FOUR DEAD ON DELAURA BEACH

Local resident Leigh Hunt, his two sons Tad (age 13) and Tom (age 11), and a nephew known only as Skip, were found dead Saturday, June 20th, on DeLaura Beach. The four went out clamming in the afternoon, according to Hunt's wife Marie, and failed to return home for dinner. County Sheriff Kit Edwards discovered the bodies, which showed no signs of a struggle or physical injury. "Not finding any physical marks, we immediately suspected smoke inhalation or poisoning. Leigh had a large supply of a cyanide treatment in his workshop that he used for tanning leather," Edwards remarked. "He and the boys must have been exposed to a strong dose before they went to the beach, and the poison caught up with them there," he stated. Funeral arrangements are pending examination of the bodies by the county coroner.

"Is there a follow-up news report on the coroner's findings?" he asked.

Margaret rifled through another dozen editions of the News before finding a small article related to the deaths. Reading out loud, she cited that the coroner's office confirmed accidental cyanide inhalation as the suspected cause of death.

"My father never did believe it was an accident," Margaret added, to Dirk's surprise.

"It doesn't make sense that they would have died later at the beach after inhaling the fumes in Hunt's work shed," Dirk mused.

"Papa said the same thing," Margaret replied, letting down her guard slightly. "And he said the authorities never did consider the birds."

"Birds?"

"Yes. About a hundred seagulls were found dead on the beach around the area that Hunt and the boys were found. Fort Stevens, the Army base, was right near that beach. Papa always suspected it was some sort of Army experiment that accidentally killed them. Guess nobody will ever know for sure."

"Wartime secrets can be difficult to unlock sometimes," Dirk replied. "Thank you for your help, Margaret."

Dirk returned to the jeep and drove through the town to the coastal highway and turned south. A short stretch of pavement later, he approached a small side road marked DELAURA BEACH ROAD. The road led though an open pair of gates marked FORT STEVENS STATE PARK before narrowing through thick underbrush. Dirk jammed the jeep into low gear and surged over a jagged ridge before descending to a large abandoned gun emplacement overlooking the ocean. Battery Russell had been one of several coastal defense sites guarding the entrance to the Columbia River which sprang up during the Civil War, then were later updated with huge long-range guns during World War II. From the emplacement, Dirk had a clear view of the shimmering blue waters at the mouth of the Columbia River, as well as the DeLaura Beach below, which was dotted with afternoon picnickers. Dirk soaked in a few deep breaths of the fresh sea air, then drove back out the small road, pulling off nearly into the brush at one point to let an oncoming black Cadillac pass by. Driving a quarter mile farther, he stopped the car at a large historical marker along the roadside that caught his eye. Carved on a massive gray slab of granite was a highly detailed engraving of a submarine, beneath which was inscribed:

On June 21, 1942, a 5.53 shell exploded here. One of 17 fired at Columbia River Harbor Defense Installations by the Japanese Submarine 25. The only hostile shelling of a military base on the U. S. mainland during World War II and the first since the War of 1812.

As he read the inscription, he instinctively moved away from the road as the Cadillac returned and passed by slowly, to avoid kicking up dust. Dirk studied the submarine carving for a long moment and started to walk away. But something caught his eye and he looked again. It was the date. June 21, just a day after Hunt and the boys were found dead on the beach.

Dirk reached into the jeep's glove compartment and pulled out a cellular phone, leaning against the car's hood as he dialed the number. After four rings, a deep and jolly voice boomed through the handset.

"Perlmutter here."

"Julien, it's Dirk. How's my favorite nautical historian?"

"Dirk, my boy, so good to hear from you! I was just enjoying some pickled green mangoes your father sent me from the Philippines. Pray tell, how are you enjoying the Great White North?"

"We just finished our survey in the Aleutians, so I am back in the Pacific Northwest. The islands were quite beautiful, though, but it was a little cold for my blood."

"Heavens, I can imagine," Perlmutter's voice bellowed. "So, what's on your mind, Dirk?"

"World War Two-era Japanese submarines, to be exact. I'm curious about their record of attacks on the U. S. mainland and any unusual weaponry in their arsenals."

"Imperial submarines, eh? I recall they made some fairly harmless attacks on the West Coast, but I have not delved into my Japanese wartime files in some time. I'll have to do some nosing about for you."

"Thanks, Julien. And one more thing. Let me know if you run across any references to the use of cyanide as an armament."

"Cyanide. Now, that would be nasty, wouldn't it?" Perlmutter asked rhetorically before hanging up.

Contemplating the enormous collection of rare maritime history books and manuscripts jammed into his Georgetown carriage house, St. Julien Perlmutter needed only a few seconds of pondering to pinpoint the material he was looking for. Perlmutter resembled an overgrown Santa Claus, with sparkling blue eyes, a huge gray beard, and an enormous belly that helped him tip the scales at nearly four hundred pounds. Besides a penchant for gourmet foods, Perlmutter was known as one of the world's foremost maritime historians, in large part due to his peerless collection of sea-related ephemeris.

Clad in silk pajamas and a paisley robe, Perlmutter padded across a thick Persian carpet to a mahogany bookcase, where he examined several titles before pulling down a book and two large binders with his meaty hands. Satisfied it was the material he was looking for, the immense man returned to an overstuffed red leather chair, where a plate of truffles and a hot pot of tea beckoned him.

Dirk continued on his drive to Portland, where he found the antique auto auction he was looking for at a large, grassy fairgrounds at the city's edge. Scores of people milled about the gleaming autos, most from the forties, fifties, and sixties, which were neatly lined up on the wide grass field. Dirk sauntered by the cars, admiring the paint jobs and mechanical restorations, before heading to a large white-canopied tent where the auctioning was taking place.

Inside, loudspeakers blared out the auctioneer's grating staccato voice as he spat out price bids like a rapid-fire machine gun. Grabbing a side seat away from the blare, Dirk watched in amusement as the team of auctioneers, wearing a ridiculous combination of seventies-style tuxedos and cheap cowboy hats, pranced around in a futile attempt to hype the excitement, and price, of each car. After several Corvettes and an early Thunderbird were passed through, Dirk sat up as a 1958 Chrysler 300-D drove up onto the stage. The huge car was painted an original Aztec turquoise, enhanced by miles of gleaming chrome and a pair of rear tail fins that jutted into the air like the dorsal fin of a shark. In a reaction only a true car fanatic could understand, Dirk felt his heartbeat quicken simply at the sight of the artistic mass of steel and glass.

"Perfectly restored to concourse condition by Pastime Restorations of Golden, Colorado," the auctioneer pitched. He resumed his vocal convulsions, but bidding on the car surprisingly stalled early. Dirk raised his hand in the air and was soon dueling for the car with an overweight man wearing yellow suspenders. Dirk quickly countered his opponent's bids in rapid succession, showing his intent was serious. The tactic worked. Yellow Suspenders shook his head after the third bid and headed toward the bar.

"Sold to the man in the NUMA hat!" the auctioneer barked as the surrounding crowd applauded politely. Though it cost him several months' salary, Dirk recognized it was a good buy, knowing that less than two hundred Chrysler 300-D convertibles were manufactured in 1958.

As he arranged to have the car shipped up to Seattle, his cell phone started to ring.

"Dirk, it's Julien. I have some information for you."

"That was fast service."

"Well, I wanted to get back to you before supper," Perlmutter replied, contemplating his next meal.

"What can you tell me, Julien?"

"After Pearl Harbor, the Japanese placed nine or ten submarines on station along the West Coast, but they were gradually pulled off as the battle action moved to the South Pacific. The Japanese submarines were primarily on reconnaissance missions, observing the major bays and harbors while trying to track major ship movements. They did manage to sink a handful of merchant ships early in the war and create a dose of psychological fear in the general public along the way. As for actual land attacks, the first occurred in early 1942, when the I-17 lobbed a few shells near Santa Barbara, damaging a pier and an oil derrick. In June of '42, the I-25 fired upon Fort Stevens, near Astoria, Oregon, while the I-26 bombarded a radio station on Vancouver Island in Canada. No fatalities were recorded in either of the attacks. In August of 1942, the I-25 returned near Cape Blanco, Oregon, and launched a seaplane armed with incendiary bombs in an attempt set fire to the nearby forests. The attack was a failure, as only one small fire was ignited in the region."

