The Chrysler's hefty V-8 engine was now knocking like a pounding sledgehammer, but the old beast hung on and gave Dirk every last ounce of energy it could muster. The big convertible stormed up the ramp at the end of the pier and burst into the air like a cannon shot. Dirk gripped the steering wheel hard and braced for the impact as he watched a forty-foot ribbon of blue water pass beneath the car. Screams filled the air as shocked passengers on the rear of the ferry scrambled to avoid the path of the green monstrosity hurtling through space toward them. The momentum of the car and the angle of the ramp sent the Chrysler sailing through the air in an almost picture-perfect arc before gravity took hold and pulled the nose of the car down fast. But they had cleared the open water and would plunge down onto the ferry.
Just a few feet inboard on the open stern, the Chrysler's front wheels slammed down onto the deck, the tires immediately bursting from the force with a bang. A split second later, the rear wheels dropped down, smashing through a low railing just inches from the stern edge. A section of the handrail kicked up into a wheel well, where it became wedged as the full weight of the car crashed down. It proved to be a lifesaver. Rather than skidding wildly into the rows of cars parked on the auto deck, the wedged railing dug into the wooden deck like an anchor. The massive old car bounded twice, then skidded slowly to a stop just twenty feet from where it struck the deck, lightly smacking the pea green Volkswagen bus.
The black Cadillac did not fare as well. Just a few seconds behind, its driver saw too late that the ferry had left the dock. Too panicked to try to stop, the driver kept his foot down on the accelerator and soared off the pier in tandem with the Chrysler. Only by now, the ferry had moved beyond its path.
With the gunman screaming a bloodcurdling cry, the Cadillac soared gracefully into the sky before nosing hard into the stern of the ferryboat with a thunderous crash. The front bumper kissed the painted letters of the ferryboat's name, Issaquah, just above the waterline before the entire car crumpled like an accordion. A large spray of water flew up as the mangled wreckage of the car plopped into the water and sank to forty feet, carrying its crushed occupants to a watery grave.
In the Chrysler, Dirk shook off the daze of the impact and assessed their injuries. He felt a sprained knee and sore hip on himself as he wiped away a flow of blood from his lower lip, gashed open on the steering wheel. But otherwise all parts seemed to be working. Sarah looked up from the floor in a twisted angle, where she forced a smile through a painful grimace.
“I think my right leg is broken,” she said calmly, “ but otherwise I'm okay.”
Dirk lifted her out of the car and gently set her on the deck as a crowd of passengers crept in to offer assistance. In front of them, a door flung open on the VW bus and out popped its overage hippie driver, complete with ponytail and beer belly half-hidden under a tie-dyed Grateful Dead T-shirt. His eyes bulged as he surveyed the scene behind him. Smoke oozed from the smoldering wreckage of the Chrysler, tainting the air with the odor of burned oil and rubber. The car's metal skin was festooned with bullet holes from front to back, while broken glass and shreds of leather upholstery littered the interior. The front tires were splayed out from bursting on impact, while a metal guardrail poked out oddly from one of the rear wheel wells. A deep gash in the deck tailed back from the wreck like some sort of violent bread crumb trail. Dirk smiled weakly at the man as he wandered closer while surveying the scene.
Shaking his head, the old hippie finally quipped, “Far out, man. I sure hope you have insurance.”
It took only a few hours for the authorities to commandeer a nearby work barge and position it off the ferry landing. Its twenty-ton crane easily hoisted the crushed Cadillac from the bottom and dumped it on the greasy deck of the old barge. A paramedic crew carefully extricated the mashed bodies from the vehicle and transferred them to the county morgue. Their cause of death was cited simply as blunt injury from motor vehicle accident.
At NUMA's request, the FBI interceded and opened a federal investigation into the incident. Initial attempts to identify the gunmen came up empty when no forms of ID were found on the bodies, and the Cadillac was discovered to be a stolen rental car. Immigration finally ascertained that the men were Japanese nationals who had entered the country illegally through Canada.
At the Seattle/ King County morgue, the chief coroner shook his head in irritation as yet another investigator arrived to examine the bodies.
“Can't get any work done around here as long as we're holding these so-called Japanese gangsters,” he grumbled to an underling, as yet another pair of Feds left the storage facility.
The assistant medical examiner, an ex-Army doctor who had once been stationed in Seoul for a year, nodded in agreement.
“We might as well install a revolving door on the ice room,” he joked.
“I'll just be happy when the paperwork arrives to release them for transport back to Japan.”
