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“He's slowing to cross our wake,” He
The thought never occurred to him that it was anything more than a coincidental encounter. Nor would he ever suspect that a trusted crewman, one of a handful of Kang's men working on board as launch technicians, was feeding their exact position to the ship using a simple GPS receiver and portable radio transmitter. After crossing the length of the Pacific, the Koguryo had picked up the radio transmission twenty-four hours earlier and vectored in on the Odyssey's path like a homing pigeon to roost.
As the lights of the unknown ship twinkled off the Odyssey's port stern in the evening darkness, He
The experienced assault team came quickly, in the dark of night and with complete surprise. After shadowing the Odyssey for most of the evening, the Koguryo had suddenly stopped its engines, letting the self-propelled platform churn on toward the horizon. In the pilothouse of the Odyssey, the night shift helmsman and watch officer relaxed as the lights of the other ship fell away. With an autopilot steering the platform, their only concerns were monitoring the radar screen and weather forecast. But on an empty sea in the dead of night, there was little cause for concern. Focus on duty waned as the two men paced the bridge, engaging in a tireless debate about World Cup soccer rather than studying the electronic monitors about them. Had either man watched the radarscope more closely, they would have had an inkling of things to come.
Far from changing course or making repairs, the Koguryo had stopped to launch its high-speed tender. The open-decked, thirty-foot boat was a spacious and luxurious assault craft for Tongju, Kim, and the dozen other men dressed in black commando outfits who sat brandishing their assault rifles on leather-cushioned seats. Though low on stealth, the boat provided a fast and stable means of crossing open water to strike the platform with an ample attack force.
The tender bounded in darkness across the rolling waves, racing across the open sea under a bright canopy of stars that spread from horizon to horizon. The speedy boat quickly gobbled up ground between itself and the moving platform, which was lit up against the night sky like a Times Square marquee. As the tender's pilot approached the shadow of the massive platform, he steered the boat dead center under the structure, threading the boat between the Odyssey's twin pontoons. Holding its speed, the boat darted under the platform and past the thick support columns, barely skimming under a set of massive triangular supports that horizontally crisscrossed the columns just twelve feet above the water. Slowing to match speeds with the Odyssey, he inched toward the forward starboard column, where a salt-encrusted steel stairway led up to the heights above. When he edged to within a few feet, one of the commandos leaped from the bow with a small line and quickly tied it to the stairwell post. One by one, the remaining commandos jumped onto the stairwell and began the long climb to the platform above. Pausing at the top steps to catch their breath, the team paused for a moment to regroup before Tongju nodded his head to proceed. The secure door to the stairwell had been left unlocked by one of Kang's crewmen already aboard and the commandos quickly slipped through and fa
Though Tongju had studied photos and plans of the Odyssey, he was still overwhelmed by the massive scale of the launch deck, which stretched well over a football field in length. At the far end stood the launch tower, separated by a large tract of open deck that led to the launch vehicle hangar. Along the recessed starboard beam sat the massive fuel storage tanks, which would gas up the rocket shortly before launch. On either side of the launch vehicle hangar stood two small buildings that housed the crew's quarters, offering accommodations for sixty-eight men plus a galley and medical station. That would be the first target.
The assault team was primed to strike simultaneously, five men to the hangar, three to the bridge, and the balance to the crew's quarters. Most of the forty-two-man crew aboard the Odyssey had little to do until the platform reached the launch site and spent the hours reading, playing cards, or watching movies. By 3 a.m." only a handful of men were still awake, mostly crewmen assigned to sail the platform or monitor the launch vehicle. When the commandos struck the crew's quarters with drill precision, the confused technicians and engineers were too stu
In the launch vehicle hangar, it was a similar story. The small commando team rapidly swept through the air-conditioned building that housed the cradled Zenit rocket, rounding up a handful of engineers without a fight. On the bridge situated high atop the launch vehicle hangar, the two men ma
The commandos were surprised to find that most of the platform's marine crew were Filipino while the launch team was an assorted mix of American, Russian, and Ukrainian engineers. The subdued multinational crew was herded to the galley where they were held at gunpoint, except for the dozen of Kang's planted crew members and satellite company representatives, who took over operational control of sailing the platform. Even Captain He
On the bridge, Tongju radioed the Koguryo that the platform was taken with no resistance. Examining an unfurled navigation chart left on a side table, he barked at one of Kang's crewmen now ma
“Revise bearing to fifteen degrees north-northeast. We are diverting to a new launch site.”
As the crack of dawn approached, the Koguryo maneuvered alongside the northbound Odyssey and slowed to match speeds with the platform as it mashed through five-foot swells. Edging to within twenty feet of the Odyssey, Captain Lee held the Koguryo perfectly in tandem with the moving platform's starboard beam. In the wheel-house of the Odyssey, a nervous helmsman ensured that the autopilot was properly engaged as the ex-cable-laying ship hove to alongside.
On the top deck of the hangar, Tongju supervised the movement of a large crane as it was swung out over the starboard edge of the platform. A heavy block and hook swung wildly from the end of the crane for a moment before being lowered to the rear deck of the Koguryo. A ready signal was relayed over the marine radio and the crane began hoisting up a square metal container the size of a sofa, which was swung over and lowered to the platform's main deck. Stored inside were the special canisters containing the freeze-dried chimera cultures ready to be inserted into the payload aerosol dispenser.
While the deadly virus was being hoisted to the platform, the Koguryo's tender ferried over a dozen launch and payload specialists, who immediately swarmed into the rocket hangar and began dissecting the Zenit's payload section. An additional security contingent was also ferried over to help relieve Tongju's assault commandos.