Vixen 03

by Clive Cussler

  "I apologize for my remarks. I am overtired."

  Machita decided then and there that the colonel was a danger that bore watching. He could see that Jumana would never fully accept the position of number-two man.

  "Forget it," said Lusana. "The important thing now is to lay our hands on Wild Rose."

  "I will make arrangements for the exchange," said Machita.

  "You will do more than that," Lusana said, facing the shore again. "You will create a plan to make the payoff. Then you will kill Emma."

  Jumana's mouth hung open. " You never intended to give away the two million dollars?" he sputtered.

  Lusana grinned. "Of course not. If you had been patient, you could have spared us your juvenile outburst."

  Jumana made no reply. There was nothing he could say. He widened his smile and shrugged. It was then Machita caught the imperceptible shift of the eyes. Jumana was not looking directly at Lusana; his vision was aimed at a spot in the river ten feet upstream from the general.

  "Guards!" Machita screamed, pointing frantically. "The river! Fire! For God's sake, fire!"

  The security men's reaction time measured less than two seconds. Their shots exploded in Machita's ears and the water erupted a few feet from Lusana in a hundred shattered geysers.

  Twenty feet of hideous brown scale burst through the surface and rolled over and over, its tail thrashing crazily as the bullets thudded into the thick hide like hail. Then the firing ceased and the great reptile made one more convulsive revolution and sank beneath the surface.

  Lusana stood in his wading boots, his eyes wide, his body stunned into immobility. He stared dazedly into the clear water at the hulk of the crocodile, now gracefully tumbling along the riverbed in the current.

  On the bank, Machita trembled, not so much at Lusana's narrow escape as at the satanic expression on Jumana's Neanderthal-shaped face.

  The bastard had known, Machita thought. He had known the instant the crocodile slithered off the far bank and homed in on the general, and yet he had said nothing.

  25

  Chesapeake Bay, USA-October 1988

  It was two hours before dawn when Patrick Fawkes paid the cabdriver and walked up to the floodlit gate of the Forbes Marine Scrap & Salvage Company. A uniformed guard turned from a portable TV set and yawned as Fawkes passed a small folder through the arched window of the gatehouse. The guard scrutinized the signatures and compared the photograph with the man before him.

  35

  Then he passed it back.

  "Welcome to America, Captain. My employers have been expecting you."

  "Is she here?" Fawkes asked impatiently.

  "Tied up to the east dock," replied the guard, shoving a Xerox copy of a map of the salvage area through the window. "Mind your step. Since the energy rationing, the yard's night lights have been shut off. It's darker than Hades out there." As Fawkes passed under the giant derricks toward the dock, a wind swept in off the bay and carried a heavy odor to his nostrils: the pungent perfume of the waterfront. He inhaled the mingled aromas of diesel oil, tar,and salt water. It never failed to revive his spirits.

  He came to the dock and glanced about for signs of human activity. The night crew had long since gone home. Only a seagull, perched on a wooden piling, returned Fawkes's gaze out of one beady eye.

  After another hundred yards, Fawkes stopped at a huge spectral shape that loomed in the darkness beside the pier. Then he took the gangplank, stepped onto the seemingly endless deck, and unerringly made his way through the steel labyrinth to the bridge.

  Later, as the sun crept over the eastern side of the bay, the mutilated shabbiness of the ship became manifest. But the peeling paint, the acres of rust, and the jagged torch marks of the salvage crew stood unseen in Fawkes's eyes. Like a father with a hideously disfigured daughter, he saw only her beauty.

  "Aye, you're a bonny ship," he shouted across the silent decks. "You're gonna do just fine."

  3

  Salvage

  26

  Washington, D.C. -November 1988

  Steiger's superiors at the Pentagon sat on his report of the discovery of Vixen 03 for nearly two months before summoning him to Washington. To Steiger it was like sitting in the audience of a staged nightmare. He felt more like a hostile witness than a key investigator.

  Even with the evidence before their eyes, in the form of videotape, General Ernest Burgdorf, chief of Air Force Safety, and General John O'Keefe, aide to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expressed doubts over the sunken aircraft's importance, and argued that nothing was to be gained by bringing it to light except sensationalistic play from the news media. Steiger sat stunned.

