Black wind

gently eased the blimp alongside the submersible. Pitt leaned down and secured the Badger’s top hatch, then took a few steps and staggered into the open door of the gondola, where Dirk and Dahlgren grabbed his arms and yanked him safely aboard.
    “I believe,” he said to Giordino in a dry parched voice, “I’ll take that drink now.”
    Pitt slipped into the blimp’s copilot seat and gulped down a bottled water as Al, Dirk, and Jack described the fiery disintegration of the Zenit rocket minutes before. While studying the vapor trails in the
    sky and eyeing the Koguryo fleeing in the distance, Pitt countered with a description of his drilling attack on the Odyssey’s support columns and the tumultuous assault from the wake of the blastoff.
    “And here I had good money down that you were lolling about in the Odyssey’s lounge nursing a martini,” Giordino grumbled.
    “I was the one shaken and stirred,” Pitt laughed. “Would have been baked alive when the Badger got jammed against the side pontoon, but I was able to manually force the rudder against the surge and broke free into cooler water. Even with the ballast tanks purged, it took me a while to surface until I got the bilge pump working. There’s still a lot of water sloshing around inside, but she should stay afloat a while longer.”
    “I’ll radio Deep Endeavor and have her fish the Badger out once they’ve picked up the platform crew on Santa Barbara Island,” Giordino replied.
    “I will have a furious sister on my hands if you first don’t let her know you are safe,” Dirk chided.
    Summer nearly fell over when her father’s voice crackled through the Deep Endeavor’s radio, jokingly ordering a beer and a peanut butter sandwich.
    “We feared the worst,” she gushed. “What on earth happened to you?”
    “It’s a long story. Suffice it to say that the Scripps Institute isn’t going to be too happy with my submarine-driving skills,” he said, leaving all on the bridge of the Deep Endeavor scratching their heads.
    As Giordino lifted the airship up off the water, Pitt noticed the F-16s circling the fleeing Koguryo.
    “Cavalry finally arrive?” he asked.
    “Just moments ago. The Navy has an armada headed this way as well. She’s not going to get away.”
    “Her tender is sure making haste,” Pitt said, nodding toward a white speck to the south.
    Lost in the spectacle and confusion was the Koguryo’s tender, which had slipped quietly away from her mother ship and was now motoring south toward the horizon at high speed.
    “How do you know that’s her tender?” Giordino asked, squinting downrange.
    “Over here,” Pitt replied, tapping the WE SCAM monitor. Pitt had been fooling around with the zoom lens while talking and happened to catch the speeding boat flashing by. The focused image clearly showed it was the Koguryo’s tender, which they had observed earlier.
    “The jets definitely aren’t tracking her,” Dirk said from the rear, noting the F-16s circling tightly around the Koguryo as she sailed farther to the west.
    “Let’s stay on her,” Pitt stated.
    “She has nary a chance against our fleet wings aflutter,” Giordino snarled, pushing the throttles to full and watching as the airspeed indicator crept slowly toward 50 knots.
    Why haven’t they fired on the aircraft, or that infernal airship?” Tongju swore as he stared at the Koguryo through a pair of binoculars. The bouncing movement of the tender as it ran at full speed through the waves made it impossible for him to steady his gaze and he finally threw the glasses down harshly onto a cowling.
    “The aircraft have intimidated Lee,” Kim said over his shoulder as he clutched the steering wheel tightly. “He will pay with his life in about two more minutes.”
    The Koguryo was growing smaller on the horizon as the tender accelerated south. But when the planted explosives detonated, they could clearly see puffs of water spray into the air along the ship’s hull line.
    Standing on the bridge, Captain Lee at first thought that the F-16s had fired on him. But the warbirds still circled lazily above, and there was no sign that they had fired any missiles. As the damage assessments came in reporting that the lower hull was compromised in several locations, Lee suddenly realized the culprit. Minutes before, a
    crewman had reported observing Kim and Tongju board the tender and the small boat was now seen running south at high speed. With a sick sensation of