Black Wind (Dirk Pitt 18)

"There's little more we can do. Our survey work is finished and we need to get those injured scientists appropriate medical care. There's no sense in hanging around any longer."

Dirk nodded. "You're right, of course." Wishing there was a way to find the trawler, he headed down the ladder to the ship's galley for a cup of coffee. Dinner had long since been served and a cleanup crew was working over the kitchen before shutting down. Dirk filled a mug of coffee from a large silver urn, then turned and spotted Sarah sitting in a wheelchair at the end of the dining hall. The golden-haired woman sat alone at a table, peering out a large porthole at the moonlit water outside. She was dressed in the dull medical ward attire of cotton pajamas, slippers, and a blue robe but still gave off a vibrant glow. As Dirk approached, she looked up and her eyes twinkled.

"Too late for dinner?" he asked apologetically.

"Afraid so. You missed the chef's special Halibut Oscar, which was truly excellent."

"Just my luck," Dirk replied, drawing a chair and sitting down directly across from her.

"What happened to you?" Sarah asked with concern in her voice as she eyed the bandages on Dirk's face.

"Just a little accident with the helicopter. I don't think my boss is going to like the news," he said with a grimace, thinking about the expensive helicopter sitting at the bottom of the sea. Dirk proceeded to describe the events of the flight, all the while gazing intently into Sarah's hazel-colored eyes.

"Do you think the fishing boat had something to do with the death of the Coast Guardsmen and us getting sick?" she asked.

"It only goes to figure. They obviously weren't too keen on us seeing them poaching sea lions, or whatever else they were up to."

"The sea lions," Sarah murmured. "Did you see any sea lions on the west end of the island when you flew over?"

"Yes, Jack spotted several just past the Coast Guard-station on the western shore. They all appeared to be dead."

"Do you think the Deep Endeavor could obtain one of the cadavers to study? I could arrange to have the specimen sent to the state lab in Washington we are working out of."

"Captain Burch isn't eager to stick around the area, but I'm sure I can convince him to retrieve one for scientific purposes," Dirk said before taking a long draw from his coffee. "We are actually headed back to port in Seattle, so could deliver it there in a few more days."

"We could perform an autopsy of the animal and determine the source of death relatively quickly. I'm sure the Alaska state authorities will take some time to release the cause of death of the two Coast Guardsmen, and they might not want the CDC looking over their shoulder."

"Do you think there might be a link with the dead sea lions that were found on the other Aleutian islands?"

"I don't know. We believe the cadavers found near the mainland were infected by a canine distemper virus."

"Distemper? From dogs?"

"Yes. A viral outbreak likely occurred through contact between an infected domestic dog and one or more sea lions. Distemper is very contagious and could spread rapidly through a concentrated sea lion population."

"Wasn't there a similar outbreak in Russia a few years ago?" Dirk tried to recall.

"Kazakhstan, actually. Thousands of Caspian seals died in 2000 due to an outbreak of distemper near the Ural River along the Caspian Sea."

"Irv told me you found healthy, uninfected sea lions on Yunaska."

"Yes, the distemper did not appear to have reached this far west. Which will make an examination of the dead sea lions you saw from the helicopter that much more intriguing."

A quiet pause fell over the couple and Sarah could see a faraway look in Dirk's eyes as the wheels churned inside his head. After a moment, she broke the silence.

"The men on the boat. Who do you think they were? What were they doing?"

Dirk stared out the porthole for a long minute. "I don't know," he replied quietly, "but I intend to find out."

The twelfth hole of the Kasumigaseki Golf Club stretched 290 yards down a tight fairway before it dog legged left to an elevated green tightly guarded by a deep bunker in front. The U.S. ambassador to Japan, Edward Hamilton, waggled the head of his oversized driver several times before swinging hard into the golf ball, sending it soaring some 275 yards off the tee box and straight down the fairway.

"Fine shot, Ed," offered David Monaco, the British ambassador to Japan and Hamilton's weekly golf partner for nearly three years. The lanky Brit teed up his ball, then punched a long arcing shot that rolled twenty yards past Hamilton's ball before bounding into a patch of tall grass on the left fringe of the fairway.

"Nice power, Dave, but I think you found the rough," Hamilton said as he spotted his playing partner's ball. The two men proceeded to walk down the fairway while a pair of female caddies, in the unique tradition of Japan's oldest country clubs, manhandled their golf bags a respecta

ble distance behind them. Lurking nearby, four not-so-inconspicuous government bodyguards maintained a rough perimeter around the duo as they made their way around the course.

The weekly outing at the golf course located south of Tokyo was an informal way of sharing information about the goings-on in and around their host country. The two allied ambassadors actually found it one of their most productive uses of time.