  "But their families," he protested. "It would be criminal not to notify the crew's families that the bodies have been found."

  "Come to your senses, Colonel. What good would dredging up old memories do them? The crew's parents are probably long since dead. Wives have remarried. Children raised by new fathers. Let all concerned go about their present lives in peace."

  "There's still the cargo," Steiger said. "The possibility exists that Vixen O3's cargo included nuclear warheads."

  "We've been all through that," snapped O'Keefe. "A thorough computer search through military-storehouse records confirmed that there are no missing warheads. Every piece of atomic hardware beginning with the bomb dropped on Hiroshima can be accounted for."

  "Are you also aware, sir, that nuclear material was, and is still, shipped in stainless-steel canisters?"

  "And did it also occur to you, Colonel," said Burgdorf, "that the canisters you say you found might be empty?"

  Steiger sagged in his chair, beaten. He might as well have been debating with the wind. They were treating him like an overimaginative child who claimed he'd seen an elephant in a Minnesota cornfield.

  "And if that actually is the same aircraft that was supposed to have vanished over the Pacific," added Burgdorf, "I think it best to let sleeping dogs lie."

  "Sir?"

  "The grim reasons behind the aircraft's tremendous course differen-tial may not be something the Air Force wishes to publicize.

  Consider the probabilities. To fly a thousand miles in the opposite direction takes either the total malfunction of at least five different instrument systems aided by the blind stupidity of the crew, a navigator who lost his marbles, or a plot by the entire crew to steal the airplane, for what purpose God only knows."

  "But somebody must have authorized the flight orders," said Steiger, puzzled.

  "Somebody did," said O'Keefe. "The original orders were issued at Travis Air Force Base, in California, by a Colonel Michael Irwin."

  Steiger looked at the general skeptically. "Flight orders are seldom kept on file more than a few months. How is it possible the ones in question were retained for over thirty years?"

  O'Keefe shrugged. "Don't ask me how, Colonel. Take my word for it: Vixen 03's last flight plan turned up in old files at the Travis administration office."

  "And the orders I found in the wreckage?"

  "Accept the inevitable," said Burgdorf. "The papers you pulled out of that Colorado lake were too far gone to decipher with any degree of accuracy. You simply read something into them that wasn't there."

  "As far as I'm concerned," O'Keefe said resolutely, "the explanation for Vixen O3's course deviation is a dead issue." He turned to Burgdorf. "You agree, General?"

  "I do."

  O'Keefe stared at Steiger. "Do you have anything else you'd like to put before us, Colonel?"

  Steiger's superiors sat and waited for him to reply. He knew no words worth uttering. He had reached a dead end. The implication dangled over his head like a suspended sword. Either Abe Steiger forgot all about Vixen 03 or his Air Force career would come to a premature halt.

  The President stood on the putting green behind the White House and stiffly swatted a dozen balls toward the cup only five feet away. None dropped in, further proving to him that golf was not his game. He could understand the c
ompetitive challenge of tennis or handball or even a fast run of pool, but why one would choose to compete against one's own handicap escaped him.

  "Now I can die content, for I have seen everything."

  36

  The President straightened and looked into the grinning face of Timothy March, his Secretary of Defense.

  "It all goes to prove how much time I have on my hands now that I'm a lame-duck president."

  March, a short, dumpy man who detested any sort of physical exertion, walked onto the green. "You should be happy with the election. Your party and your man won."

  "Nobody ever really wins an election," the President grunted. "What's on your mind, Tim?"

  "Thought you might like to know I've clamped the lid on that old aircraft found in the Rockies."

  "Probably a wise move."

  "A baffling affair," said March. "Except for those doctored flight plans in Air Force files, there is no trace-of the crew's true mission."

  "So be it," said the President, finally knocking a ball into the cup. "Let's leave it lie. If Eisenhower buried the answers during his administration, far be it from me to open a can of worms during mine."

  "I suggest we remove the remains of the crew for a military burial. We owe them that."

  "Okay, but absolutely no publicity."

