Black wind

object.
    “Yes,” Delgado replied. “The Narwhal has already radioed her to halt, so we’ll intercept her after she’s had a chance to slow. She’s reported herself as the Maru Santo out of Osaka.”
    An hour later, the Deep Endeavor hove to alongside the Maru Santo, a rusty, multipurpose cargo freighter of small size by inter-Pacific standards. Aimes’s Sea Marshal team, along with Summer, Dahlgren, and three other NUMA crewmen, climbed into a small launch and motored over to the freighter, tying up to a rust-stained stairwell that was lowered over the side. Having made fast friends with the bomb-sniffing dogs, Summer quickly volunteered to take the leash of one of the retrievers. As Aimes and Dahlgren met with the freighter’s captain to review the manifest, the remaining contingent began a bow-to-stern search of the ship. With the dogs leading the way, the search crew wedged through the ship’s holds, checking the container seals and examining several loose crated shipments of running shoes and apparel manufactured in Taiwan. A gritty Malaysian crew looked on with bored amusement as the yellow Labs sniffed their way through the dimly lit crew’s quarters.
    Dirk stood on the bridge of the Deep Endeavor, studying the Japanese cargo ship. A pair of the freighter’s crew stood on the deck looking back at the NUMA vessel. Dirk tossed a friendly wave as the two
    men leaned against a railing in disheveled clothes, smoking cigarettes and cracking jokes in an obviously relaxed manner.
    “There is no threat from this ship,” he turned and said with certainty to Captain Burch.
    “How can you be so sure?”
    “The crew is too lax. The men on Kang’s ship were no-nonsense professionals, not the ragtag jovial sort on this tub. There would be a slew of paranoid undercover security types running around as well,” he added, recalling the image of Tongju and his men.
    “Be worth noting to Aimes when he gets back. If nothing else, it’s still a good practice exercise for the boys. And, heck, I got Dahlgren off the bridge for a few minutes at least,” the captain smiled.
    “We’ve still got to find them first. There’s just too many places to hide at sea,” Dirk muttered.
    As the search team appeared above decks for a moment, Captain Burch picked up a pair of binoculars and scanned the horizon. He noted a pair of dots far to the southwest, then scanned to the north, taking in the Narwhal as she started to pull away from the containership. Burch started to drop the binoculars when a sudden glint caught his eye. Raising the glasses and adjusting the focus, he smiled broadly, then spoke to Dirk.
    “I guess there will be a few less places to hide on the sea now that our illustrious leaders of the deep are checking things out from the balcony.”
    Two thousand feet above the calmly rolling swells of the Pacific, the silver Icarus floated gracefully across the sky at thirty-five miles per hour. While the elder Pitt handled the blimp’s flight controls, Giordino adjusted a row of dials at the base of a flat-panel color monitor. A WE SCAM long-distance camera mounted to the side of the gondola, a supplement to the LASH imaging system, fed into the
    monitor, providing a zoom image of objects located hundreds of yards away. Pitt glanced from the flight controls to the monitor, which displayed a close-up picture of the stern of a small boat where two bikini-clad women were stretched out sunbathing.
    “I hope your girlfriend doesn’t catch wind of your voyeuristic tendencies,” Pitt laughed.
    “Just testing the resolution,” Giordino replied in a serious tone while prankishly zooming the image in and out on one of the women’s behinds.
    “Ansel Adams you’re not. Let’s see what that setup will read with a real target,” Pitt said, turning the airship west toward an outbound vessel a few miles away. Dropping down a few hundred feet, Pitt nosed the Icarus to starboard and increased the throttle, gradually gaining ground on the departing ship. While still nearly a half mile away, Giordino zoomed the camera lens onto the stern of the black-hulled freighter, easily reading the name: “Jasmine Star… Madras.” He raised the camera along the ship’s deck, noting a stacked array of containers, before settling on the bridge mast, where the monitor revealed a flag of India snapping crisply in the breeze. “Works like a champ,” Al said proudly.
    Pitt looked at the LASH screen on the laptop, which showed an empty