Black wind

pushed away a cleaned plate of Pasta Alfredo and rubbed his taut stomach with satisfaction.
    “Excellent dining choice.”
    “We eat here all the time,” Sarah said as she reached over and out-grabbed Dirk for the bill.
    “I insist on returning the favor,” Dirk said, looking at Sarah with a serious smile.
    “Sandy and I have to travel to the CDC research lab in Spokane for a few days, but I’d love to take you up when we return,” she replied, intentionally leaving Sandy out of the equation.
    Dirk smiled in acknowledgment. “I can’t wait.”
    The landing wheels of the Gulfstream V jet dropped slowly from the fuselage as the sleek aircraft aligned its nose at the runway. Its wings cut through the moist, hazy air like a scalpel, as the nineteen-passenger luxury business jet dropped gracefully out of the sky until its rubber tires touched the tarmac with a screech and a wisp of blue smoke. The pilot guided the plane to the corporate jet terminal of Tokyo’s modern Narita International Airport before shutting down the high-pitched turbines. As a ground crew chocked the wheels of the jet, a gleaming black Lincoln limousine glided up, stopping precisely at the base of the plane’s passenger stairwell.
    Chris Gavin squinted in the bright sun as he stepped down from the jet and climbed into the waiting limo, followed by a legion of assistants and assorted vice presidents. As chief executive officer of SemCon Industries, Gavin commanded the largest semiconductor manufacturing company in the world. The flamboyant and free-spending corporate chief, who inherited the company from a visionary father, had alienated many of his countrymen in the United States by closing profitable factories and brusquely laying off thousands of workers at home in order to move production to newer and cheaper facilities offshore. Profits would be higher, he promised his shareholders, while taking personal delight in broadening his elaborate lifestyle to a worldwide setting.
    Exiting the airport grounds located some sixty-six kilometers northeast of Tokyo, the limo driver entered the Higashi Kanto Expressway and headed toward Japan’s capital city with his cargo of high-salaried executives. Twenty minutes later, the driver turned south, exiting the highway some twenty kilometers short of Tokyo. The limo soon entered the industrial section of Chiba, a large port city on the eastern edge of Tokyo Bay. The driver wound past a number of large drab manufacturing buildings before pulling up in front of a sleek glass building overlooking the bay. The modern structure looked more like an executive office building than the industrial fabrication plant it contained, with its shimmering face of gold reflective windows rising four stories high. Mounted on the roof in huge block letters was a blue semcon neon sign, which could be seen for miles away. A large crowd of factory workers, all clad in pale blue lab coats, waited anxiously on the grounds for the arrival of their CEO to officially open the new facility.
    The crowd cheered and cameras flashed as Gavin exited the limo and waved to the assembled employees and media, baring a wide, capped-tooth grin. After a pair of long-winded welcome speeches by the mayor of Chiba and the new plant manager, Gavin offered a few polished words of thanks and inspiration to the employees, then hoisted a comically oversized pair of scissors and cut a thick ribbon stretched tight across the entrance to the new building. As the crowd applauded politely, a muffled boom echoed from somewhere in the depths of the building, which some mistook for a firing of celebratory fireworks. But then a succession of louder explosions rocked the building and the assembly of employees suddenly gasped in confusion.
    In the heart of the building’s silicon chip fabrication center, a small
    timed charge had detonated on a tank of silane gas, a highly flammable substance used in the growth of silicon crystals. Exploding like a torpedo, the tank had flung metallic fragments at high velocity into a half-dozen additional silane and oxygen tanks stored nearby, causing them to burst in a series of concussions that culminated in a massive fireball inside the building. Soaring temperatures soon caused the exterior windows to blast out in a burst of hot air, showering the stunned crowd with a hail of glass and debris.
    As the building shook and flames roared from the roof, the panicked employees began to scramble in all directions. Gavin