Black Wind (Dirk Pitt 18)

"Ready when you are, Orville."

Launching the blimp was not a simple action handled solely by the pilots but rather a carefully orchestrated maneuver assisted by a large ground crew. Outside the gondola, the Icaruis support crew, all attired in bright red shirts, took up positions around the airship. A pair of ropes attached to the blimp's nose were pulled taut by three men standing off either side of the bow while four additional men grabbed onto side rails running the length of the gondola. Directly forward of the wide cockpit window that ran nearly to his feet, Pitt stared toward the crew chief, who stood at the base of the mobile mooring mast. At Pitt's command, the crew chief signaled another crewman, standing high atop the mooring mast, to release the nose tether. In unison, the ground crew then tugged at the weightless blimp, walking it away from the mooring mast several dozen yards to a safe launching point clear of obstacles.

Pitt gave a thumbs-up signal to the crew chief, then reached over and pulled down a pair of levers protruding from the center console, increasing the throttle to the twin engines. As the ground crew let free of their clutches and moved clear, he gently pulled back on a center yoke control mounted in front of his seat. The controls manipulated the motor-driven propellers, which were each enclosed in swiveling ducts. As he pulled on the yoke, the ducts tilted upward, providing additional lift from the churning propellers. Immediately, the blimp began to rise, creeping forward as it climbed. Almost without the feeling of movement, the big airship rose off the ground and into the sky with its nose pointed high. Giordino cheerfully waved out an open side window to the ground crew below, who shrank to the size of bugs as the airship rapidly gained altitude.

Despite Giordino's request for a low-flying pass over Malibu, Pitt steered the airship directly offshore from Oxnard after leaving the grounds of the airport and soon leveled the blimp off at a height of twenty-five hundred feet. The Pacific Ocean resonated a deep aqua color under a bright sun, and the men easily counted out the northerly Channel Islands of Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and San Miguel under the clear skies. As they floated east, Pitt noticed dew dripping off of the blimp, its fabric sides warming under the rays of the morning sun. He glanced at a helium pressure gauge, noting a slight rise in the needle as the helium expanded from the warming temperatures and higher cruising altitude. An automatic venting system would release any excess gas if the pressure rose too high, but Pitt kept the blimp well below its pressure height so as not to needlessly stave off helium.

The controls of the Sentinel 1000 were heavy in his hands and he noted that the sensation of flying the blimp felt closer to sailing a twenty-meter racing yacht than piloting an airplane. Turning the huge rudders and elevators required some muscling of the yoke, which resulted in an anxious pause before the ship's nose would gradually respond. Correcting course, he absentmindedly watched the lines dangling off the blimp's nose sway back and forth. A boat bobbed into view beneath them, which he recognized as a charter fishing boat. The tiny-looking day fishermen on the boat's stern suddenly waved up

at them with friendly abandon. There was something about an airship that always seemed to strike a warm chord with people. They captured the romance of the air, Pitt decided, offering a reminder of times past when flying was still a novelty. With his hands on the controls, he could feel the nostalgia himself. Floating at a leisurely pace over the water, he let his mind churn back to the days of the thirties when mammoth dirigibles like the Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg shared the skies with the huge Navy airships Akron and Macon. Like the opulent cruise ships of the same era, they offered a certain relaxed majesty that simply no longer existed in modern travel.

When they reached a distance of thirty miles offshore, Pitt angled the blimp south and began navigating a large, lazy arc off the Los Angeles metropolis. Giordino powered up the LASH optical system, tied into a laptop computer, which enabled him to spot the images of incoming surface vessels up to thirty-five miles away. The freighters and containerships came chugging in toward the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach at a sporadic yet endless pace. The big vessels hailed from a variety of exotic-sounding home ports from Mumbai to Jakarta, though China, Japan, and Taiwan accounted for the largest volume of traffic. More than three thousand vessels a year entered the adjacent ports, creating a constant stream of traffic that crawled across the Pacific toward America's busiest port like ants to a picnic. As Giordino studied the laptop, he reported to Pitt that he could spot two large vessels inbound in the distance that figured to be commercial ships. Squinting out the cockpit window, Pitt could just make out the leading vessel on the horizon.

"Let's go take a look," Pitt replied, aiming the nose of the airship toward the approaching ship. Flicking a button on the Coast Guard radio set newly installed in the cockpit, he spoke into his headset.

"Coast Guard Cutter Halibut, this is airship Icarus. We are on station

and preparing to survey two inbound vessels approximately forty-five miles due east of Long Beach, over."

"Roger, Icarus" came a deep-voiced reply. "Glad to have you and your eyes in the sky with us. We have three vessels deployed and engaged in current interdiction actions. We'll await your surveillance reports on new inbound vessels as they approach. Out."

"Eyes in the sky," Giordino grumbled. "I'd rather be the stomach on the sofa," he said, suddenly wondering if anyone had packed them a lunch aboard the airship.

Throu

ghout the night, the Odyssey had churned west, inching her way closer to the California coast that she had departed just days before. Tongju returned to the platform after resolving the launch position dispute and stole a few hours of sleep in the captain's cabin before rising an hour before dawn. Under the first trickles of morning light, he watched from the bridge as the platform followed in the Koguryo's wake, noticing the shadow of a sizable island in the distance off the starboard bow. It was San Nicolas Island, a dry and windblown rock farthest from shore of all the Channel Islands and owned by the Navy for use primarily as an amphibious training site. They continued west for another hour before the radio crackled with the voice of Captain Lee.

