Black Wind (Dirk Pitt 18)

"Is she secure?" Yoshida asked, waving a hand at the submersible.

"All ready," the second man replied eagerly, a young kid of nineteen ^ho Yoshida knew had just started work on the docks a few weeks before.

A few yards away, Yoshida noticed a stocky bald man with dark eyes surveying the scene near the ship's gangway. A menacing quality lingered over the man, Yoshida thought. He'd been in enough scrapes in the nearby shipyard bars to recognize which men were legitimate tough guys and which were pretenders. This man was no pretender, he judged.

Shifting thoughts to the taste of a cold Sapporo beer, Yoshida climbed up a high ladder into the cab of the adjacent container crane and fired up its diesel motor. Adeptly working the levers like a concert pianist tickling the ivories, he expertly adjusted the movable boom and sliding block until satisfied, then dropped the hook and block quickly toward the ground, halting it dead center a few inches above the submersible. The two dockworkers quickly slipped a pair of cables over the hoist hook and gave Yoshida the thumbs-up sign. Ever so gently, the crane operator pulled up on the hoist line, the thick cable drawing tight as it wrapped around a drum behind the cab. Slowly, Yoshida raised the twenty-four-ton submersible to a height of fifty feet, hesitating as he waited for its twisting motion to halt before swinging it over to a waiting pad on the Baekje's rear deck. But he never got the chance.

Before it could be seen, and almost before it physically started, Yoshida's experienced hands could feel something wrong through the controls. One of the cables had not been properly secured to the submersible and the tail suddenly slipped down and through a loop in the cable. In an instant, the rear of the sub lunged down and the white metal capsule hung vertically at a grotesque angle, clinging precariously to the single cable wrapped around its nose. Yoshida didn't breathe, and, for a moment, it looked like the dangling submersible would stabilize. But before he could move it an inch, a loud twang burst through the air as the lone securing cable snapped. Like a toon of bricks, the submersible dropped straight to the dock below, landing on its tail with an accordion like smash before plopping over on its side in distress.

Yoshida grimaced, already thinking of the grief he would suffer at the hands of Takagai, as well as the reams of insurance paperwork he would be forced to fill

out. Thankfully, no one was hurt on the dock. As he climbed down from the crane's cab to inspect the damage, Yoshida glanced at the bald man on the gangway, expecting to see a seething fury. Instead, the mysterious man looked back at him with a cold face of stone. The dark eyes, however, seemed to pierce right through him.

The Shinkai three-man submersible was heavily mashed on one end and clearly inoperable. It would be shipped back to its home at the Japanese Marine Science and Technology Center for three months' worth of repairs before it would be seaworthy again. The two dock-workers did not fare as well. Though not fired, Yoshida noticed that the two men did not show up for work the next day, and, in fact, were never seen or heard from again.

Twenty hours later and 250 miles farther to the southwest, an American commercial jetliner touched down at Osaka's modern Kan-sai International Airport and taxied to the international gate. Dirk stretched his six-foot-four frame as he exited the plane, relieved to be free from the cramped airline seating that only a jockey would find comfortable. Passing quickly through the customs checkpoint, he entered the busy main terminal crowded with businessmen hustling to catch their flights. Stopping briefly, it took just a momentary scan of the terminal before he picked out the woman he was looking for from the mass of humanity.

Standing nearly six feet tall with shoulder-length flaming red hair, his fraternal twin sister Summer towered like a beacon in a sea of black-haired Japanese. Her pearl gray eyes glistened and her soft mouth broke into a grin as she spotted her brother and waved him over to her.

"Welcome to Japan," she gushed, giving him a hug. "How was your flight?"

"Like riding in a sardine can with wings."

"Good, then you'll feel right at home in the cabin berth I scraped up for you on the Sea Rover" she laughed.

"I was afraid you wouldn't be here yet," Dirk remarked as he collected his luggage and they made their way to the parking lot.