"Sounds like they were primarily nuisance attacks," Dirk commented.

"Yes, there was nothing overly strategic about their actions. Things slowed down after the incendiary attack, as the submarines were moved north to support the Aleutian campaign. Imperial submarines were heavily involved in supporting the capture and later evacuation of Attu and Kiska islands during fighting in 1943. The Japanese lost five subs during the Aleutian battles as our sonar technology really began to pick them out of the seas. After the fall of Kiska, just a few Imperial submarines continued to operate in the north and western Pacific. The I-180 was attacked and sunk near Kodiak, Alaska, in April of 1944, then things were pretty quiet on the home front until the I-403 was sunk off Cape Flattery, Washington, in January 1945."

"Odd that one would get tagged off the West Coast at a point in the war when their navy was on its last legs."

"It's even more queer when you consider that the I-403 was one of their big boats. Apparently, it was planning an air attack when it was surprised by an American destroyer."

"Hard to believe they constructed submarines back then capable of carrying an airplane," Dirk marveled.

"Their big boats could carry not just one but actually three airplanes. They were massive beasts."

"Did you find any indication that the naval forces used cyanide weapons?"

"None that was recorded in battle, but they did exist. It was the Imperial Army, I believe, and its biological warfare unit in China, that experimented with biological and chemical weapons. They did fool around with cyanide artillery shells, among other things, so it is possible the Navy tried experimenting with them, but there is no official record of their use."

"I guess there is no way to prove it, but I suspect the I-25 launched a cyanide shell that killed four people the day before it attacked Fort Stevens."

"Quite possible. May be hard to prove, as the I-25 was later lost in the South Pacific, presumably sunk near Espiritu Santo Island in 1943. But with one possible exception, all accounts I have seen indicate that the Japanese vessels were armed only with conventional weapons."

"And the exception?"

"The I-403 again. I found a reference in a postwar Army journal stating that a shipment of Makaze ordnance was transferred to the Navy and delivered to the submarine in Kure prior to her last sailing. I've never seen a reference to Makaze before, however, and could find no other references in my ordnance and munitions files."

"Any idea what the term means?"

"The best translation I can make of it is 'Black Wind.' "

Dirk made a short phone call to Leo Delgado, then reached Dahlgren, who was drinking a beer in a lounge overlooking Lake Washington following his morning kayak with the bank teller.

"Jack, you up for a dive tomorrow?" Dirk asked.

"Sure. Spearfishing in the Sound?"

"I've got something a little bigger in mind."

"King salmon are game for me."

"The fish I'm interested in," Dirk continued, "hasn't swum in over sixty years."

Chapter 7

Irv Fowler woke up with a raging headache. Too many beers the night before, the scientist mused as he dragged himself out of bed. Chugging down a cup of coffee and a donut, he convinced himself he felt better. But as the day wore on, the pain seemed to swell, with little relief offered despite his multiple hits on a bottle of aspirin. Eventually, his back joined in the game, sending out waves of pain with every movement he made. By midafternoon, he felt weak and tired, and left early from his temporary office at Alaska State Health and Social Services to drive back to his apartment and rest.

After he downed a bowl of chicken soup, his abdomen started firing off streaks of shooting pain. So much for home remedies, he thought. After several fitful naps, he staggered into the bathroom for another dose of aspirin to help kill the pain. Looking into the glassy-eyed worn and weary face that stared back at him from the mirror, he noticed a bright red rash emerging on his cheeks.

"Damndest flu I've ever had," he muttered aloud, then fell back into bed in a heap.

Security was tight at the Tokyo Hilton Hotel and guests for the private banquet were required to pass through three separate checkpoints before gaining entry to the lavish dining hall. The Japan Export Association's annual dinner was an extravagant affair featuring the best local chefs and entertainers performing for the country's top business leaders and dignitaries. Executives from Japan's major exporting companies helped sponsor the dinner on behalf of their major trading partners. In addition to key customers, in-country diplomats from all the Western and Asian countries that constituted Japan's primary trading partners were treated as special guests.

The recent assassination of U. S. Ambassador Hamilton and the bedlam at the SemCon factory opening had created a buzz in the crowd and heads turned when the American embassy's deputy chief of mission, Robert Bridges, entered the room, accompanied by two undercover security men.

Though a career diplomat, Bridges was more at home working policy strategies or conducting business security briefings rather than socializing in mass crowds. Hamilton had been by far the better glad-hander, Bridges thought as he made small talk with a Japanese trade representative. A dinner host soon arrived and escorted him to a small banquet table, where he was seated with a number of European diplomats.

As traditional dishes of sashimi and soba noodles were brought to the tables, a troupe of geisha dancers glided elegantly about a raised stage, dressed in brightly colored kimonos and twirling bamboo fans as they pirouetted. Bridges downed a shot of warm sake to help deaden the pain of listening to the French ambassador drone on about the poor quality of Asian wines while he watched the dancers spin.

As the first course was finished, a litany of corporate executives took to the stage to promote their self-importance with blustery speeches. Bridges took the opportunity to visit the restroom and, with a large bodyguard leading the way, walked down a side corridor and into the men's room.

The bodyguard scanned the tiled restroom, finding only a waiter washing his hands in a sink at the far end. Letting Bridges pass to the urinal, the bodyguard closed the door and stood facing the interior.

The bald waiter slowly finished washing his hands, then turned his back to the bodyguard as he dried his hands from a paper towel rack. When he spun back toward the door, the bodyguard was shocked to see a .25 automatic in the waiter's hand. A silencer was affixed to the muzzle of the small handgun, with the business end pointed directly at the bodyguard's face. Instinctively grabbing for his own weapon, the bodyguard had barely moved his hand when the .25 emitted a muffled cough. A neat red hole appeared just above the bodyguard's left eyebrow and the large man raised up and back momentarily before collapsing to the floor with a thud, a river of red blood running from his head.

Bridges failed to detect the muffled gunshot but heard the bodyguard collapse. Turning to see the waiter pointing the gun at him, Bridges could only mutter, "What the hell?"

The bald man in the waiter suit stared back at him with deathly cold black eyes, then broke into a sadistic grin that revealed a row of crooked yellow teeth. Without saying a word, he squeezed the trigger two times and watched as Bridges grasped his chest and fell to the ground. The assassin pulled a typewritten note out of his pocket and rolled it up tight into the shape of a tube. He then bent over and wedged it into the dead diplomat's mouth like a flagpole. Carefully disassembling his silencer and placing it in his pocket, he gingerly stepped over the two bodies and out the door, disappearing down a hall toward the kitchen.

Chapter 8

The fiberglass bow of the twenty-five-foot Parker workboat plunged through the deep, wide swells, cutting a white foamy path as it rolled through the trough before cresting on the peak of the next wave. Though tiny in comparison to most vessels in the NUMA fleet, the durable little boat, identified on the stern as the Grunion, was ideal for surveying inland and coastal waterways, as well as supporting shallow-water dive operations.

Leo Delgado rolled the helm's wheel to the right and the Grunion quickly nosed to starboard and out of the path of a large red freighter bearing down on them near the entrance of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

"How far from the strait?" he asked, spinning the wheel hard to port a moment later in order to take the passing freighter's wake bow on.

Standing alongside in the cramped cabin, Dirk and Dahlgren were hunched over a small table studying a nautical chart of their present position near the entrance to the Pacific Ocean, some 125 miles west of Seattle.

"Approximately twelve miles southwest of Cape Flattery," Dirk said over his shoulder, then dictated latitude and longitude coordinates to Delgado. The Deep Endeavor's first officer reached over to a keyboard and tapped the position into the small boat's computerized navigation system. A few seconds later, a tiny white square appeared in the upper corner of a flat-screen monitor that hung from the ceiling. At the lower edge of the monitor, a small white triangle flashed on and off, representing the Grunion as it motored into the Pacific. With the aid of a satellite Global Positioning System interface, Delgado was able to steer a path directly toward the marked position.

"Now, you guys are sure Captain Burch isn't going to find out we borrowed his support boat and are burning his fuel just for a pleasure dive?" Delgado asked somewhat sheepishly.