“I hope that's their right home,” the assistant pathologist said, slowly sliding the bodies back into a refrigerated locker. “If you ask me, I still say they look like a couple of Koreans.”
After twelve hours at Sarah's hospital bedside, Dirk finally convinced the doctors at Seattle's Swedish Providence Medical Center to release Sarah the following morning. Though a broken leg didn't normally warrant an overnight stay, the cautious medical staff was concerned about trauma from the accident and kept her there for observation. She was fortunate in that the break to her tibia, or shin-bone, did not require any rods or screws to align. The doctors wrapped her leg in a heavy plaster cast and pumped her full of painkillers, then signed her release.
“Guess I can't take you dancing anytime soon,” Dirk joked as he pushed her out the hospital exit in a wheelchair.
“Not unless you want a black-and-blue foot,” she replied, grimacing at the heavy cast around her lower leg.
Despite insisting that she was well enough to work, Dirk took Sarah home to her stylish apartment in Seattle's Capitol Hill district. Gently assisting her to a leather couch, he propped her broken leg up on a large pillow.
“Afraid I've been called back to Washington,” he said, stroking her silky hair as she adjusted the pillows behind her back. “Have to leave tonight. I'll make sure Sandy checks in on you.”
“I probably won't be able to keep her away,” she grinned. “But what about the sick crew members of the Deep Endeavor? We need to find out if they are all right,” she said, struggling to rise from the couch. The drugs made her feel as if her mind and body were enshrouded in a coat of honey and she fought to remain lucid against the overwhelming desire to sleep.
“Okay,” he said, gently pushing her back down and bringing a portable phone to her. “You get one phone call, then it's lights out for you.”
As she called the Public Health Lab, he checked to see that her kitchen was stocked with groceries. Peering into a scantly filled refrigerator, he idly wondered why unmarried women always seemed to have less food in the house than the single men he knew.
“Great news,” she called in a slurred voice after hanging up the phone. “The tests on the sick crewmen all came back negative. No sign of the smallpox virus.”
“That is great news,” Dirk said, returning to her side. “I'll let Captain Burch know before I leave for the airport.”
“When will I see you again?” she asked, squeezing his hand.
“Just a quick trip to headquarters. I'll be back before you know it.”
“You better,” she replied, her eyelids drooping low. Dirk leaned over and brushed her hair aside, then kissed her gently on the forehead. As he stood up, he could see that she had already fallen asleep.
He slept soundly on his cross-country red-eye flight, popping awake well rested as the wheels of the NUMA jet touched down at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport just after eight in the morning. An agency car was left waiting for him at the government terminal, and he drove himself out of the parking lot under a light drizzle. As he exited the airport, he cast a long glance toward a dilapidated-looking hangar situated off one of the runways. Though his father was out of the country, he still had the urge to visit the old man's hideout and tinker with one of his many antique autos stored there. Business before pleasure, he told himself, and wheeled the loaner car onto the highway.
Following the George Washington Memorial Parkway out of the airport, he drove north, passing the Pentagon on his left as he followed the banks of the Potomac River. A short distance later, he turned off the highway and angled toward a towering green glass building that housed the NUMA headquarters. Passing through an employee security gate, he pulled into an underground garage and parked. Opening the car trunk, he hoisted a large duffel bag over his shoulder, then rode the employees' elevator to the tenth floor, where the doors opened onto an elaborate maze of quietly humming computer hardware.
Established with a budget that would make a third world dictator whimper, the NUMA Ocean Data Center computer network was a marvel of state-of-the-art computer processing. Buried within its massive data storage banks was the finest collection of oceanographic resources in the world. Real-time inputs of weather, current, temperature, and bio diversity measurements were collected via satellite from hundreds of remote sea sites from around the world, giving a global snapshot of ocean conditions and trends at any given moment. Links to the leading research universities provided data on current investigations in geology, marine biology, and undersea flora and fauna research, as well as engineering and technology. NUMA's own historical reference library contained literally millions of data sources and was a constant reservoir of information for research institutes the world over.
Dirk found the maestro behind the vast computer network, sitting behind a horseshoe console munching a bear claw with one hand while tapping a keyboard with the other. To a stranger, Hiram Yaeger resembled a groupie from a Bob Dylan concert. His lean body was clad in faded Levi's and matching jeans jacket over a white T-shirt, complemented by a pair of scuffed cowboy boots on his feet. With his long gray hair tied in a ponytail, his appearance belied the fact that he lived in a high-end Maryland suburb with an ex-model wife and drove a BMW 7 Series. He caught sight of Dirk over a pair of granny glasses and smiled in greeting.
