Into the Wind

Into the Wind is the story of Kim Stewart, a 30 year old marine biologist who has willingly forfeited her career to be fulltime housewife to genetic engineer husband, Jason, and fulltime mother to her three preschool children. Kim leads a simple and serene life in the Florida panhandle, a life filled with carefree days at the beach and the park. One day, however, a phone call shatters everything. The call is from a South Florida environmental laboratory wanting to recruit Kim, an expert in red tide, to set up a red tide culturing facility and to train the employees concerning the biological and chemical aspects of the toxic organism under the guise of environmental research.
Persuaded by Jason to accept the temporary position and activate her “scientific juices,” Kim reluctantly heads to Bradenton, Florida, 500 miles away, to assist the firm. While acquainting herself with the laboratory, she unwittingly stumbles upon a plot of the United State’s Army to extract toxins from organisms for the purpose of assassinations, in particular, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.
Fearing the laboratory suspects she has knowledge of the plot and the implications that accompany that knowledge, her own assassination, Kim decides her only option is to leave Bradenton and return home to Pensacola. Having planned a mini-vacation of sailing from Bradenton to Pensacola at the conclusion of the project, Kim requests that her father, Dr. Paul Ryan, the Director of the United States Environmental Protection Agency in Gulf Breeze, FL., please hurry and sail down immediately. As she waits for him, she tries to gather more evidence and overhear more conversations.
As the two set sail back to the panhandle, from where Dr. Ryan can contact his government friends in Washington, D.C., they discover their boat has been sabotaged; a supporting shroud has been cut, their radio and Loran have been destroyed, and the life jackets have been taken. After surviving a ripped mainsail, vicious winds and swells, and an overboard episode, they ponder their dilemma and decide to continue toward home. However, a fishing boat suspiciously appears, breaking their calm. Her skipper and mate are murderers who try to rape and kill them.
After overcoming the assault, Dr. Ryan and Kim decide to sail to Sarasota, just south of Bradenton, for stealth and then to return to the lab to gather evidence and document the conspiracy. Breaking into the laboratory, Kim shows her father the aquaria of toxic puffer fish and scorpion fish, as well as, her work on the red tide culturing facility. Dr. Ryan encourages her to recall everything that she knows concerning the plot. As she tells of a conversation that she overheard concerning Hussein being in Tel Aviv, Dr. Ryan begins to have serious doubts of his daughter’s suspicions. Tel Aviv is in Israel and Hussein would never go there. Kim is left to uncover the truth-- alone