"You mean this is Burch's private boat?" Dirk replied with mock horror.

"If he comes snooping, we'll just tell him that Bill Gates stopped by and offered us a few million stock options if he could take the Grunion out for a spin," Dahlgren offered.

"Thanks. I knew I could trust you guys," Delgado muttered, shaking his head. "By the way, how good is your fix on the submarine's location?"

"Came right out of the official Navy report on the sinking that Perlmutter faxed me," Dirk replied, grabbing the cabin door sill for balance as the boat rolled over a large swell. "We'll start with the position that was recorded by the destroyer after she sank the I-403."

"Too bad the Navy didn't have GPS back in 1945," Delgado lamented.

"Yes, the wartime action reports weren't always entirely accurate, especially where locations are concerned. But the destroyer had not traveled very far from shore when it engaged the sub, so their reported position ought to put us in the ballpark."

When the Grunion reached the marked position, Delgado eased the throttle into neutral and began keying a search grid into the navigation computer. On the back deck, Dirk and Dahlgren unpacked a Klein Model 3000 side-scan sonar system from a reinforced plastic crate. As Dirk hooked up the cables to the operating system, Dahlgren reeled a yellow cylindrical sonar towfish out over the stern gunwale and into the water.

"The fish is out," Dahlgren yelled from the back deck, whereupon Delgado applied a light throttle and the boat edged forward. In a matter of minutes, Dirk had the equipment calibrated, resulting in a continuous stream of contrasting shadowy images sliding across a color monitor. The images were reflections of sound waves emitted from the towfish, which bounced off the seafloor and were recaptured and processed into visual recordings of protrusions or cavities on the sea bottom.

"I have a one-mile-square grid plotted around the Theodore Knight's reported position at the time she rammed the sub," Delgado said.

"That sounds like a good starting range," Dirk replied. "We can expand the grid if we need to."

Delgado proceeded to steer the boat down a white line on the monitor until the end of the grid was reached, then he spun the wheel around and brought the boat down the next line in the opposite direction. Back and forth the Grunion sailed, in narrow two-hundred-meter paths, slowly chewing up the grid while Dirk kept a sharp eye for a long, dark shadow on the sonar monitor that would represent the I-boat lying on the bottom.

An hour went by and the only recognizable image that appeared on the sonar screen was a pair of fifty-five-gallon drums. After two hours, Dahlgren broke out tuna sandwiches from an ice chest and tried to relieve the tedium by telling an assortment of weakly humorous redneck jokes. Finally, after three hours of searching, Dirk's voice suddenly cut through the damp air.

"Target! Mark position."

Gradually, the fuzzy image of an elongated object rolled across the screen, joined by two smaller protrusions near one end and a large object lying next to it amidships.

"Lord have mercy!" Dahlgren shouted, studying the image. "Looks like a submarine to me."

Dirk glanced at a scale measurement at the bottom of the screen. "She's about 350 feet long, just as Perlmutter's records indicate. Leo, let's take another pass to verify the position, then see if you can park us right on top of her."

"Can do," Delgado replied with a grin while swinging the Grunion around for another run over the target. The second-pass image showed that the submarine was clearly intact and appeared to be sitting upright on the bottom. As Delgado punched the precise location into the GPS system, Dirk and Dahlgren hauled in the sonar towfish, then unpacked a pair of large dive bags.

"What's our depth here, Leo?" Dahlgren called out as he poked his feet through the leggings of a black neoprene wet suit.

"About 170 feet," Delgado replied, eyeing a humming fathometer.

"That will only give us twenty minutes of bottom time, with a twenty-five-minute decompression stop on the way up," Dirk said, recalling the recommended dive duration from the Navy Dive Tables.

"Not a lot of time to cover that big fish," Dahlgren considered.

"The aircraft armament is what I am most interested in," Dirk replied. "According to the Navy report, both aircraft were on deck when the destroyer attacked. I'm betting those two sonar images off the bow are the Seiran bombers."

"Suits me fine if we don't have to get inside that coffin." Dahlgren shook his head briefly, considering the scene in his head, then proceeded to strap on a well-worn lead weight belt.

When Dirk and Dahlgren were suited up in their dive gear, Delgado brought the Grunion back over the target position and threw out a small buoy tied to two hundred feet of line. The two black-suited divers took a giant step off the rear dive platform and plunged fin first into the ocean.

The cold Pacific water was a shock to Dirk's skin as he dropped beneath the surface and he paused momentarily in the green liquid, waiting for the thin layer of water trapped by the wet suit surface to match the warmth of his body heat.

"Damn, I knew we should have brought the dry suits," Dahlgren's voice crackled in Dirk's ears. The two men wore full-face AGA Divator MK II dive masks with an integrated wireless communication system, so they could talk to each other while underwater.

"What do you mean, it feels just like the Keys," Dirk joked, referring to the warm-water islands at the south end of Florida.

"I think you've been eating too much smoked salmon," Dahlgren retorted.

Dirk purged the air out of his buoyancy compensator and cleared his ears, then flipped over and began kicking toward the bottom following the anchored buoy line. Dahlgren followed, tagging a few feet behind. A slight current pushed them toward the east, so Dirk compensated by angling himself against the flow as he descended, trying to maintain their relative position over the target. As they swam deeper, they passed through a thermocline, feeling the water temperature turn noticeably colder in just an instant. At 110 feet, the green water darkened as the murky water filtered the surface light. At 120 feet, Dirk flipped on a small underwater light strapped to his hood like a coal miner. As they descended a few more feet, the elongated, dark shape of the Japanese submarine suddenly grew out of the depths.

The huge black submarine lay quietly at the bottom, a silent iron mausoleum for the sailors who died on her. She had landed on her keel when she sank and sat proudly upright on the bottom, as if ready to set sail again. As Dirk and Dahlgren drew closer, they were amazed at the sheer size of the vessel. Descending near the bow, they could barely see a quarter of the ship before its bulk disappeared into the murky darkness. Dirk hovered over the bow for a moment, admiring the impressive girth, before examining the catapult ramp that angled down the center deck.

"Dirk, I see one of the planes over here," Dahlgren said, pointing an arm toward a pile of debris lying off the port bow. "I'll go take a look."

"The second plane should be farther back, according to the sonar reading. I'll head in that direction," Dirk replied, swimming along the deck.

Dahlgren quickly darted over to the wreckage, which he could easily see was the remains of a single-engine floatplane, dusted in a heavy layer of fine silt. The Aichi M6A1 Seiran was a sleek-looking monoplane specially designed as a submarine-launched bomber for the big I-boats. Its rakish design, similar in appearance to a Messerschmitt fighter, was made comical by the attachment of two huge pontoons braced several feet below the wing, which looked like oversized clown shoes extending beyond the fuselage. Dahlgren could see only a split portion of one pontoon, though, as the left float and wing had been sheared off by the charging American destroyer. The fuselage and right wing remained intact, propped up at an odd angle by the damaged pontoon. Dahlgren swam to the seafloor in front of the plane, studying the visible undercarriage and wing bottom of the bomber. Moving closer, he fanned an accumulation of silt away from several protrusions, revealing a set of bomb grips. The clasps that secured the bomber's payload were empty of armament.

Gliding slowly up the side of the fuselage, Dahlgren kicked over to the half-crushed cockpit canopy and wiped away a layer of silt from the glass enclosure. Shining his light inside, he felt his heart pound rapidly at the startling sight. A human skull stared up at him from the pilot's seat, the bared teeth seeming to smile at him in a macabre grin. Playing the light about the cockpit, he recognized a pair of deteriorated flying boots on the floorboard, a sizable bone remnant jutting out of one opening. The collapsed bones of the pilot still occupied the plane, Dahlgren realized, the flier having gone down with his ship.

Dahlgren slowly backed away from the aircraft, then called Dirk on the radiophone.

"Say, old buddy, I've got the business end of one of the floatplanes here, but it doesn't look like she had any weapons mounted when she sank. Airman Skully sends his regards, though."

"I've found the remains of the second plane and she's clean as well," Dirk replied. "Meet me at the conning tower."

