Clive Cussler - Black Wind

“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 sky and eyeing the Koguryo fleeing in the distance, Pitt countered with a description of his drilling attack on the Odyssey's support columns and the tumultuous assault from the wake of the blastoff.

“And here I had good money down that you were lolling about in the Odyssey's lounge nursing a martini,” Giordino grumbled.

“I was the one shaken and stirred,” Pitt laughed. “Would have been baked alive when the Badger got jammed against the side pontoon, but I was able to manually force the rudder against the surge and broke free into cooler water. Even with the ballast tanks purged, it took me a while to surface until I got the bilge pump working. There's still a lot of water sloshing around inside, but she should stay afloat a while longer.”

“I'll radio Deep Endeavor and have her fish the Badger out once they've picked up the platform crew on Santa Barbara Island,” Giordino replied.

“I will have a furious sister on my hands if you first don't let her know you are safe,” Dirk chided.

Summer nearly fell over when her father's voice crackled through the Deep Endeavor's radio, jokingly ordering a beer and a peanut butter sandwich.

“We feared the worst,” she gushed. “What on earth happened to you?”

“It's a long story. Suffice it to say that the Scripps Institute isn't going to be too happy with my submarine-driving skills,” he said, leaving all on the bridge of the Deep Endeavor scratching their heads.

As Giordino lifted the airship up off the water, Pitt noticed the F-16s circling the fleeing Koguryo.

“Cavalry finally arrive?” he asked.

“Just moments ago. The Navy has an armada headed this way as well. She's not going to get away.”

“Her tender is sure making haste,” Pitt said, nodding toward a white speck to the south.

Lost in the spectacle and confusion was the Koguryo's tender, which had slipped quietly away from her mother ship and was now motoring south toward the horizon at high speed.

“How do you know that's her tender?” Giordino asked, squinting downrange.

“Over here,” Pitt replied, tapping the WE SCAM monitor. Pitt had been fooling around with the zoom lens while talking and happened to catch the speeding boat flashing by. The focused image clearly showed it was the Koguryo's tender, which they had observed earlier.

“The jets definitely aren't tracking her,” Dirk said from the rear, noting the F-16s circling tightly around the Koguryo as she sailed farther to the west.

“Let's stay on her,” Pitt stated.

“She has nary a chance against our fleet wings aflutter,” Giordino snarled, pushing the throttles to full and watching as the airspeed indicator crept slowly toward 50 knots.

Why haven't they fired on the aircraft, or that infernal airship?" Tongju swore as he stared at the Koguryo through a pair of binoculars. The bouncing movement of the tender as it ran at full speed through the waves made it impossible for him to steady his gaze and he finally threw the glasses down harshly onto a cowling.

“The aircraft have intimidated Lee,” Kim said over his shoulder as he clutched the steering wheel tightly. “He will pay with his life in about two more minutes.”

The Koguryo was growing smaller on the horizon as the tender accelerated south. But when the planted explosives detonated, they could clearly see puffs of water spray into the air along the ship's hull line.

Standing on the bridge, Captain Lee at first thought that the F-16s had fired on him. But the warbirds still circled lazily above, and there was no sign that they had fired any missiles. As the damage assessments came in reporting that the lower hull was compromised in several locations, Lee suddenly realized the culprit. Minutes before, a crewman had reported observing Kim and Tongju board the tender and the small boat was now seen running south at high speed. With a sick sensation of betrayal, Lee knew that he and his ship had been deemed expendable.

But a miscalculation would save them. Kim's demolition team had planted ample explosives to rip the bowels out of a normal ship Koguryo's size. But a critical piece of information about the cable ship had not been considered: she had a double hull. The detonated charges easily ruptured the vessel's inner hull but only buckled the plates of the outer hull. Seawater gushed into the lower holds, but not with the massive force that would submerge the running ship as Tongju had envisioned. Lee immediately stopped the ship, deployed portable pumps to the damaged holds, and then sealed off the high-risk areas behind watertight doors. The ship would list and be unable to run at speed but she would not founder.

Once the flooding was halted, the captain peered through a set of field glasses at the speeding tender escaping in the distance. Lee knew that he had little to live for now. As the captain of the vessel that launched the aborted missile attack against the United States, he would be the prime scapegoat if captured. If he somehow escaped, or was released, there would be no telling what sort of reception he'd receive from Kang. Satisfied that the ship was stabilized, Lee excused himself from the bridge and retired to his cabin. Retrieving a Chinese-made Makarov 9mm pistol from beneath a dresser drawer filled with pressed shirts, Lee lay down neatly on his bed, held the barrel to his ear, and pulled the trigger.

While pursuing the speeding tender, the men in the Icarus caught sight of the series of explosions that ripped along the hull of the Koguryo. “Are those lunatics trying to scuttle her with all hands?” Dahlgren wondered.

For several minutes, they watched the ship as she slowed but held steady. Pitt noticed that there was no apparent rush for the lifeboats, and he could see several members of the crew standing idly at the rail watching the jets overhead. He studied the waterline for a significant change but could only detect a slight list.

“She's not going to disappear on us anytime soon,” he said. “Let's keep after the tender.”

Giordino glanced at the LASH system output on the laptop computer, spotting several gray shapes to the southeast approximately thirty miles away.

“Our Navy pals are on the way,” he said, tapping the screen. “They won't be alone for long.”

With a nearly 20-knot advantage in speed, the airship began easily gaining ground on the fleeing white boat. The Icarus had only ascended to a five-hundred-foot altitude when Giordino gave chase and he didn't waste power on any further climbing. The blimp glided smoothly toward the boat's wake, driving fast and low over the water. As the airship moved closer, Pitt focused the surveillance camera on the boat's open rear deck and cabin. Through the covered portico, he could only make out indiscriminate shapes at the helm.

“I count four men above decks,” he said.

“Apparently, they're not ones for a crowded escape,” Giordino replied.

Pitt scanned the camera about the deck, relieved to find no heavy armament but noting the extra drums of fuel near the stern.

“Plenty of gas for a run to Mexico,” he said.