Black Wind Read online

  "Did he identify what it was?" Gunn pressed.

  "He tried to, but working with the fellow Tanaka was difficult. "A

  gloomy, overbearing, obstinate taskmaster," he wrote about the officer.

  Typical Army-Navy rivalry, I suppose, plus the submariners didn't like his being a last-minute addition to the sailing crew. At any rate, he pressed Tanaka for information, but to no avail. Finally, just before he fell ill and was transferred off the sub in the Aleutians, he wriggled the information out of one of the pilots. The pilot, so the story goes,

  shared some sake with Tanaka and was able to pry the secret payload out of him. It was smallpox."

  "Good God, so it's true!" Gunn exclaimed.

  "Apparently so. He wrote that the payload was a freeze-dried virus, which was to be detonated and dispersed at altitude above the most concentrated population points of each city. Within two weeks, an outbreak of smallpox was expected all along the West Coast. With a thirty percent mortality rate, the deaths would have been staggering. The Japanese figured the resulting panic would allow them to negotiate a peace settlement on their terms."

  "The threat of more smallpox bombs on our home soil might very well have changed the resolve of many people to finish the war, Gunn speculated.

  An uneasiness crept over the room as the three considered how history may have played out differently had the I-403 successfully completed its mission. Their thoughts then turned to the possibility of a more current threat.

  "You mentioned that the virus was freeze-dried. So they must have had the ability to store the virus for long periods and then rejuvenate it," Dirk commented.

  "Necessary for a long sea voyage," Yaeger added. "According to Max the Japanese had difficulty in keeping the viruses alive in their munitions for any length of time. They ultimately perfected a way of freeze-drying the virus, for easier handling and longer storage, until the need for activation when deployed. Insert a little H2O and you're in business."

  "So the virus could still be a viable danger, even after sixty years at the bottom of the sea," Gunn remarked. "I guess that answers Jost's question."

  "There's no reason the smallpox wouldn't survive in freeze-dried form if the canisters hadn't cracked during sinking. Since they're made of porcelain, the canisters could survive intact for centuries underwater," Dirk said. "Might also explain the various interior segments to the bomb. A compartment with water was needed to rejuvenate the virus."

  "Perhaps it was more fortunate than we know that all but one of the canisters were demolished on the I-403," Gunn remarked.

  "That still leaves one canister unaccounted for," Dirk replied.

  "Yes, as well as the other mission ordnance," Yaeger added.

  Dirk and Gunn looked at each other. "What other mission?" Gunn asked incredulously.

  "The I-411."

  Yaeger felt their eyes boring right through him.

  "Didn't you know?" he asked. "There was a second submarine, the I-411. It, too, was armed with the Maka^e ordnance and was sent to attack the eastern seaboard of the United States," Yaeger said quietly, realizing he had just dropped a bomb of his own.

  It had been a long day for Takeo Yoshida. A crane operator for the Yokohama Port Development Corporation, Yoshida had toiled since six in the morning loading an aged Iberian freighter with container after container of Japanese consumer electronics bound for export. He had just secured the last of the metal containers onto the ship's deck when a radio crackled in the crane's control cabin.

  "Yoshida, this is Takagi," the deep voice of his foreman grumbled. "Report to Dock D-5 upon completion with San Sebastian. A single loading for the vessel Baekje. Takagi, out."

  "Affirmed, Takagi-san," Yoshida answered, holding his disdain under his breath. Just twenty minutes to go on his shift and Takagi gives him a last-minute assignment across the shipyard. Securing the crane, Yoshida walked eight hundred yards across the Honmoku Port Terminal toward Dock D-5, cursing Takagi's name with each step he took. As he approached the end of the pier, he glanced beyond at the waters of the bustling port of Yokohama, where a constant stream of commercial ships jockeyed into position for loading and unloading.

  With three hundred meters of waterfront, container terminal D-5 was big enough to handle the largest cargo ships afloat. Yoshida was surprised to find the vessel tied to the dock was not the typical jumbo containership awaiting a load of industrial cargo but a special-purpose cable ship. Yoshida even recognized the Baekje as having been built in the nearby Mitsubishi Heavy Industries shipyard. At 436 feet long and with a beam of 133 feet, the stout vessel was designed to lay fiber-optic cable on the seafloor while withstanding the turbulent seas of the North Pacific. With a modern-appearing superstructure and white paint that still glistened, Yoshida could tell that it had not been many years since the high-tech ship slid into Yokohama Bay for the first time. She sported a Korean flag above the bridge mast and a blue lightning bolt across the funnel, which Yoshida recalled was the signature of a Kang Enterprises vessel. Short on Korean history, the crane operator did not know that her name, Baekje, represented one or the early Korean tribal kingdoms that dominated the peninsula in the third century a.d.

