Black wind

stubbornness.
    The Navy SEAL from Bend, Oregon, hunched back down in the rickety sampan and glanced at the three men lying low under the gunwale besides him. Like McCasland, they were clad in black underwater wet suits, with matching fins, mask, and backpack. As their mission was one of reconnaissance, they were armed for only minimal close quarters combat, each carrying a compact Heckler & Koch MP5K 9mm submachine gun. Clipped to their vests were an assorted mix of miniature still and video cameras, as well as a pair of night vision goggles.
    The weathered boat putted past the commercial docks of Inchon, trailing a pall of blue smoke from its sputtering outboard motor. To the casual eye, the sampan appeared like a thousand others in the region used by merchants and tradesmen up and down the coastal Korean waters as a common mode of transport. Hidden beneath its aged-appearing exterior, however, was a fiberglass-hulled assault craft. With a high-speed inboard motor, the covert boat was specially built to launch and retrieve small teams of underwater special forces.
    Meandering through the quiet north corner of the harbor, the sampan approached within two hundred meters of the Kang Marine Services entry channel. Exactly on cue, the twenty-two-foot boat’s motor sputtered and coughed several times, then died. Two SEALs, disguised as a pair of derelict fishermen, began swearing loudly at each other in Korean. While one of the men tugged at the outboard motor to restart it, the other made a loud show of grabbing an oar and splashing it in the water in a clumsy attempt to row them toward shore.
    McCasland peered over the gunwale with a pair of night vision binoculars trained on the sentry post at the mouth of the channel. Two men looked back from the interior of their guard hut but made no move toward a black speedboat tied up a few feet away. Satisfied the guards were too lazy to investigate further, he called quietly to the three men beside him.
    “In the water. Now.”
    With the gracefulness of a Persian cat leaping from a settee, the three men slipped quietly over the side and into the water with barely a gurgle. McCasland adjusted his faceplate, gave a thumbs-up to the two “fishermen,” then followed the frogmen over the side. Having grown hot in the boat wearing the insulated wet suit, he was refreshed by the cool water as it seeped against his skin. Clearing his ears, he submerged to a depth of twenty feet, then leveled off, peering around
    into the black gloomy murk. The dank polluted harbor water offered only a few feet of visibility, which fell to zero at night without a flashlight. McCasland ignored the blind diving conditions and spoke into a wireless underwater communication system attached to his face mask.
    “Audio and nav check,” he barked.
    “Bravo here. Nav confirmed. Out,” came one voice.
    “Charlie here. Nav confirmed. Out,” followed a second voice, this one with a slight Georgia twang.
    “Delta here. Nav confirmed. Out,” the third diver’s voice copied.
    “Roger, stand by,” McCasland replied.
    Above them, the two SEALs in the sampan had beached the boat next to a battered and abandoned pier within sight of Kang’s security men. Making a show of repairing the boat, the two men clanged tools together and cursed loudly as they pretended to fumble with the motor while the men in the water carried out their mission.
    Below the surface, McCasland activated his Miniature Underwater GPS Receiver (MUGR), or “Mugger” as it was nicknamed. No larger than a Palm Pilot, the small device contained a navigation system that was calibrated by signals from the GPS satellite system. McCasland briefly kicked up to a depth of ten feet, where the underwater receiver could pick up the GPS signal and establish a fixed base point. A muted green display screen popped on, displaying an animated trail that zigzagged through and around a series of obstacles. Based on aerial survey photographs and the description provided by Dirk and Summer, McCasland had programmed a series of GPS way points into the Mugger. The aggregate points created a path to the covered dock entrance they could follow while completely submerged. All four divers held one of the devices, which also showed one another’s relative position with a tiny flashing light. Swimming in complete darkness, they could follow the path to the covered dock while staying within just a few feet of one another.
    “Okay, let’s move,” he spoke into