Dirk had found the second bomber lying thirty yards away from the sub, flipped over on its back. The two large pontoons had been ripped off the Seiran bomber when the sub went under, and the plane's fuselage, with wings still attached, had fluttered down to the bottom. He could easily see that no ordnance was mounted on the undercarriage and found no evidence that a bomb or torpedo had fallen away when the plane sank.

Swimming back to the sub's topside deck, he followed the eighty-five-foot-long catapult ramp along the bow until reaching a large round hatch. The vertical hatch capped the end of a large twelve-foot-diameter tube, which was mounted at the base of the conning tower and stretched aft for more than one hundred feet. The airtight tube had been the hangar for the Seiran aircraft, storing the sectional pieces of the planes until they were ready for launching. Set back above the tubular section was a small platform containing triple-mounted 25mm antiaircraft guns, which still sat with their barrels pointed skyward waiting for an unseen enemy.

Instead of a large metal sail rising upward, Dirk found a huge hole in the center of the I-403, the gaping remains of where the conning tower had been sheared off in the collision. A small school of lingcod swam around the jagged crater's edge, feeding on smaller marine life and adding a splash of color to the dark scene.

"Wow, you could drive your Chrysler through that hole," Dahlgren remarked as he swam up alongside Dirk and surveyed the crater.

"With change to spare. She must have gone down in a hurry when the sail ripped off." The two men silently visualized the violent collision between the two war vessels so many years before and imagined the agony of the helpless crew of the I-403 as the submarine sank to the bottom.

"Jack, why don't you take a pass through the hangar and see if you can eyeball any ordnance," Dirk said, pointing a gloved hand toward a gash along the top of the aircraft hangar. "I'll go belowdecks and do the same."

Dirk glanced at the orange face of his Doxa dive watch, a gift from his father on his last birthday. "We've only got eight more minutes of bottom time. Let's be quick."

"I'll meet you back here in six," Dahlgren said, then disappeared with a kick of his fins through the gash in the hangar wall.

Dirk entered the gloomy crevice adjacent to the hangar, diving past a jagged edge of mangled and twisted steel. As he descended, he could make out the sub's unusual twin side-by-side pressured hulls, which ran lengthwise down the keel. He entered an open bay and quickly identified it as the remains of the control room, as evidenced by a large mounted helm's wheel, now covered in barnacles. An array of radio equipment was fixed to one side of the room while an assortment of mechanical levers and controls protruded from another wall and ceiling. Shining his light on one set of valves, he made out BARASUTO TANKU in white lettering, which he presumed operated the ballast tanks.

Kicking his fins gently, Dirk moved forward at a deliberate pace trying not to stir up sediment from the deck. As he passed from one compartment to the next, the submarine seemed to echo with the life from the Japanese sailors. Dining plates and silverware were strewn across the floor of a small galley. Porcelain sake vials were still standing in cabin shelves. Gliding into a large wardroom where officers' staterooms lined one side, Dirk admired a small Shinto shrine mounted on one wall.

He continued forward, cognizant of his dwindling bottom time but careful to take in all that his eyes could absorb. Moving past a maze of pipes, wires, and hydraulic lines, he reached the chief's quarters, near the forward part of the ship. At last, he approached his objective, the forward torpedo room, which loomed just ahead. Thrusting ahead with a powerful scissors kick, he advanced to the torpedo room entrance and prepared to pass in. Then he stopped dead in his tracks.

He blinked hard, wondering if his eyes were playing tricks on him. Then he turned off his light and looked through the hatch again. He was not imagining what he saw.

In the inky bowels of the rusting warship, entombed at the bottom of the sea for over sixty years, Dirk was welcomed by a faint but distinct flashing green light.

Chapter 9

Dirk pulled himself through the hatch and into the pitch-black darkness of the torpedo room, save for the penetrating beam of light. As his eyes adjusted to the blackness, the flashing green light became clearer. It appeared to be a pair of tiny lights, situated at eye level, and fixed at the far side of the room.

Dirk turned his own light back on and surveyed the room. He was in the upper torpedo room, one of two torpedo bays the I-403 had stacked vertically at the bow of the sub. Near the forward bulkhead, he could see the round chamber hatches for the four twenty-one-inch-diameter torpedo tubes. Lying in racks on either side of the room were six of the huge Type 95 torpedoes, large and deadly fish that were both more reliable and more explosive than the American counterpart during the war. Jumbled on the floor, Dirk shined his light on two additional torpedoes that had been jarred out of their racks when the submarine had slammed into the bottom. One torpedo lay flat on the floor, its nose angled slightly off bow from where it had rolled after hitting the deck. The second torpedo was propped on some debris near its tip, pointing its nose lazily upward. It was just above this second torpedo that the eerie green light flashed on and off.

Dirk floated over to the pulsating light, putting his face mask up close to the mystery beam. It was nothing more than a small stick-on digital clock wedged at the end of the torpedo rack. Fluorescent green block numbers flashed a row of zeroes, indicating an elapsed time that had run out more than twenty-four hours before. Days, weeks, or months before, it would be impossible to tell. But it certainly could not have been placed there sixty years earlier.

Dirk plucked the plastic clock and stuffed it in a pocket of his BC, then peered upward. His expended air bubbles were not gathering at the ceiling, as expected, but were trailing upward and through a shaft of pale light. He kicked up with his fins and found that a large hatch to the open deck had been wedged open several feet, easily allowing a diver access to and from the torpedo bay.

A crackly voice suddenly burst through his earpiece.

"Dirk, where are you? It's time to go upstairs," Dahlgren's voice barked.

"I'm in the forward torpedo room. Come meet me on the bow, I need another minute."

Dirk looked at his watch, noting that their eight minutes of bottom time had expired, then swam back down to the torpedo rack.

Two wooden crates were crushed beneath one of the fallen torpedoes, split open like a pair of suitcases. Constructed of hardwood mahogany, the crates had amazingly survived the ravages of saltwater and microorganisms and were in a minimal state of decay. He curiously noted that no silt covered the broken crates, unlike every other object he had seen on the submarine. Someone had recently fanned away the sediment to reveal the crates' contents.

Dirk swam over to the closest crate and looked inside. Like a half carton of eggs, six silver aerial bombs were lined up in a custom-fitted casemate. Each bomb was nearly three feet long and sausage-shaped, with a fin-winged tail. Half of the bombs were still wedged under the torpedo, but all six had been broken up by the torpedo's fall. Oddly, to Dirk, they appeared to be cracked rather than simply crushed. Running his hand over an undamaged section of one of the bombs, he was surprised to feel the surface had a glassy smoothness to the touch.

Kicking his fins gently, Dirk then glided over to the other crate and found a similar scene. All of the bomb canisters had been crushed by the falling torpedo in the second crate as well. Only this time, he counted five bombs, not six. One of the casings was empty. Dirk shined his light around and surveyed the area. The deck was clear in all directions, and no fragments were evident in the empty slot. One of the bombs was missing.

"Elevator, going up," Dahlgren's voice suddenly crackled.

"Hold the door, I'll be right there," Dirk replied, glancing at his watch to see that they had overrun their bottom time by almost five minutes. Examining the smashed crates a last time, he tugged on one of the less mangled bombs. The ordnance slipped out of its case but fell apart into three separate pieces in Dirk's hands. As best he could, he gently placed the pieces into a large mesh dive bag, then, holding tight, he kicked toward the open hatch above. Pulling the bag through the hatch after him, Dirk found Dahlgren hovering above the sub's bow a few yards in front of him. Joining his dive partner, the two wasted no time in kicking toward their decompression stop.

Tracking their depth as they rose, Dirk flared his body out like a skydiver at forty feet to slow his ascent and purged a shot of air out of his BC. Dahlgren followed suit and the two men stabilized themselves at a depth of twenty feet to help rid their bodies of elevated levels of nitrogen in their blood.

"That extra five 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.

Chapter 10

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 MP, Finch still sported a crew cut and spoke with the blunt voice of a basic training drill sergeant.

"Sir, the assassinations of Ambassador Hamilton and Deputy Chief of Mission Bridges appear to have been performed by the same individual. Surveillance video from the hotel where Bridges was killed exposed a suspect dressed as a waiter who was not known to be an employee of the hotel. Photographs from the video were matched to eyewitness accounts of an individual seen at the Tokyo area golf course shortly before Ambassador Hamilton was shot."