“Well, the young Mr. Pitt,” he grinned warmly.
“Hiram, how are you?”
“Not having smashed my car, nor destroyed an agency helicopter, I'd have to say I'm doing quite well,” he joked. “By the way, has our esteemed director been advised of the loss of one of NUMA's flying assets?”
“Yes. Fortunately, with Dad and Al still over in the Philippines the bite was tempered somewhat.”
“They've had their hands full with a toxic spill they ran across near Mindanao, so your timing was good,” Yaeger said. “So tell-me, to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”
“Well,” Dirk hesitated, “it's your daughters. I would like to go out with them.”
The color drained from Yaeger's thin boyish face for a moment as he took Dirk's proposal seriously. Yaeger's twin daughters, finishing their last year of private high school, were his pride and joy. For seventeen years, he had successfully scared away any male suitors who had the remotest inkling of touching his girls. God forbid the giddiness they'd show over the rugged and charismatic Dirk.
"You so much as mention their names around me and I'll have you off the payroll with a ruined credit rating that will take five lifetimes to fix' Yaeger threatened.
It was Dirk's turn to laugh, chuckling loudly at Yaeger's vulnerable soft spot. The computer genius softened and grinned as well at Dirk's idle ploy.
“Okay, the girls are off-limits. But what I really want is a little time with you and Max before my meeting with Rudi later this morning.”
“Now, that I can approve,” Yaeger replied with a firm nod of the head. The bear claw now demolished, he applied both hands in a finger dance over the keyboard to conjure up his bionic confidante, Max.
No fellow computer programmer, Max was an artificial intelligence system with a virtual interface in the form of a holographic image. The brainchild of Yaeger to aid in researching voluminous databases, he had cleverly modeled the visual interface after his wife, Elsie, adding a sensual voice and saucy personality. On a platform opposite the horseshoe console, an attractive woman with auburn hair and topaz eyes suddenly appeared. She was dressed in a skimpy halter top that revealed her navel and a very short leather skirt.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” the three-dimensional image murmured.
“Hi, Max. You remember the younger Dirk Pitt?”
“Of course. Nice to see you again, Dirk.”
“You're looking good, Max.”
“I'd look better if Hiram would stop dressing me in Britney Spears outfits,” she replied with disdain, rolling her hands down her body.
“All right. Tomorrow it will be Prada,” Yaeger promised.
“Thank you.”
“Dirk, what is it that you'd like to ask Max?” Yaeger prompted.
“Max, what can you tell me about the Japanese efforts at chemical and biological warfare during World War Two?” Dirk asked, turning serious.
Max hesitated for a moment as the question generated a massive search through thousands of databases. Not just limiting it to oceanographic resources, Yaeger had wired the NUMA network into a diverse multitude of government and public information resources, ranging from the Library of Congress to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Sifting through the mass of information, Max consolidated the data points into a concisely summarized reply.
“The Japanese military conducted extensive research and experimentation into chemical and biological weaponry both during and preceding World War Two. Primary research and deployment occurred in Manchuria, under the direction of the occupying Japanese Imperial Army after they had seized control of northeast China in 1931. Numerous facilities were constructed throughout the region as test centers, under the guise of lumber mills or other false fronts. Inside the facilities, Chinese captives were subject to a wide variety of human experiments with germ and chemical compounds. The Qiqihar facility, under the command of Army Unit 516, was the largest Japanese chemical weapons research and test site, although chemical weapons manufacture actually took place on the Japanese mainland. Changchun, under Army Unit 100, and the sprawling Ping Fan facility, under \my Unit 731, were the major biological warfare research and test centers. The facilities were in fact large prisons, where local criminals and derelicts were sent and used as test subjects, though few of the captives would survive their incarceration.”
“I've read about Unit 731,” Dirk commented. “Some of their experiments made the Nazis look like Boy Scouts.”
“Allegations of inhuman experiments performed by the Japanese, particularly in Unit 731, are nearly endless. Chinese prisoners, and even some Allied prisoners of war, were routinely injected with an assortment of deadly pathogens, as their captors sought to determine the appropriate lethal dosage. Biological bombs were dropped on prisoners staked to the ground in order to test delivery systems. Many experiments took place outside the walls of the facilities. Typhoid bacilli germs were intentionally released into local village wells, resulting in widespread outbreaks of fever and death. Rats carrying plague-infected fleas were released in congested urban areas as a test of the speed and ferocity of infection. Children were even considered an acceptable target. In one experiment, local village children were given chocolates filled with anthrax, which they gratefully devoured, with horrifying side effects.”