Black wind

The predawn light had yet to edge over the black night sky and it took just a few minutes before the sight of the Sea Rover fell away into a fuzzy grouping of twinkling lights.
    Dirk and Summer strained to watch the NUMA ship as the Baekje increased speed and distance. The twinkling lights eventually dissolved beneath the horizon until they could see nothing more of their ship and comrades.
    SIR, we seem to have lost all contact with the Sea Rover?” Rudi Gunn looked up slowly from his desk. His bespectacled blue eyes bore into the NUMA field support analyst standing nervously before him.
    “How long ago?” Gunn probed.
    “Our communications link fell nonresponsive a little over three hours ago. We continued to receive a digital GPS position update, which showed they were still fixed on site in the East China Sea. That signal was lost approximately twenty minutes ago.”
    “Did they issue a distress call?”
    “No, sir, none that we received.” Despite ten years of service with the agency, the analyst displayed obvious discomfort at being the bearer of bad news to senior management.
    “What about the Navy vessel? They were assigned an escort.”
    “Sir, the Navy rescinded their frigate escort before Sea Rover left port in Osaka due to an exercise commitment with the Taiwanese Navy.
    “That’s just great,” Gunn exclaimed in frustration.
    “Sir, we’ve requested satellite imagery from the National Reconnaissance Office. We should have something within the hour.”
    “I want search and rescue craft in the air now,” Gunn barked. “Contact the Air Force and Navy. See who’s got the closest resources and get them moving. Quick!”
    “Yes, sir,” the young man replied, nearly jumping out of Gunn’s office.
    Gunn mulled over the situation. NUMA research ships had the latest in satellite communications equipment. They wouldn’t just disappear without warning. And the Sea Rover had one of the most experienced and competent crews in the NUMA fleet. Dirk must be right, he feared. There must be a powerful operation that was pursuing the biological bombs on board the I-411.
    With a foreboding sense of dread, Gunn picked up his telephone and buzzed his secretary.
    “Dark, get me the vice president.”
    Captain Robert Morgan was not a man to go down easy. Shaking off his shattered femur and broken cheekbone as if they were a sprain and a scratch, he quickly took order of his shaken crew after being unceremoniously tossed into the confined storage hold. Seconds after his arrival, the heavy steel hatch cover was slammed down above them, the crash of the massive lid thrusting the compartment into complete darkness. Frightened whispers echoed off the steel walls while the dank air hung thick with the odor of diesel fuel.
    “Don’t panic,” Morgan bellowed in response to the murmurs. “Ryan, are you in here?”
    “Over here,” Ryan’s voice rang back from a corner.
    “There should be a spare lightweight ROV secured in the rear. Find some batteries and see if you can’t get the lights rigged,” he ordered.
    A dim light suddenly glowed in the back of the hold, the narrow beam of a portable flashlight clasped in the paw of the Sea Rover\ chief engineer.
    “We’ll get it done, Cap’n,” growled the Irish-tinged voice of the engineer, a red-haired salt named Mcintosh.
    Ryan and Mcintosh located the spare ROV in a storage cradle, and further rummaging under the faint light produced a stockpile of battery packs. Ryan proceeded to cut one end of the ROV’s power cable and spliced several internal lines to the battery pack terminals. Once he configured a complete circuit, the ROV’s bright xenon lights burst on in a blinding shower of blue-white luminescence. Several crew members standing near the ROV’s lights squinted their eyes shut tight at the sudden surge of light in the blackened hold. Under the bath of light, Morgan was able to examine his shipboard crew and the onboard team of scientists, which he noted were huddled in small groups throughout the hold. A mix of confusion and fear was reflected in the faces of most of the men and women.
    “Nice work, Ryan. Mcintosh, move those lights across the hold, please. Now, then, is anybody hurt?” the captain said, ignoring his own severe injuries.
    A quick tally revealed a score of cuts, bumps, and bruises. But aside from the wounded machinist and a broken leg suffered by a geologist when he fell into the hold, there were no other serious