"Any tie-in to the killing of the executive Chris Gavin and the SemCon plant explosion?" the president inquired.

"None that we have been able to identify, although there is a potential indicator in the note left with Bridges's body. We are, of course, treating it as a related incident."

"And what of the suspect?" the secretary of state asked.

"The Japanese authorities have been unable to make a match in their known criminal files, or provide a possible identification, for that matter. He was not a previously recognized member of the Japanese Red Army cell. He is apparently something of an unknown. The Japanese law enforcement agencies are cooperating fully in the man-hunt and have placed their immigration checkpoints on high alert."

"Despite no prior connection, there would seem to be little doubt that he is operating under the auspices of the Japanese Red Army," the CIA deputy added.

"The note left with Bridges. What did it say?" asked Jimenez.

Finch rifled through a folder, then pulled out a typewritten sheet.

"Translated from Japanese, it says: 'Be vanquished, American imperialists who soil Nippon with greed, or death will blow her cold, sweet breath to the shores of America. JRA.' Classic fringe cult hyperbole."

"What is the state of the Japanese Red Army? I thought they were essentially dissolved a number of years ago," President Ward asked. Waiting for the reply, he tilted his head back and blew a cloud of cherry-scented tobacco smoke toward the paneled ceiling before Finch answered.

"As you may know, the Japanese Red Army is a fringe terrorist group that grew out of a number of communist factions in Japan during the seventies. They promote an anti-imperialist rant and have supported the overthrow of the Japanese government and monarchy by both legitimate and illegitimate means. With suspected ties to the Middle East and North Korea, the JRA was behind a number of bombings and hijackings, culminating in the attempted takeover of the U. S. embassy in Kuala Lumpur in 1975. They seemed to lose support in the nineties, and by 2000 the known leadership of the organization had been largely apprehended. Though many believed the organization was dead, indications of the group's stirrings have been seen again in the last two years. Published doctrines and active media reporting in Japan have provided a new sounding board, gaining more reception in the country's declining economic climate. Their message has focused on anti-American and anticapitalist tenets, rather than the anarchistic overthrow of the government, which has found a degree of support within a fragment of the population's youth. Oddly, there is no visible front man, or poster child, for the group."

"I can endorse Marty's comments, Mr. President," the deputy CIA director offered. "Until the hits on our people, we've had no overt record of activity from these people in a number of years. The known leadership is behind bars. Quite frankly, we don't know who is now calling the shots."

"Are we confident there is no Al Qaeda connection here?"

"Possible, but not likely," Finch replied. "The method of assassination is certainly not their style, and there has been no real radical Islamic presence visible in Japan. At this juncture, we have absolutely no evidence to suggest a link."

"Where are we with the Japanese on this?" the president asked.

"We have an FBI counterterrorist team in-country working closely with the Japanese National Police Agency. The Japanese authorities are quite cognizant of the nefarious nature of these assassinations in their country and have assigned a large task force to the investigation. There is little more in the way of assistance we could ask of them that they haven't already offered up."

"I have initiated a request through State to the Japanese Foreign Ministry for an update to their profile of high-risk aliens," Jimenez interjected. "We'll issue a border security alert watch, in coordination with the FBI."

"And what are we doing elsewhere abroad to prevent any more target shooting?" the president asked, addressing the secretary of state.

"We have issued heightened security alerts at all of our embassies," the secretary replied. "We have also assigned additional security protection to our senior diplomats, and placed a temporary travel restriction for all State Department personnel within their host country. For the time being, our ambassadors abroad are under lock and key."

"Any opinion that there is an imminent threat domestically, Dennis?"

"Not at this time, Mr. President," the homeland security director replied. "We've tightened our travel and immigration inspections on incoming traffic from Japan but don't feel it is necessary to raise the domestic security alert."

"Do you concur, Marty?"

"Yes, sir. Like Dennis, all our indications suggest that the incidents are isolated to Japan."

"Very well. Now what about the deaths of those two Coast Guard meteorologists in Alaska?" the president asked, drawing another puff on his pipe.

Finch rifled through some documents before responding. "That would be the island of Yunaska in the Aleutians. We have an investigative team presently on site working with local officials. They are also looking at the destruction of a NUMA helicopter as a related incident. Preliminary indications are that the acts were the result of rogue poachers who used cyanide gas to subdue a herd of sea lions. We're trying to track down a Russian fishing trawler that was known to be fishing the local waters illegally. Officials on-site appear confident that they will apprehend the vessel."

"Cyanide gas to hunt sea lions? There are lunatics all over this planet. All right, gentlemen, let's give it our all to find these murderers. Allowing our diplomatic representatives to be gunned down without repercussion is not the message I want to be giving the world. I knew Hamilton and Bridges. They were both good men."

"We'll find them," Finch promised.

"Make sure," the president said, tapping his down-turned pipe bowl against a stainless steel ashtray for effect. "I fear these characters have more up their sleeve than we realize and I want none of what they're selling." As he spoke, a glob of burned tobacco plopped unceremoniously into the ashtray, and nobody said a word.

Chapter 11

Although Keith Catana had been in South Korea only three months, he had already identified his favorite off-base watering hole. Chang's Saloon appeared little different from the dozen or so other bars of "A-Town," a seedy entertainment section on the fringe of Kunsan City that catered to the American servicemen stationed at Kunsan Air Force Base. Chang's skipped the loud blaring music that emanated from most of the other bars and offered a decent price for an OB beer, one of the local Korean brews. But perhaps more important, in Catana's eyes, Chang's attracted the best-looking working girls of A-Town.

Abandoned by two buddies who decided to pursue a group of American servicewomen headed to a dance club around the corner, Catana sat silently nursing his fourth beer, welcoming the early periphery of a warm buzz. The twenty-three-year-old master sergeant was an avionics specialist at the air base, supporting F-16 attack jets of the Eighth Fighter Wing. Located just a few minutes' flight time from the DMZ, his squadron stood in constant preparedness for an aerial counterstrike should North Korea initiate an invasion of the South.

Sentimental memories of his family back in Arkansas were suddenly jolted from his brain when the door to the bar flung open and in strolled the most stunning Korean woman Catana had ever laid eyes on. Four beers were not enough to deceive himself; she was a genuine beauty. Her long, straight black hair accentuated a delicate, almost porcelain-skinned face that featured a petite nose and mouth but stunningly bold black eyes. A tight leather skirt and silk top accentuated her small build but magnified a distorted symmetry created by her large, surgically enhanced breasts.

Like a tigress searching for prey, the woman surveyed the crowded bar from front to back before focusing on the lone airman sitting alone in a corner. With her sights locked, she swiveled her way over to Catana's table and smoothly slipped into the chair facing him.

"Hello, Joe. Be a friend and buy me a drink?" she purred.

"Glad to," Catana stammered in reply. She was definitely in a different league from the normal A-Town hookers, he thought, and not the type that caters to enlisted servicemen. But who was he to argue? If the heavens intended to drop this creature in his lap on payday, then good fortune was indeed smiling his way.

It took only one quick beer before the harlot invited him back to her hotel room. Catana was pleasantly surprised that the woman didn't wrangle about price, or, in fact, mention it at all, he thought oddly.

She led him to a cheap motel nearby, where they walked arm in arm down its seedy hallway that was complete with red lights. At the end of the hall, the woman unlocked the door to a small, hot corner room. Sleep wasn't the major draw of the room, Catana could see, as evidenced by a condom machine mounted near the bed.

After closing the door, the woman quickly stripped off her top, then embraced Catana in a deep, passionate kiss. He paid little attention to a noise near the closet as he soaked in the warmth of the exotic woman, intoxicated by a combination of her beauty, the alcohol, and the expensive perfume she wore. His pleasurable delirium was suddenly jolted by a sharp jab to his buttocks, followed by a hot, searing pain. Whirling unsteadily around, he was shocked to find himself facing another man in the room. The stocky bald man grinned a crooked smile through his long mustache, his dark cold eyes seeming to penetrate right through Catana's skull. In his hands, he held a fully depressed hypodermic needle.

