Black wind

zone, with the Channel Islands as a baseline. We’ll set up position about ten miles west of Santa Catalina as our base monitoring position.”
    Two hours later, they cruised beyond the large island of Catalina
    and the engines slowed as they neared their station point. At a slow crawl, the Deep Endeavor began patrolling a large north-to-south loop west of the island, using the ship’s radar as surveillance eyes. A sprinkling of pleasure craft and fishing boats was all the radar detected, along with a Coast Guard cutter on patrol nearby to the north.
    “We are positioned well south of the main shipping lane to L.A. and not likely to catch much night traffic in this quadrant,” Aimes said. “We’ll get tossed into the fray in the morning when Icarus shows up for work. In the meantime, I suggest we take shifts and get some sleep.”
    Dirk took the hint and walked out onto the bridge wing, inhaling a deep breath of sea air. The night was still and damp and the seas almost as flat as a pancake. As he stood in the darkness, his mind tumbled over his meeting with Kang and the less-than-implicit threat that the mogul had delivered to Summer and him. Another week and the South Korean Assembly vote would be history and the legal authorities could pursue Kang with full fury. That’s all they needed. A week without incident. As he stared at the sea, a chilled gust of wind suddenly whisked his face, then fell away again just as suddenly, leaving a tranquil and seeming calm.
    By 9 p.m.” the Odyssey had backtracked some three hundred miles and was now approaching the designated launch position calibrated in Inchon. Tongju, catching up on some lost sleep in Captain Hennessey’s cabin, was startled awake by a rapid pounding at the door. An armed commando entered the room and bowed as Tongju sat up and began pulling on his boots.
    “So sorry to intrude,” the commando said apologetically. “It’s Captain Lee. He has requested that you return to the Koguryo at once. There is some sort of dispute with the Russian launch engineers.”
    Tongju nodded, then shook off the cobwebs and made his way to the pilothouse, where he verified that the platform was still cruising north-northeast at 12 knots. Radioing for the Koguryo’s tender, he made his way down the long flight of stairs on the forward piling and hopped into the idling boat that awaited him. A short ride took him to the nearby support ship, where Captain Lee was waiting for him.
    “Come with me to the Launch Control Center. It’s those damn
    Ukrainians,” the captain cursed. “They can’t agree on where to position the platform for launch. I think they’re going to kill one another.” The two men made their way down a flight of stairs and along an interior passageway to the expansive Launch Control Center. As Lee opened a side entry door, a loud staccato of foreign swearing burst upon their ears. At the center of the room, a group of launch engineers were huddled loosely around the two Ukrainian launch specialists, who stood toe-to-toe with their arms in the air arguing violently with each other. The crowd of engineers parted as Tongju and Lee approached, but the Ukrainians didn’t skip a beat. Looking on in disgust, Tongju turned and grabbed a padded console chair, then lifted it over his head and hurled it at the two jabbering engineers. The gathered spectators gasped as the chair flew into the two men, smashing into their heads and chests before ricocheting to the floor with a crash. The stunned Ukrainians finally fell silent as they shook off the blow from the flying chair and turned toward the two men. “What is the issue here?” Tongju growled.
    One of the Ukrainians, a goateed man with shaggy brown hair, cleared his throat before speaking.
    “It is the weather. The high-pressure front over the eastern Pacific, specifically off North America, has stalled due to the push from a low-pressure system in the south.” “And what does this mean?”
    “The normally prevailing high-altitude easterly winds have, in fact, reversed and we are instead facing a strong headwind at the moment. This has thrown off our planned mission flight profile by a considerable margin.” Shuffling through a file of papers, he pulled out a sheaf of algorithmic paper containing numerous calculations and trajectory profiles handwritten in pencil.
    “Our base mission plan has been to fuel the Zenit rocket first stage at fifty percent of capacity, which will produce an estimated