Black Wind - Cussler Clive - Страница 20

Kicking his fins gentry, Dirk then glided over to the other crate and found a similar scene. All of the bomb canisters had been crushed by the falling torpedo in the second crate as well. Only this time, he counted five bombs, not six. One of the casings was empty. Dirk shined his light around and surveyed the area. The deck was clear in all directions, and no fragments were evident in the empty slot. One of the bombs was missing.

“Elevator, going up,” Dahlgren's voice suddenly crackled.

“Hold the door, I'll be right there,” Dirk replied, glancing at his watch to see that they had overrun their bottom time by almost five minutes. Examining the smashed crates a last time, he tugged on one of the less mangled bombs. The ordnance slipped out of its case but fell apart into three separate pieces in Dirk's hands. As best he could, he gently placed the pieces into a large mesh dive bag, then, holding tight, he kicked toward the open hatch above. Pulling the bag through the hatch after him, Dirk found Dahlgren hovering above the sub's bow a few yards in front of him. Joining his dive partner, the two wasted no time in kicking toward their decompression stop.

Tracking their depth as they rose, Dirk flared his body out like a sky-diver at forty feet to slow his ascent and purged a shot of air out of his BC. Dahlgren followed suit and the two men stabilized themselves at a depth of twenty feet to help rid their bodies of elevated levels of nitrogen in their blood.

“That extra five minutes on the bottom cost us another thirteen of decompression time. I'll be sucking my tank dry before thirty-eight minutes rolls around,” Dahlgren said, eyeing his depleted air gauge. Before Dirk could answer, they heard a muffled metallic clang in the distance.

“Never fear, Leo is here,” Dirk remarked, pointing at an object forty feet to their side.

A pair of silver scuba tanks with attached regulators dangled at the twenty-foot mark, tied to a rope that ascended to the surface. At the other end of the rope, Delgado stood munching a banana on the back deck of the Grunion, tracking the men's air bubbles and making sure they didn't stray too far from the boat. After hovering for a fifteen-minute decompression stop at twenty feet, the men grabbed the regulators affixed to the dangling tanks and floated up to ten feet for another twenty-five-minute wait. When Dirk and Dahlgren finally surfaced and climbed aboard the boat, Delgado acknowledged the men with just a wave as he turned the boat for landfall.

As the boat motored into the calmer waters of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Dirk unwrapped the bomb canister fragments and laid them on the deck.

“No sign of one of these on the aircraft, or in the hangar?” Dirk asked.

“Definitely not. There was plenty of parts, tools, and other debris in the hangar, but nothing that looked like that,” Dahlgren replied, eyeing the pieces. “Why would a canister crack open like that?”

“Because it's made of porcelain,” Dirk replied, holding a shard up for Dahlgren's closer inspection.

Dahlgren ran a finger over the surface, then shook his head. “A porcelain bomb. Very handy for attacking tea parties, I presume.”

“Must have something to do with the payload.” Dirk rearranged the fragments until they fit roughly together, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The payload armament had long since washed away in the sea, but several compartmentalized sections formed in the interior were clearly evident.

“Looks like different combustibles were to react together when detonated.”

“An incendiary bomb?” Dahlgren asked.

“Perhaps,” Dirk replied quietly. He then reached into the side pocket of his BC and pulled out the digital timer. “Someone went to a fair amount of trouble to retrieve one of these bombs,” he said, tossing the timer over to Dahlgren.

Dahlgren studied the device, turning it over in his hands.

“Maybe it was the original owner,” he finally said with seriousness. Raising his arm with the timer in his palm, he showed Dirk the backside of the clock. In raised lettering on the plastic case was an indecipherable line of Asian script.

Like A pack of hyenas fighting over a freshly killed zebra, the president's security advisers were biting and yipping at each other in a self-serving attempt to dodge responsibility over the events in Japan. Tempers flared across the Cabinet Room, situated in the West Wing of the White House.

“It's a breakdown of intelligence, clear and simple. Our consulates are not getting the intelligence support they need and two of my people are dead as a result,” the secretary of state complained harshly.

“We had no advance knowledge of an increase in terrorist activity in Japan. Diplomatic feeds from State reported that Japanese security forces were in the dark as well,” the deputy CIA director fired back.

“Gentlemen, what's done is done,” the president interjected as he attempted to light a large old-fashioned smoking pipe. Bearing the physical appearance of Teddy Roosevelt and the no-nonsense demeanor of Harry Truman, President Garner Ward was widely admired by the public for his common sense and pragmatic style. The first-term president from Montana welcomed spirited debate among his staff and cabinet but had a low tolerance for finger-pointing and self-serving pontification.

“We need to understand the nature of the threat and the motives of our opponent, and then calculate a course of action,” the president said simply “I'd also like a recommendation as to whether Homeland Security should issue an elevated domestic security alert.” He nodded toward Dennis Jimenez, sitting across the Cabinet Room conference table, who served as secretary of the homeland security department. “But first, we need to figure out who these characters are. Martin, why don't you fill us in on what we know so far?” the president said, addressing FBI Director Martin Finch.

An ex-Marine Corps MP, Finch still sported a crew cut and spoke with the blunt voice of a basic training drill sergeant.

“Sir, the assassinations of Ambassador Hamilton and Deputy Chief of Mission Bridges appear to have been performed by the same individual. Surveillance video from the hotel where Bridges was killed exposed a suspect dressed as a waiter who was not known to be an employee of the hotel. Photographs from the video were matched to eyewitness accounts of an individual seen at the Tokyo area golf course shortly before Ambassador Hamilton was shot.”

“Any tie-in to the killing of the executive Chris Gavin and the Sem-Con plant explosion?” the president inquired.

“None that we have been able to identify, although there is a potential indicator in the note left with Bridges's body. We are, of course, treating it as a related incident.”

“And what of the suspect?” the secretary of state asked.

“The Japanese authorities have been unable to make a match in their known criminal files, or provide a possible identification, for that Matter. He was not a previously recognized member of the Japanese Red Army cell. He is apparently something of an unknown. The Japanese law enforcement agencies are cooperating fully in the manhunt and have placed their immigration checkpoints on high alert.”

“Despite no prior connection, there would seem to be little doubt that he is operating under the auspices of the Japanese Red Army,” the CIA deputy added.

“The note left with Bridges. What did it say?” asked Jimenez.

Finch rifled through a folder, then pulled out a typewritten sheet.

“Translated from Japanese, it says: ”Be vanquished, American imperialists who soil Nippon with greed, or death will blow her cold, sweet breath to the shores of America. JRA.“ Classic fringe cult hyperbole.”

“What is the state of the Japanese Red Army? I thought they were essentially dissolved a number of years ago,” President Ward asked. Waiting for the reply, he tilted his head back and blew a cloud of cherry-scented tobacco smoke toward the paneled ceiling before Finch answered.