Pain and confusion overwhelmed Catana as his body suddenly went numb. He tried to raise his hands but his limbs were useless. Even his lips refused to cooperate with his brain in voicing a cry of protest. It took just a few seconds before a wave of blackness rolled over him and all feeling departed his senses.

It was hours later when the incessant pounding jarred him from a state of unconsciousness. The pounding was not in his head, as he first imagined, but came externally, from the motel room door. He noticed a warm stickiness enveloping him as he fought to clear the fog from his vision. Why the pounding? Why the wetness? The dimly lit room and cobwebs in his mind refused to reveal the mystery.

The banging ceased for a moment, then a loud blow struck the door, bashing it open with a flood of light. Squinting through the brightness, he saw a company of policemen storm into the room, followed by two men with cameras. As his eyes adjusted to the sudden infusion of light, he was able to notice what the wetness was around him.

Blood. It was everywhere: on the sheets, on the pillows, and smeared all over his body. But mostly it was pooled about the prone figure of the nude woman lying dead beside him.

Catana instinctively lurched back from the body in shock at the sight of the corpse. As two of the policemen pulled him off the bed and handcuffed his wrists, he cried out in horror.

"What happened? Who did this?" he said in a daze.

He looked on in shock as a third policeman pulled back a sheet partially covering the woman, fully exposing a body that had been brutally mutilated. To Catana's further bewilderment, he saw that the body was not that of the beautiful woman he had met the night before but rather was of a young girl whom he did not know.

Catana sagged as he was dragged out of the room amid a flurry of photographs. By noon that day, the story of the rape and savage murder of a thirteen-year-old Korean girl by a U. S. serviceman was a countrywide horror. By evening, it had become a national outrage. And by the time of the girl's funeral two days later, it was a full-blown international incident.

Chapter 12

The high noonday sun shimmered brightly off the sapphire waters of the Bohol Sea, forcing Raul Biazon to squint as he gazed toward the large research vessel moored in the distance. For a moment, the Philippine government biologist thought the sun's rays were playing a trick on his eyes. No respectable scientific research ship could possibly be emblazoned in such a lively hue. But as the small weather-beaten launch in which he rode drew closer, he saw that there was nothing wrong with his vision. The ship was in fact painted a glistening turquoise blue from stem to stern, which made the vessel appear as if it belonged under the sea rather than bobbing atop it. Leave it to the Americans, Biazon thought, to escape the ordinary.

The launch pilot guided the worn wooden boat alongside a stepladder suspended over the side of the ship and Biazon wasted no time in leaping aboard. Speaking briefly to the pilot in Tagalog, he turned and scampered up the ladder and sprang onto the deck, nearly colliding with a tall brawny man who stood at the rail. With thinning blond hair and sturdy build, there was a Viking-like air about the man who was dressed in an immaculate white warm-weather captain's uniform.

"Dr. Biazon? Welcome aboard the Mariana Explorer. I'm Captain Bill Stenseth," the man smiled warmly through gray eyes.

"Thank you for receiving me on such short notice, Captain," Biazon replied, regaining his stance and composure. "When a local fisherman informed me that a NUMA research vessel was seen in the region, I thought you might be able to offer some assistance."

"Let's head to the bridge and out of the heat," Stenseth directed, "and you can fill us in on the environmental calamity you mentioned over the radio."

"I hope that I am not interfering with your research work," Biazon said as the two men climbed a flight of stairs.

"Not at all. We've just completed a seismic mapping project off Mindanao and are taking a break to test some equipment before heading up to Manila. Besides," Stenseth said with a grin, "when my boss says, 'Stop the boat,' I stop the boat."

"Your boss?" Biazon inquired with a confused look.

"Yes," Stenseth replied as they reached the bridge wing and he pulled open the side door. "He's traveling on board with us."

Biazon stepped through the door and into the bridge, shivering involuntarily as a blast of refrigerated air struck his perspiration-soaked body. At the rear of the bridge, he noticed a tall, distinguished-looking man in shorts and a polo shirt bent over a chart table studying a map.

"Dr. Biazon, may I present the director of NUMA, Dirk Pitt," Stenseth introduced. "Dirk, this is Dr. Raul Biazon, hazardous wastes manager with the Philippines Environmental Management Bureau."

Biazon was shocked to find the head of a large government agency working at sea so far from Washington. But one look at Pitt and Biazon knew he wasn't the typical government administrator. Standing nearly a foot taller than his own five-foot-four frame, the NUMA chief carried a tan, lean, muscular body that showed few indications of having spent much time behind a desk. Though Biazon wouldn't know, the senior Pitt was nearly the spitting image of his son who carried the same name. The face was weathered and the ebony hair showed tinges of gray at the temples, but the opaline green eyes sparkled with life. They were eyes that had absorbed much in their day, Biazon gauged, reflecting an assorted mix of intelligence, mirth, and tenacity.

"Welcome aboard," Pitt greeted warmly, shaking Biazon's hand with a firm grip. "My underwater technology director, Al Giordino," he added, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder toward the far corner of the wheelhouse. Curled up asleep on a bench seat was a short, thick man with dark curly hair. A light snore drifted from the man's lips with each breath of air that exhaled from his barrel-shaped chest. His powerful build reminded Biazon of a rhinoceros.

"Al, come join the party," Pitt yelled across the bridge.

Giordino pried his eyes open, then popped instantly awake. He quickly stood and joined the other men at the table, showing no signs of slumber.

"As I told the captain, I appreciate your offer of assistance," Biazon said.

"The Philippine government has always been supportive of our research work in your country's waters," Pitt replied. "When we received your radio call to help identify a toxic marine affliction, we were glad to help. Perhaps you can tell us a little more about the specifics of the outbreak."

"A few weeks ago, our office was contacted by a resort hotel on Panglao Island. The hotel's management was upset because a large quantity of dead fish were washing up on the guest beach."

"I could see where that would tend to dampen the holidaymakers' spirits," Giordino grinned.

"Indeed," Biazon replied sternly. "We began monitoring the shoreline and have witnessed the fish kill growing at an alarming rate. Dead marine life is washing ashore along a ten-kilometer stretch of beach now, and growing day by day. The resort owners are all up in arms, and we, of course, are concerned about potential damage to the coral reef."

"Have you been able to diagnose what is killing the fish?" Stenseth asked.

"Not yet. Toxic poisoning is all we can infer. We have sent samples to our departmental lab in Cebu for analysis but are still awaiting the results." The look on Biazon's face revealed his dissatisfaction with the snail-paced response from the agency lab.

"Any speculation as to the source?" Pitt asked.

Biazon shook his head. "We initially suspected industrial pollutants, which, regrettably, are an all too common source of environmental damage in my country. But my field team and I have scoured the impacted coastal region and failed to locate any heavy industrial businesses operating in the area. We also examined the coastline for obvious spillways or illegal dump sites but came up empty. It is my belief that the source of the kill originates at sea."

"Perhaps a red tide?" Giordino said.

"We do experience toxic phytoplankton outbreaks in the Philippines," Biazon said, "though they are typically seen during the warmer late summer months."

"It might also be some covert offshore industrial dumping," Pitt replied. "Where exactly is the impacted area, Dr. Biazon?"

Biazon glanced at the map, which showed Mindanao and the southern Philippine island groupings. "Off the province of Bohol," he said, pointing to a large round island north of Mindanao. "Panglao is a small resort island located here, adjacent to the southwest coast. It's about fifty kilometers from our present position."

"I can have us there in under two hours," Stenseth said, eyeing the distance.

Pitt nodded toward the map. "We've got a ship full of scientists who can help find the answers. Bill, lay a course in to Panglao Island and we'll take a look."

"Thank you," a visibly relieved Biazon said.

"Doctor, perhaps you'd like a tour of the ship while we get under way?" Pitt offered.

"I'd like that very much."

"Al, you care to join us?"

Giordino looked at his watch pensively. "No, thanks. Two hours will be just enough time for me to finish my project," he replied, easing himself back down on the bench seat and drifting rapidly back to sleep.

The Mariana Explorer cruised easily through a flat sea and arrived at Panglao Island in just over ninety minutes. Pitt studied an electronic navigational map of the area that was displayed on a color monitor as Biazon denoted a rectangular area where the fish kill was occurring.

