Black Wind (Dirk Pitt 18)

"The smoke is starting to clear. Once the helipad opens up, I'll take us in for a closer look," Giordino replied.

As they drifted back toward the bow of the platform, Dahlgren looked down and grimaced.

"Damn. The Badger's gone, too. Must have sank during the launch."

The threesome fell quiet, reflecting that the disappearance of the submersible was the least of their losses.

Three miles to the south, a gunnery crewman on the Koguryo was transferring the radar-derived coordinates of the blimp into a Chinese CSA-4 surface-to-air missile guidance system. The slow-moving airship was as easy an objective as the gunnery crew could ever hope to target. With such a large object at close range, the odds of failing to strike the blimp were nearly zero.

In an enclosed room adjacent to the dual missile canister, a weapons

control expert stood at a console transferring the firing guidance through a missile command link. A row of green lights flashed at him as the engagement radar embedded in the missile acknowledged a tar-get lock. The man immediately picked up a telephone receiver that ran directly to the bridge.

"Target acquired and missile armed," he said in monotone to Captain Lee. "Awaiting orders to fire."

Lee looked out a bridge side window toward the blimp hovering over the platform in the distance. The high-powered missile exploding into the airship would make for a spectacular display, he thought childishly. Perhaps they should also destroy the distant turquoise vessel that lingered on the edge of their radar screen and then make a clean escape. But, first things first. He moved the receiver to his mouth to issue the command to fire when suddenly his lips froze. His eyes had detected a small pair of dark objects emerging from behind the airship. He stood frozen and watched as the objects quickly materialized into a pair of low-flying aircraft.

The F-16D Falcon fighter jets had been scrambled from an Air National Guard base in Fresno minutes after a NORAD satellite had detected the launch of the Zenit rocket. While flying toward the launch site, the pilots were directed to the Koguryo with the help of the Coast Guard distress call that had originated from the Deep Endeavor. The sleek gray jets flew low above the water and burst over the Koguryo just a few hundred feet above her fore bridge The crackling roar of the jets' engines struck a second after their shadows had whisked by overhead, rattling the windows of the bridge where Lee stood with a sickened look on his face.

"Stand down! Stand down and secure the battery!" he barked over the phone. As the SAM was stowed away, Lee watched as the two fighter jets gained altitude and began crisply circling the fast-moving ship.

"You!" he cursed at a crewman standing nearby. "Find Tongju and bring him to the bridge ... at once."

The men in the blimp beamed in relief at the sight of the Air National Guard jets circling above the Koguryo, having no idea how close they were to being blasted out of the sky by the ship's SAM battery. They knew that a horde of Navy ships was on the way and that there was little chance the ship would escape apprehension now. They again turned their attention to the smoke-covered platform below.

"The haze is lifting off the helipad," Giordino observed. "I'll set her down if you boys want to jump off and take a look around."

"Absolutely," Dirk replied. "Jack, we can start with the bridge, then move down to the hangar if the air is breathable."

"I'd start with the ship's lounge," Giordino said, trying to cut the somber mood. "If he's okay, my money says he's mixing a martini and eating up the ship's store of pretzels."

Giordino swung the blimp wide of the platform, bringing the airship around with its nose into the wind. As he lined upon the helipad and began dropping altitude, Dahlgren stuck his head back into the cockpit and pointed out the side window.

"Take a look over there," he said.

Several hundred feet off the side of the platform, a sudden surge of bubbles erupted from beneath the surface. A few seconds later, a mottled gray metallic object broke the surface.

"Launch debris?" Dahlgren asked.

"No, it's the Badger^" Giordino exclaimed.

Guiding the airship toward the object, the three men could see that it was in fact the NUMA submersible bobbing low in the water. The underwater vehicle's bright metallic paintwork had been cooked off in the launch blast, leaving its skin a dappled mix of primer and bare metal. The bow section was bent and mangled, as if it had been involved in a head-on traffic accident. How the thing still managed to float was anybody's guess, but there was no denying it was

the experimental submersible Dirk and Dahlgren had sailed to the platform.

As Giordino brought the blimp down for a closer look, the three men were stunned to see the top hatch suddenly twist and pop open. A cloud of steaming vapor streamed from the open hatch as they looked on incredulously. For several agonizing seconds, their eyes hung glued to the hatch, hoping against hope. Finally, they saw the odd apparition of a pair of stockinged feet rise up and out of the hatch. A patch of dark hair then appeared and they realized that the feet they observed were actually hands covered in a pair of socks. The stocking-wrapped hands, protected from the hot metal, quickly hoisted up the lean, racked body of their owner from the enclosed oven.

"It's Dad! He's okay!" Dirk exclaimed with glaring relief.

Pitt climbed

to his feet and swayed on the rocking sub, sucking in lungfuls of the cool ocean air. He was a haggard mass of blood and sweat, and his clothes stuck to him as if they were glued to his skin. But his eyes shined as he looked skyward and threw a jaunty wave to the men in the gondola.

"Going down," Giordino announced as he proceeded to guide the blimp down toward the sea until the gondola was skimming just inches above the waves. With a deft touch, Giordino gently eased the blimp alongside the submersible. Pitt leaned down and secured the Badger's top hatch, then took a few steps and staggered into the open door of the gondola, where Dirk and Dahlgren grabbed his arms and yanked him safely aboard.

"I believe," he said to Giordino in a dry parched voice, "I'll take that drink now."

Pitt slipped into the blimp's copilot seat and gulped down a bottled water as Al, Dirk, and Jack described the fiery disintegration of the Zenit rocket minutes before. While studying the vapor trails in the