Black wind

of carnage. Twisted and jagged edges of the white metal skin jutted inward as if mashed by a giant sledgehammer. Pitt maneuvered the ROV to peer inside but there was little to be seen besides mashed metal.
    “This has to be the payload. It must have struck the water on its end,” Pitt remarked.
    “Maybe there’s something exposed on the other side,” Giordino said.
    Pitt quickly guided the ROV along the length of the horizontal rocket section until reaching the opposite end, then glided the submersible around in a wide U-turn. Shining the ROV’s illuminating lights into the exposed end, Pitt and Giordino craned at the monitor to get a closer look. The first thing that Pitt noticed was an inward-flared ring around the interior edge. It was apparent that the smaller-diameter Stage 3 rocket section had been mated to the section at this end. Inching the ROV closer, they could see that a vertical piece of fairing had been stripped off the rocket along the exposed top side. Raising the ROV until it hovered just above the prone rocket, Pitt guided the submersible along its upper side, following the open seam with the cameras pointed inside. After viewing a maze of tubes and wiring, Pitt stopped the ROV as the video image suddenly displayed a flat board that glistened under the submersible’s high-power lights. A wide grin quickly spread across Pitt’s face.
    “I do believe that there’s a solar panel shining back at us,” he said.
    “Well done, Dr. von Braun,” Giordino replied, nodding.
    As the ROV inched forward, they could clearly see the folded wings of the solar panels and the cylindrical body of the mock satellite through the open seam. Though the nose cone had been mashed at impact, the satellite payload inside had survived intact, and, with it, the deadly cargo of virus.
    After carefully studying the integrity of the entire payload section with the remote video, Pitt returned the ROV to the Deep Endeavor and directed the vessel into salvage mode. Though Deep Endeavor was primarily an exploration vessel, she was equipped to handle light salvage with the help of her onboard submersibles. Despite the loss of the Badger, Pitt and Giordino employed a backup submersible to affix a sling support around the payload and slowly bring the rocket section to the surface with the aid of large lift bags. Under cover of darkness and away from the prying eyes of the occasional media boat, the payload was hoisted out of the water and onto the deck of the Deep Endeavor. Pitt and Giordino looked on as the rocket piece was secured and covered under a shroud of canvas.
    “That’ll give the intelligence boys something to chew on for a while,” Giordino said.
    “It will certainly prove that the attack was not attempted by an amateur group of terrorists. Once the lethality of the payload is revealed to the public, the ignoble Mr. Kang will wish he was never born.”
    Giordino waved an arm toward a fuzzy glow of light on the eastern horizon. “All things considered, I’d say the good people of Los Angeles owe us a beer for protecting their fair city … and maybe the keys to the Playboy Mansion.”
    “They have Dirk and Summer to thank.”
    “Too bad they weren’t here to see this baby come up.”
    “I still haven’t heard from the kids since we dropped them at the dock.”
    “They’re probably doing the same thing their old man would have done,” Giordino grinned. “Slipped the intelligence interview and headed down to Manhattan Beach for some surfing.”
    Pitt laughed briefly then looked out at the dark sea as his thoughts wandered. No, he knew, now wasn’t the time for that.
    Forty-two thousand feet above the Pacific, Dirk sat in the cramped seat of a government jet trying to get some sleep. But the adrenaline still surged through his body, keeping him awake as the plane nosed closer to South Korea. It was just hours before that he and Summer had been summoned off the Deep Endeavor to brief FBI and Defense Department intelligence officials on their meeting with Kang and to provide details about the industrialist’s fortified residence.
    They learned that Sandecker had finally persuaded the president, and the White House had issued orders to get Kang, swiftly and silently and without informing the South Korean government. An assault plan had been formulated, targeting several of Kang’s facilities, including the shipyard at Inchon. The mysterious leader had not been seen in public for days so his private