Clive Cussler - Black Wind

As the lights of the unknown ship twinkled off the Odyssey's port stern in the evening darkness, Hennessey put the ship out of his mind and focused on the empty blackness before him. They were still nearly ten days to the equator and there was no telling what other obstacles might cross their path.

The experienced assault team came quickly, in the dark of night and with complete surprise. After shadowing the Odyssey for most of the evening, the Koguryo had suddenly stopped its engines, letting the self-propelled platform churn on toward the horizon. In the pilothouse of the Odyssey, the night shift helmsman and watch officer relaxed as the lights of the other ship fell away. With an autopilot steering the platform, their only concerns were monitoring the radar screen and weather forecast. But on an empty sea in the dead of night, there was little cause for concern. Focus on duty waned as the two men paced the bridge, engaging in a tireless debate about World Cup soccer rather than studying the electronic monitors about them. Had either man watched the radarscope more closely, they would have had an inkling of things to come.

Far from changing course or making repairs, the Koguryo had stopped to launch its high-speed tender. The open-decked, thirty-foot boat was a spacious and luxurious assault craft for Tongju, Kim, and the dozen other men dressed in black commando outfits who sat brandishing their assault rifles on leather-cushioned seats. Though low on stealth, the boat provided a fast and stable means of crossing open water to strike the platform with an ample attack force.

The tender bounded in darkness across the rolling waves, racing across the open sea under a bright canopy of stars that spread from horizon to horizon. The speedy boat quickly gobbled up ground between itself and the moving platform, which was lit up against the night sky like a Times Square marquee. As the tender's pilot approached the shadow of the massive platform, he steered the boat dead center under the structure, threading the boat between the Odyssey's twin pontoons. Holding its speed, the boat darted under the platform and past the thick support columns, barely skimming under a set of massive triangular supports that horizontally crisscrossed the columns just twelve feet above the water. Slowing to match speeds with the Odyssey, he inched toward the forward starboard column, where a salt-encrusted steel stairway led up to the heights above. When he edged to within a few feet, one of the commandos leaped from the bow with a small line and quickly tied it to the stairwell post. One by one, the remaining commandos jumped onto the stairwell and began the long climb to the platform above. Pausing at the top steps to catch their breath, the team paused for a moment to regroup before Tongju nodded his head to proceed. The secure door to the stairwell had been left unlocked by one of Kang's crewmen already aboard and the commandos quickly slipped through and fanned out across the deck.

Though Tongju had studied photos and plans of the Odyssey, he was still overwhelmed by the massive scale of the launch deck, which stretched well over a football field in length. At the far end stood the launch tower, separated by a large tract of open deck that led to the launch vehicle hangar. Along the recessed starboard beam sat the massive fuel storage tanks, which would gas up the rocket shortly before launch. On either side of the launch vehicle hangar stood two small buildings that housed the crew's quarters, offering accommodations for sixty-eight men plus a galley and medical station. That would be the first target.

The assault team was primed to strike simultaneously, five men to the hangar, three to the bridge, and the balance to the crew's quarters. Most of the forty-two-man crew aboard the Odyssey had little to do until the platform reached the launch site and spent the hours reading, playing cards, or watching movies. By 3 a.m." only a handful of men were still awake, mostly crewmen assigned to sail the platform or monitor the launch vehicle. When the commandos struck the crew's quarters with drill precision, the confused technicians and engineers were too stunned to react. With a blast of light and prodding from the muzzles of AK-74 assault rifles, the sleeping men were quickly roused at gunpoint. Two men playing cards in the galley thought it was some sort of equatorial prank before a swinging rifle butt knocked one to the floor. A startled chef in the kitchen dropped a stack of pans at the sight of the armed men, doing more to wake the disbelieving crew than the gunmen themselves.

In the launch vehicle hangar, it was a similar story. The small commando team rapidly swept through the air-conditioned building that housed the cradled Zenit rocket, rounding up a handful of engineers without a fight. On the bridge situated high atop the launch vehicle hangar, the two men manning the helm couldn't believe their eyes when Tongju walked in and calmly leveled his Glock pistol at the executive officer's ear. In less than ten minutes, the entire platform was secured by Tongju's men. Not a shot fired, the Sea Launch crew never expected to be commandeered in the middle of the Pacific.

The commandos were surprised to find that most of the platform's marine crew were Filipino while the launch team was an assorted mix of American, Russian, and Ukrainian engineers. The subdued multinational crew was herded to the galley where they were held at gunpoint, except for the dozen of Kang's planted crew members and satellite company representatives, who took over operational control of sailing the platform. Even Captain Hennessey, captured and roughly bound by one of Kim's men, was forced to the galley in shock, with the rest of his crew.

On the bridge, Tongju radioed the Koguryo that the platform was taken with no resistance. Examining an unfurled navigation chart left on a side table, he barked at one of Kang's crewmen now manning the helm.

“Revise bearing to fifteen degrees north-northeast. We are diverting to a new launch site.”

As the crack of dawn approached, the Koguryo maneuvered alongside the northbound Odyssey and slowed to match speeds with the platform as it mashed through five-foot swells. Edging to within twenty feet of the Odyssey, Captain Lee held the Koguryo perfectly in tandem with the moving platform's starboard beam. In the wheel-house of the Odyssey, a nervous helmsman ensured that the autopilot was properly engaged as the ex-cable-laying ship hove to alongside.

On the top deck of the hangar, Tongju supervised the movement of a large crane as it was swung out over the starboard edge of the platform. A heavy block and hook swung wildly from the end of the crane for a moment before being lowered to the rear deck of the Koguryo. A ready signal was relayed over the marine radio and the crane began hoisting up a square metal container the size of a sofa, which was swung over and lowered to the platform's main deck. Stored inside were the special canisters containing the freeze-dried chimera cultures ready to be inserted into the payload aerosol dispenser.

While the deadly virus was being hoisted to the platform, the Koguryo's tender ferried over a dozen launch and payload specialists, who immediately swarmed into the rocket hangar and began dissecting the Zenit's payload section. An additional security contingent was also ferried over to help relieve Tongju's assault commandos.

Tongju returned to the pilothouse and peered out the heavy-paned windows at the rolling sea two hundred feet beneath him. The swaying of the platform was slight as the motion rolled up from the distant pontoons beneath the surface. Gazing to his right, he saw the Koguryo begin to peel away from the Odyssey, its ferrying services complete for the time being.

“Increase speed to maximum,” his said to the helmsman.

The nervous Filipino adjusted the propulsion controls on both pontoons and then watched as the digital speed indicator slowly counted upward.