"When Captain Morgan received word from Rudi that we were to terminate our study of pollutants along the eastern coast of Japan to assist in an emergency search-and-recovery mission, he wasted no time in responding. Fortunately, we were working not far off Shikoku when we got the call so were able to reach Osaka this morning."

Like her brother, Summer had possessed a deep love of the sea since childhood. After obtaining a master's degree in oceanography from the Scripps Institute, she'd joined her brother at NUMA following a uniting with their father, who now headed up the undersea organization. As headstrong and resourceful as her sibling, she'd gained respect in the field with her knowledge and hands-on abilities, while her attractive looks never failed to turn heads.

Leading Dirk past a row of parked cars, Summer suddenly stopped in front of a tiny orange Suzuki subcompact parked by itself.

"Oh, no, not another knee-crusher," Dirk laughed as he surveyed the tiny vehicle.

"A loaner from the Port Authority. You'll be surprised."

After carefully wedging his gear into the minuscule hatchback, Dirk opened the left-side door and prepared to pretzel himself into the passenger seat. To his amazement, the interior of the right-hand-drive car proved roomy, with a low sitting position creating ample headroom for the two six-footers. Summer jumped into the driver's seat and threaded their way out of the parking lot and onto the Hanshin Expressway-Heading north toward downtown Osaka, she accelerated the little Suzuki hard, zipping in and out of traffic, for the twelve-kilometer drive to the city's port terminal. Exiting the expressway, she turned the car into the Osaka South Port Intermodal Terminal and down a side dock before pulling up in front of the Sea Rover.

The NUMA research vessel was a slightly newer and larger version of the Deep Endeavor, complete with matching turquoise paint scheme. Dirk's eyes were drawn to the stern deck, where a bright orange submersible called the Starfish sat glistening like a setting sun.

"Welcome aboard, Dirk," boomed the deep voice of Robert Morgan, the master of the Sea Rover. A bearded bear of a man, Morgan resembled a muscular version of Burl Ives. The jovial captain held an amazing array of seagoing experience, having commanded everything from a Mississippi River tugboat to a Saudi Arabian oil tanker. Having salted away a healthy retirement sum from his commercial captain days, Morgan joined NUMA for the pure adventure of sailing to unique corners of the globe. Deeply admired by his crew, the skipper of the Sea Roverwas a highly organized leader who possessed an acute attention to detail.

After storing Dirk's bags, the threesome adjourned to a starboard-side conference room whose porthole windows offered a serene view of Osaka Harbor. They were joined by First Officer Tim Ryan, a lanky man with ice blue eyes. Dirk grabbed a cup of coffee to regain alertness after his long flight while Morgan got down to business.

"Tell us about this urgent search-and-recovery mission. Gunn was rather vague with the details over the satellite phone."

Dirk recapped the Yunaska incident and the recovery of the I-403's bomb canister and what had been learned of the sub's failed mission.

"When HiramYaeger reviewed the Japanese naval records in the National Archives, he discovered a near-duplicate operations order that was issued to a second submarine, the I-411. It had the same mission, only to cross the Atlantic and strike New York and Philadelphia instead of the West Coast."

"What became of the I-411?" Summer asked.

"That's what we're here to find out. Yaeger was unable to uncover any definitive information on the I-411's final whereabouts, other than that she failed to appear for a refueling rendezvous near Singapore and was presumed lost in the South China Sea. I contacted St. Julien Perlmutter, who took it a step further and found an official Japanese naval inquiry which placed the loss in the middle of the East China Sea sometime during the first few weeks of 1945. Perlmutter noted that those facts matched up to a report from the American submarine Swordfish that she had engaged and sunk a large enemy submarine in that region during the same time frame. Unfortunately, the Swordfish was later destroyed on the same mission so the full accounting was never documented. Their radio report did provide an approximate coordinate of the sinking, however."

"So it's up to us to find the I-411" Morgan said matter-of-factly.

Dirk nodded. "We need to ensure that the biological bombs were destroyed when the submarine went down, or recover them if they are still intact."