"We are approaching the location that the Ukrainian engineers have indicated. Prepare to halt engines, and we will take up position to the southeast of you. We will be standing by to initiate launch countdown at your direction."

"Affirmative," Tongju replied. "We will set position and ballast the platform. Stand by for positioning."

Tongju turned and nodded to one of Kang's undercover crewmen who was piloting the Odyssey. With skilled confidence, the helmsman eased off the platform's forward-propulsion throttles, then activated

the self-positioning thrusters. Using a GPS coordinate as a fixed target, the computer-controlled system of forward, side, and rear thrusters was activated, locking the Odyssey in a fixed position as if parked on a dime.

"Position control activated," the helmsman barked in a crisp military voice. "Initiating ballast flooding," he continued, pushing a series of buttons on an illuminated console.

Two hundred feet below the pilothouse, a series of gate valves were automatically opened inside the twin pontoons and a half-dozen ballast pumps began rapidly pumping salt water into the hollow steel hulls. The flooding was imperceptible to those standing on the platform deck, as the computer-controlled pumps ensured an even rate of flooding. On the bridge, Tongju studied a computerized three-dimensional image of the Odyssey on a monitor, its catamaran hulls and lower columns turning a bright blue as the seawater poured in. Like a lethargic elevator ride, as the men on the bridge watched rather than felt, the platform sank slowly toward the waves. Sixty minutes passed before the platform gently dropped forty-six feet, the bottom of its twin hulls submerged to a stabilizing depth seventy feet below the surface. Tongju noted that the platform had ceased its slow swaying evident earlier. With its submerged pontoons and partially sunken pilings, the Odyssey had become a rock-stable platform from which to launch a million-pound rocket.

A buzzer sounded as the designated launch depth was attained, the rising blue water on the monitor graphic having reached a red horizontal line. The helmsman pressed a few more buttons, then stood back from the console.

"Flooding complete. Platform is stabilized for launch," he said.

"Secure the bridge," Tongju replied, nodding toward a Filipino crewman who stood near the radarscope. A guard standing near the door was waved over and quickly escorted the crewman off the bridge without saying a word. Tongju followed out the rear of the bridge, entering a small elevator, which he rode to the floor of the hangar. A dozen or so engineers were hovering around the huge horizontal rocket, examining an array of computer stations that were wired directly into the launch vehicle. Tongju approached a thick-haired man with round glasses named Ling who headed up the launch operations team. Before Tongju could speak, Ling gushed with a nervous testimony.

"We have verified final tests on the payload with positive results. The launch vehicle is secure and all electromechanical systems have tested nominal."

"Good. The platform is in the designated position and ballasted for launch. Is the rocket ready to be transported to the launch tower?"

Ling nodded enthusiastically. "We have been awaiting word to proceed. We are prepared to initiate launch vehicle transport and erection."

"There is no reason to dawdle. Proceed at once. Notify me when you are ready to evacuate the platform."

"Yes, of course," Ling replied, then hurried over to a group of nearby engineers and spoke at them rapid-fire. Like a band of scared rabbits, the engineers scattered in a fury to their collective posts. Tongju stood back and watched as the massive hangar doors were opened, revealing a railed path across the deck to the standing launch tower at the opposite end of the platform. A series of electrical motors were then started, which reverberated loudly off the hangar's interior walls. Tongju walked behind a console panel and peered over Ling's shoulder as the launch leader's hands danced over the control board. When a row of lights suddenly glowed green, Ling pointed to another engineer, who activated the mobile cradle.

The two-hundred-foot horizontal rocket rocked sluggishly toward the hangar doors, its support cradle creeping forward on a countless mass of wheels that churned like the legs of a centipede. With its base thrusters leading the way, the rocket crept through the doors and into the daylight, its white paint glistening under the morning sun. Tongju strolled alongside the rolling launch vehicle, admiring the potent power of the huge rocket while amazed at its massive girth in the prone position. Several hundred yards away, the Koguryo stood off the platform, a throng of crew and engineers craning from her top deck to catch a glimpse of the big rocket under way.

Crossing the open deck, the mechanical caterpillar ground to a halt as it reached the base of the launch tower. The upper section of the rocket had not completely cleared the hangar and a sliding panel in the hangar roof suddenly crept open to provide clearance. The transporter was locked securely in place to the deck and then the erector mechanicals were engaged, activating hydraulic pumps that pushed gently against the rocket's cradle. With delicate patience, the launch vehicle was slowly tilted upright, its nose sliding through the hangar roof opening, until it stood vertically against the launch tower. A series of support braces clamped the rocket to the platform, while a jumble of fuel, cooling, and venting lines were affixed and checked. Several workmen on the tower plugged in a series of data cables that allowed the engineers on the Koguryo to monitor the dozens of electronic sensors embedded under the rocket's skin. Once the Zenit was affixed upright, the erector transporter support cradle was gently eased away, leaving the rocket braced only by the launch tower. With a hydraulic murmur, the cradle was slowly lowered to its original horizontal position and returned to the hangar, where it would be sheltered out of harm's way during launch.