Black wind

minutes on the bottom cost us another thirteen of decompression time. I’ll be sucking my tank dry before thirty-eight minutes rolls around,” Dahlgren said, eyeing his depleted air gauge. Before Dirk could answer, they heard a muffled metallic clang in the distance.
    “Never fear, Leo is here,” Dirk remarked, pointing at an object forty feet to their side.
    A pair of silver scuba tanks with attached regulators dangled at the twenty-foot mark, tied to a rope that ascended to the surface. At the other end of the rope, Delgado stood munching a banana on the back deck of the Grunion, tracking the men’s air bubbles and making sure they didn’t stray too far from the boat. After hovering for a fifteen-minute decompression stop at twenty feet, the men grabbed the regulators affixed to the dangling tanks and floated up to ten feet for another twenty-five-minute wait. When Dirk and Dahlgren finally surfaced and climbed aboard the boat, Delgado acknowledged the men with just a wave as he turned the boat for landfall.
    As the boat motored into the calmer waters of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Dirk unwrapped the bomb canister fragments and laid them on the deck.
    “No sign of one of these on the aircraft, or in the hangar?” Dirk asked.
    “Definitely not. There was plenty of parts, tools, and other debris in the hangar, but nothing that looked like that,” Dahlgren replied, eyeing the pieces. “Why would a canister crack open like that?”
    “Because it’s made of porcelain,” Dirk replied, holding a shard up for Dahlgren’s closer inspection.
    Dahlgren ran a finger over the surface, then shook his head. “A porcelain bomb. Very handy for attacking tea parties, I presume.”
    “Must have something to do with the payload.” Dirk rearranged the fragments until they fit roughly together, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The payload armament had long since washed away in the sea, but several compartmentalized sections formed in the interior were clearly evident.
    “Looks like different combustibles were to react together when detonated.”
    “An incendiary bomb?” Dahlgren asked.
    “Perhaps,” Dirk replied quietly. He then reached into the side
    pocket of his BC and pulled out the digital timer. “Someone went to a fair amount of trouble to retrieve one of these bombs,” he said, tossing the timer over to Dahlgren.
    Dahlgren studied the device, turning it over in his hands.
    “Maybe it was the original owner,” he finally said with seriousness. Raising his arm with the timer in his palm, he showed Dirk the backside of the clock. In raised lettering on the plastic case was an indecipherable line of Asian script.
    Like A pack of hyenas fighting over a freshly killed zebra, the president’s security advisers were biting and yipping at each other in a self-serving attempt to dodge responsibility over the events in Japan. Tempers flared across the Cabinet Room, situated in the West Wing of the White House.
    “It’s a breakdown of intelligence, clear and simple. Our consulates are not getting the intelligence support they need and two of my people are dead as a result,” the secretary of state complained harshly.
    “We had no advance knowledge of an increase in terrorist activity in Japan. Diplomatic feeds from State reported that Japanese security forces were in the dark as well,” the deputy CIA director fired back.
    “Gentlemen, what’s done is done,” the president interjected as he attempted to light a large old-fashioned smoking pipe. Bearing the physical appearance of Teddy Roosevelt and the no-nonsense demeanor of Harry Truman, President Garner Ward was widely admired by the public for his common sense and pragmatic style. The
    first-term president from Montana welcomed spirited debate among his staff and cabinet but had a low tolerance for finger-pointing and self-serving pontification.
    “We need to understand the nature of the threat and the motives of our opponent, and then calculate a course of action,” the president said simply “I’d also like a recommendation as to whether Homeland Security should issue an elevated domestic security alert.” He nodded toward Dennis Jimenez, sitting across the Cabinet Room conference table, who served as secretary of the homeland security department. “But first, we need to figure out who these characters are. Martin, why don’t you fill us in on what we know so far?” the president said, addressing FBI Director Martin Finch.
    An ex-Marine Corps