Black wind

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,