  A pair of dockworkers was securing cables beneath an oblong object on the bed of a large flatbed truck when one of the men turned and greeted Yoshida as he approached.

  "Hey, Takeo, ever fly a submarine before?" the man yelled.

  Yoshida returned a confused look before realizing that the object on the back of the truck was a small white submersible.

  "Takagi says our shift is over once we get it aboard," the man continued, displaying a missing front tooth as he spoke. "Lay it aboard and let's go get some Sapporo's."

  "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."

  Summer stared out one of the porthole windows at a skyscraper in distant downtown Osaka. "Dirk, Rudi Gunn briefed us about the Japanese Red Army. Could they have already recovered the biological weapons from the I-411?"

  "Yes, that's a possibility. Homeland Security and the FBI don't seem to think the JRA has the resources to conduct a deep-water salvage operation and they're probably right. But, then, all it would take is money, and who's to say how well funded they, or an associate terrorist group, may be. Rudi agrees that we better make sure one way or the other."

  The room fell silent as all minds visualized a cache of deadly biological bombs sitting deep below the ocean's surface and the consequence if they fell into the wrong hands.

  "You've got the best ship and crew in NUMA at your disposal," Morgan finally said. "We'll get her done."

  "Captain, we've got a pretty large search area on our hands. How soon can we be under way?" Dirk asked.

  "We'll need to top off our fuel supplies, plus two or three of the crew

  still ashore obtaining additional provisions. I expect we can be under way in six hours," Morgan said, glancing at a wall chronometer.

  "Fine. I'll retrieve the search coordinates and provide them to the ship's navigator right away."

  As they exited the conference room, Summer tugged at Dirk's elbow.

  "So what did the data from Perlmutter cost you?" she chided, knowing the gourmet historian's penchant for culinary blackmail.

  "Nothing much. Just a jar of pickled sea urchins and an eighty-year-old bottle of sake."

  "You found those in Washington, D.C.?"

  Dirk gave his sister a pleading look of helplessness.r />
  "Well," she laughed, "we do have six more hours in port."

  But, Dae-jong, opening the gates to the North is not going to provide me a usable, skilled labor pool," the CEO of South Korea's largest auto manufacturer asserted before taking a puff on a large Cuban cigar.

  Sitting across a mahogany cocktail table, Dae-jong Kang shook his head politely as a long-legged waitress brought a second round of drinks to the table. Their conversation halted while the young Chaebel Club waitress placed their drinks in front of them. The club was a private enclave for Korea's super rich and powerful, a secure and neutral meeting place where huge deals were hammered out over kimchi and martinis. The aristocratic club was appropriately housed on the hundredth floor of the world's tallest building, the recently completed International Business Center Tower located in western Seoul.

  "You must consider the lower labor wages. Retraining costs would be minor and recouped in no time. My staff has analyzed the prospects and told me I could save twenty million dollars a year in labor costs

  if we could draw on manpower from North Korea at their current equivalent wage rate. I can only imagine what your potential auto anufacturing savings would be. Suppose instead of expanding your

  Tllsan manufacturing facility, you built an entirely new plant in the orthern province of Yanggang. How would that improve your competitiveness on the world markets, not to mention open access to the northern consumers?"

  "Yes, but it is not so easy for me. I have unions to contend with, as well as capital budget constraints. I certainly can't throw people out on the street at Ulsan and rehire workers from the North at half the price. Besides, there's a whole mind-set that we'll need to contend with if we bring on the northern worker. After all, no socialist state was ever admired for its devotion to quality output."

  "Nothing that a dose of retraining and a taste of capitalistic wages wouldn't quickly solve," Kang countered.

  "Perhaps. But, face it, there is no consumer market for automobiles in the North. The country is an economic mess, and the average man on the street is primarily concerned with putting a meal on the table. The disposable income just isn't there to aid my industry."