"Bill, the current runs east to west through here, which would suggest that the hot zone is located at the eastern end of Dr. Biazon's box. Why don't we start to the west and work our way east into the current, taking water samples at quarter-mile increments."

Stenseth nodded. "I'll run a zigzag course, to see if we can gauge how far from shore the toxin is concentrated."

"And let's deploy the side-scan sonar. Might as well see if there's any obvious man-made objects involved."

Dr. Biazon watched with interest as a towed sonar fish was deployed off the stern, then the Mariana Explorer began following a dot-to-dot path laid out on the navigation screen. At periodic intervals, a team of marine biologists collected seawater samples from varying depths. As the ship moved to the next position, the collected samples were sent down to the shipboard laboratory for immediate analysis.

On the bridge, Giordino tracked the signals from the side-scan sonar. The electronic image of the shallow seafloor revealed an interweaving mix of flat sand bottom and craggy coral mounts as the ship sailed over the fringes of a coral reef. In a short time, his trained eyes had already discerned a ship's anchor and an outboard motor lying beneath the well-traveled waters. As the monitor revealed each object, Giordino reached over and punched a MARK button on the console, which flagged the location for later assessment.

Pitt and Biazon stood nearby, admiring the tropical beaches of Panglao Island less than a half mile away. Pitt glanced down at the water alongside the ship, where he spotted a sea turtle and scores of dead fish floating belly-up.

"We've entered the toxic zone," Pitt said. "We should know the results shortly."

As the research vessel plowed west, the concentration of dead fish in the water increased, then gradually fell away until the blue sea around them grew empty again.

"We're a half mile beyond Dr. Biazon's grid," Stenseth reported. "Judging by the water, it looks like we're well clear of the toxic zone."

"Agreed," Pitt replied. "Let's stand by here until we see what kind of results the lab has found."

As the ship ground to a halt and the sonar towfish was retrieved, Pitt led Biazon down a level into a teak-paneled conference room, followed by Giordino and Stenseth. Biazon studied the portraits of several famous underwater explorers which lined one wall, recognizing the images of William Beebe, Sylvia Earle, and Don Walsh. As they were seated, a pair of marine biologists clad in the requisite white lab coats entered the conference room. A short, attractive female, her brunet hair tied back in a ponytail, walked to a suspended viewing screen at the front of the room, while her male assistant began typing commands into the computer-driven projection system.

"We have completed an assessment of forty-four discrete water samples collected, which were analyzed using molecular separation of existing toxic molecules," she said in a clear voice. As she spoke, an image appeared on the screen behind her, similar to the navigation screen Biazon had noticed the ship tracking to earlier. A zigzag line punctuated by forty-four large dots ran parallel to an outline of the Panglao Island shoreline. Each dot was color-coded, though Biazon noted that most of them glowed green.

"The samples were measured for toxic content in parts per billion, with positive results occurring in fifteen of the samples," the biologist stated, pointing to a row of yellow dots. "As you can see from the chart, the concentration increases as the samples moved east, with the highest reading registered here," she said, tracing past a few orange-colored dots to a lone red dot near the top of the map.

"So the source is from an isolated location," Pitt said.

"The samples tested negative beyond the red point, indicating that it is likely of a concentrated origin spreading east with the current."

"That would seem to dispel the red tide theory. Al, do the results mesh with anything we picked up on the sonar?"

Giordino walked over to the console and leaned over the operator's shoulder, typing in a quick series of commands. A dozen Xs suddenly appeared on the projection screen, overlaid at random points along the zigzag tracking line. Each X was lettered, beginning with A at the bottom, proceeding to L near the top.

"Al's 'Dirty Dozen' hit list," he smiled, retaking his seat. "We ran over twelve objects that appeared man-made. Mostly chunks of pipe, rusty anchors, and the like. Three items appeared that could be suspected culprits," he said, eyeing a sheet of handwritten notes. "Mark C was a trio of fifty-five-gallon drums lying in the sand."

Every eye in the room jumped to the X marked C on the overhead. The water samples on either side of the mark were all illuminated with green dots, which signified a negative test result.

"No toxins registered in the vicinity," Pitt said. "Next."

"Mark F looks to be a wooden sailboat, perhaps a local fishing boat. She's sitting upright on the bottom with her mast still standing."

This X was located adjacent to the first yellow dot. Pitt commented that it was still down current of the toxic readings.

"Strike two. But you're getting warmer."

"My last mark is a little odd, as the image was just at the range of the sonar," Giordino said, pausing with uncertainty.

"Well, what did it look like?" Stenseth asked.

"A ship's propeller. Looked like it was protruding from the reef. I couldn't make out any sign of the ship that went with it, though. Might just be a lone propeller that got bashed off against the reef. I tagged it at mark K."

Every voice in the room fell silent as their eyes found the X marked K on the overhead screen. It was positioned right above the red dot.

"It would appear there's something more to it than just a propeller," Pitt said finally. "Leaking fuel from a submerged ship, or perhaps its cargo?"

"We did not detect abnormally high readings of petroleum compounds in the water samples," the NUMA biologist stated.

"You never did tell us what you found," Giordino said, raising a dark eyebrow at the biologist.

"Yes, you said you did identify toxins in the water, didn't you?" Biazon asked anxiously. "What was it that you found?"

"Something I've never encountered in salt water before," she replied, shaking her head slowly. "Arsenic."

Chapter 13

The coral reef exploded with a rainbow of colors arranged in a serene beauty that put a Monet landscape to shame. Bright red sea anemones waved their tentacles lazily in the current amid a carpet of magenta-colored sea sponges. Delicate green sea fans climbed gracefully toward the surface beside round masses of violet-hued brain coral. Brilliant blue starfish glowed from the reef like bright neon signs, while dozens of sea urchins blanketed the seafloor in a carpet of pink pincushions.

Few things in nature rivaled the beauty of a healthy coral reef, Pitt reflected as his eyes drank in the assortment of colors. Floating just off the bottom, he peered out his faceplate in amusement as a pair of small clown fish darted into a crevice as a spotted ray cruised by searching for a snack. Of all the world's great dive spots, he always felt it was the warm waters of the western Pacific that held the most breathtaking coral reefs.

"The wreck should be slightly ahead and to the north of us," Giordino's voice crackled through his ears, breaking the tranquility. After mooring the Mariana Explorer over the site of the maximum toxin readings, Pitt and Giordino donned rubberized dry suits with full faceplates to protect them from potential chemical or biological contamination. Dropping over the side, they splashed into the clear warm water that dropped 120 feet to the bottom.

The readings of arsenic in the water had been startling to everyone. Dr. Biazon reported that arsenic seepage had been known to occur in mining operations around the country and that several manganese mines operated on Bohol Island, but added that none were located near Panglao. Arsenic was also utilized in insecticides, the NUMA biologist countered. Perhaps an insecticide container was lost off a vessel, or intentionally dumped? There was only one way to find out, Pitt declared, and that was to go down and have a look.

With Giordino at his side, Pitt checked his compass, then thrust his fins together, kicking himself at an angle across the invisible current. The visibility was nearly seventy-five feet and Pitt could observe the reef gradually rising to shallower depths as he glided just above the bottom. His skin quickly began to sweat under the thick dry suit, its protective layer providing more insulation than was required in the warm tropical waters.

"Somebody turn on the air-conditioning," he heard Giordino mutter, verbalizing his own sentiments.

With eyes aimed forward, he still saw no signs of a shipwreck, but noted that the coral bottom rose up sharply ahead. To his right, a large underwater sand dune boiled up against the reef, its rippled surface stretching beyond Pitt's field of vision. Reaching the coral uplift, he tilted his upper body toward the surface and thrust with a large scissors kick to propel himself up and over its jagged edge. He was surprised to find that the reef dropped vertically away on the other side, creating a large crevasse. More surprising was what he saw at the bottom of the ravine. It was the bow half of a ship.

"What the heck?" Giordino uttered, spotting the partial wreckage of the ship.

Pitt studied the partial remains of the ship for a moment, then laughed through the underwater communication system. "Got me, too. It's an optical illusion. The rest of the ship is there, it's just buried under the sand dune."

