, he pulled out a sheaf of algorithmic paper containing numerous calculations and trajectory profiles handwritten in pencil.

“Our base mission plan has been to fuel the Zenit rocket first stage at fifty percent of capacity, which will produce an estimated downrange flight trajectory of 350 kilometers. Approximately fifty kilometers of this distance is over the target region, where the payload system will be activated. Thus, our planned launch position was three hundred kilometers west of Los Angeles, assuming normal local weather patterns. Given the present weather scenario, we have two options: either wait for the low-pressure front to yield to the prevailing winds or reposition the launch platform closer to the target.”

“There's a third option,” the other Ukrainian grumbled irritably. “We can increase the fuel load in the Zenit to reach the target from the original launch position.” As he spoke, his counterpart stood shaking his head silently.

“What is the risk of that?” Tongju asked the doubter.

“Sergei is correct in that we can adjust the fuel load to reach the target from the original launch position. However, I have grave doubts about the accuracy that we would achieve. We do not know the wind conditions for the entire flight trajectory. Given the current unusual weather pattern, the wind conditions along the entire flight path might vary significantly from what we can measure directly above us. The launch vehicle could easily be diverted north or south of the intended target by a large deviation. We could also overshoot the target by tens of kilometers or, alternatively, undershoot the target by a similar degree. There is just too much potential variability in the flight path from this distance.”

“A minor risk, compounded by speculation,” countered Sergei.

“How long before normal weather patterns return to the area?” asked Tongju.

“The low-pressure front has already showed signs of weakening. We expect it to collapse over the next day and a half, with the dominant high-pressure system prevailing in approximately seventy-two hours.”

Tongju silently contemplated the arguments for a moment, then made his decision without debate.

“We have a timetable to meet. We can ill afford to sit and wait for the weather to change, nor can we risk diluting the target strike. We shall move the platform closer to the target and initiate countdown as soon as possible. How far must we move to mitigate the atmospheric uncertainty?”

“To minimize the impact of the adverse winds, we must shorten the trajectory. Based on our latest wind measurements, we must position ourselves here,” the goateed Ukrainian said, pointing to a map of the North American seaboard. “One hundred and five kilometers from the coast.”

Tongju studied the position silently for a minute, calculating the added distance to cover. The proposed position was dangerously near the coastline, he observed, noting a pair of offshore islands in close proximity. But they could reach the spot and still launch within Kang's desired time schedule. As all eyes in the room waited for his command, he finally turned and nodded toward Lee. “Alter course at once. We will position both vessels at the new position before dawn and initiate launch countdown at daybreak.”