Giordino studied the wreck and saw that Pitt was right. The large sand dune that affronted the reef had built up partway into the crevasse and neatly covered the stern half of the ship. The current swirling through the crevasse had halted the onslaught of the sand at a point amidships of the wreck in a nearly perfect line, which gave the impression that only half a ship existed.

Pitt turned away from the exposed portion of the ship, swimming over the empty sand dune for several yards before it dropped sharply beneath him.

"Here's your propeller, Al," he said, pointing down.

Beneath his fins, a small section of the ship's stern was exposed. The brown-encrusted skin curved down to a large brass propeller, which protruded from the sand dune like a windmill. Giordino kicked over and inspected the propeller, than swam up the sternpost several feet and began brushing away a layer of sand. From the curvature of the stern, he could tell that the ship was listing sharply to its port side, which was also apparent from the exposed bow section. Pitt floated over and watched as Giordino was able to expose the last few letters of the ship's name beaded onto the stern.

"Something MARU is the most I can get," he said, struggling to trench into a refilling hole of sand.

"She's Japanese," Pitt said, "and, by the looks of the corrosion, she's been here awhile. If she's leaking toxins, it would have to be from the bow section."

Giordino stopped digging in the sand and followed Pitt as he swam toward the exposed front of the ship. The vessel eerily emerged again from the sand dune at its main funnel, which jutted nearly horizontally, its top edged meshed into the coral wall. From its small bridge section and long forward deck, Pitt could see that the vessel was a common oceangoing cargo ship. He judged her length at slightly more than two hundred feet. As they swam over the angled topside, he could see that the main deck had vanished, its wooden planking disintegrated long ago in the warm Philippine waters.

"Those are some ancient-looking hoists," Giordino remarked, eyeing a small pair of rusty derricks that reached across the deck like outstretched arms.

"If I had to guess, I'd say she was probably built in the twenties," Pitt replied, kicking past a deck rail that appeared to be made of brass.

Pitt made his way along the deck until he reached a pair of large square hatch covers, the capstones to the ship's forward cargo holds. With the freighter's heavy list, Pitt had expected to find the hatch covers pitched off the storage compartments, but that wasn't the case. Together, the two men swam around the circumference of each hatch, searching for damage or signs of leakage.

"Locked down and sealed tight as a drum," Giordino said after they returned to their starting point.

"There must be a breach somewhere else."

Silently finishing his thought, Pitt slowly ascended until he could look down the curving starboard side and exposed hull. Surrounding the ship, the coral reef rose sharply on either side. Following his instincts, he swam down the starboard hull all the way to the partially exposed keel line, then moved slowly toward the bow. Kicking just a short distance, he suddenly halted. Before him, a jagged four-foot-wide gash stretched nearly twenty feet down the starboard hull to the very tip of the bow. The sound of whistling burst through his ears as Giordino swam up and surveyed the gaping wound.

"Just like the Titanic," he marveled. "Only she scraped herself to the bottom on a coral head instead of a chunk of ice."

"She must have been trying to run aground on purpose," Pitt surmised.

"Outrunning a typhoon, probably."

"Or maybe a Navy Corsair. Leyte Gulf is just around the corner, where the Japanese fleet was decimated in 1944."

The Philippine Islands were a hotly contested piece of real estate in World War II, Pitt recalled. More than sixty thousand Americans lost their lives in the failed defense and later recapture of the islands, a forgotten toll that exceeded the losses in Vietnam. On the heels of the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, Japanese forces had landed near Manila and quickly overrun the U. S. and Philippine forces garrisoned at Luzon, Bataan, and Corregidor. General MacArthur's hasty retreat was followed by three years of Japanese oppressive rule, until American advances across the Pacific led to the invasion of the southern island of Leyte in October 1944.

Just over a hundred miles from Panglao, the province of Leyte and its adjoining gulf was the site of the largest air/sea battle in history. Days after MacArthur and his invasion force landed on Leyte, the Japanese Imperial Navy appeared and successfully divided the American supporting naval force. The Japanese came within a hair of destroying the Seventh Fleet, but were ultimately turned back in a devastating defeat, losing four carriers and three battleships, including the massive battlewagon Musashi. The crippling losses finished the Imperial Navy's brief dominance in Pacific waters and led to the country's military collapse within a year.

The sea channels surrounding the southern Philippine islands of Leyte, Samar, Mindanao, and Bohol were littered with sunken cargo, transport, and warships from the conflict. It would be no surprise to Pitt if the toxins were related to combat wreckage. Eyeing the gash in the cargo ship's hull, it was easy to presume that the vessel was a victim of war.

Pitt mentally envisioned the Japanese-flagged freighter under air attack, the desperate captain electing to run the ship aground in a perilous attempt to save the crew and cargo. Slicing into the coral reef, the bow quickly filled with water as the ship ricocheted off the sides of the crevasse. With a full head of steam, the ship literally drove itself over onto its port side. Whatever cargo the captain had tried to save lay hidden and dormant for decades to follow.

"I think we definitely hit the jackpot," Giordino said in a morose tone.

Pitt turned to see Giordino's gloved hand pointing away from the hull and toward the adjacent reef. Gone was the vibrant red-, blue-, and green-colored corals they had witnessed earlier. In a fan-shaped pattern stretching around the ship's bow, the coral was uniformly tinted a dull white. Pitt grimly noted that no fish were visible in the area as well.

"Bleached dead from the arsenic," he noted.

Turning back to the wreck, he grabbed a small flashlight clipped to his buoyancy compensator and ducked toward the gap in the hull. Edging his way slowly into the ship's underside, he flicked on the light and sprayed its beam across the black interior. The lower bow section was empty but for a mass of thick anchor chain coiled in a huge pile like an iron serpent. Creeping aft, Pitt moved toward the rear bulkhead as Giordino slipped through the gash and followed behind him. Reaching the bulkhead, Pitt panned his light across the steel wall that separated them from the forward cargo hold. At its lower joint with the starboard bulkhead, he found what he was looking for. The pressure from the outer hull's collision with the reef had buckled one of the plates on the cargo hold's bulkhead. The bent metal created a horizontal window to the cargo hold several feet wide.

Pitt eased up to the hole, careful not to kick up silt around him, then stuck his head in and pulled in the flashlight. A huge lifeless eye stared back at him just inches away, nearly causing him to recoil until he saw that it belonged to a grouper. The fifty-pound green fish drifted back and forth across the compartment in a slow maze, its gray belly pointing up toward the trail of Pitt's rising exhaust bubbles. Peering past the dead fish into its black tomb, Pitt's blood went cold as he surveyed the hold. Scattered in mounds like eggs in a henhouse were hundreds of decaying artillery shells. The forty-pound projectiles were ammunition for the 105mm artillery gun, a lethal field weapon utilized by the Imperial Army during the war.

"A Welcome-to-the-Philippines present for General MacArthur?" Giordino asked, peering in.

Pitt silently nodded, then pulled out a plastic-lined dive bag. Giordino obliged by reaching over and grabbing a shell and inserting it in the bag as Pitt sealed and wrapped it. Giordino then reached over and picked up another highly corroded shell, holding it just a few inches off the bottom. Both men looked on curiously as a brown oily substance leaked out of the projectile.

"That doesn't resemble any high-explosives powder I've ever seen," he said, gingerly setting the weapon down.

"I don't think they are ordinary artillery shells," Pitt replied as he noted a pool of brown ooze beneath a nearby pile of ordnance. "Let's get this one back to the shipboard lab and find out what we've got," he said, carrying the wrapped ordnance under his arm like a football. Gliding forward along the bow section, he slipped through the open hull and back into the bright sunlit water.

Pitt had little doubt that the armament was a lost World War II cache. Why the arsenic, he did not know. The Japanese were innovative in their weapons of war and the arsenic-laced shells might have been another device in their arsenal of death. The loss of the Philippines would have effectively spelled the end of the war for the Japanese and they may have prepared to use the weapons as part of a last-gasp measure against a determined enemy.

As they surfaced with the mysterious shell, Pitt felt a strange sense of relief. The deadly cargo that the ship carried so many years ago had never reached port. He was somehow glad that it had ended up sunk on the reef, never to be fielded in the face of battle.