  "I'll make that clear to the Air Force officer in charge."

  The President tossed the putter to a Secret Service man who lurked nearby and motioned for March to accompany him to the Executive Offices.

  "What's your best educated guess, Tim? What do you really think Ike was trying to cover up back in 1954?"

  "That question has kept me staring at the ceiling the past few nights," said March. "I don't have the foggiest idea."

  Steiger shouldered his way past the lunchtime crowd waiting for tables at the Cottonwood Inn and entered the bar. Pitt waved from a rear booth and motioned for the cocktail waitress in almost the same gesture. Steiger slipped into a seat across from Pitt as the waitress, seductively attired in an abbreviated colonial costume, arched her blossoming breasts over the table.

  "A martini on the rocks," said Steiger, eyeing the mounds. "On second thought, make that a double. It's been one of those mornings."

  Pitt held up a nearly empty glass. "Another salty dog."

  "Christ," moaned Steiger. "How can you stand those things?"

  "I hear they're good for cutting down weight," Pitt answered. "The enzymes from the grapefruit juice cancel out the calories in the vodka."

  "Sounds like an old-wives' tale. Besides, why bother? You don't have an ounce of fat on you anywhere."

  "See," Pitt laughed. "They really work."

  The humor was contagious. For the first time that day Steiger felt like laughing. But soon after the drinks arrived his expression clouded again, and he sat there silently, toying with his glass without touching its contents.

  "Don't tell me," said Pitt, reading the colonel's dour thoughts, "your friends at the Pentagon shot you down?"

  Steiger nodded slowly. "They dissected every sentence of my report and flushed the pieces into the Washington sewer system."

  "Are you serious?"

  "They wanted none of it."

  "What about the canisters and the fifth skeleton?"

  "They claim the canisters are empty. As to your theory on Loren Smith's father, I didn't even bring it up. I saw little reason to stoke the fires of their already flaming skepticism."

  "Then you're off the investigation."

  "I am if I wish to retire a general."

  "They leaned on you?"

  "They didn't have to. It was written in their eyes."

  "What happens now?"

  Steiger looked at Pitt steadily. "I was hoping you might go it alone."

  Their eyes locked.

  "You want me to raise the aircraft from Table Lake?"

  "Why not? My God, you salvaged the Titanic from thirteen thousand feet in the middle of the Atlantic. A Stratocruiser in a landlocked lake should be child's play for a man of your talents."

  "Very flattering. But you forget, I'm not my own boss. Raising Vixen 03 will take a crew of twenty men, several truckloads of equipment, a minimum of two weeks, and a budget of nearly four hundred thousand dollars. I can't swing that on my own, and Admiral San decker would never give NUMA's blessing to a project that size without solid assurance of additional government funding."

  "Then what about simply bringing up one of the canisters and Smith's remains for positive identification?"

  "And find ourselves holding the proverbial bag?"

  "It's worth a try," Steiger said, excitement rising in his tone. "You can fly back to Colorado tomorrow. In the meantime I'll authorize a contract to retrieve the crew's bodies. That will get you off the hook with the Pentagon and NUMA."

  Pitt shook his head. "Sorry, but you'll have to take a rain check. Sandecker assigned me to oversee the raising of a Union ironclad that sank off the Georgia coast during the Civil War." He paused to check his watch. "I'm scheduled to board a flight for Savannah in six hours."

  Steiger sighed and his shoulders sagged. "Perhaps you can give it a go at a later date."

  "Wrap up the contract and keep it on ice. I'll sneak off to Colorado the first chance I get. That's a promise."

  "Have you told Congresswoman Smith about her father yet?"

  "Truthfully, I haven't had the guts."

  "A nagging doubt you could be wrong?"

  "That's part of it."

  A vacant expression clouded Abe Steiger's face. "Jesus, what a mess." He downed the double martini in one throw and then stared at the glass sadly.

  The waitress returned with menus and they ordered. Steiger absently watched her backside as she swayed into the kitchen.

  37

  "Instead of sitting here, beating out my brains over an old mystery nobody cares about, I should be concentrating on getting back to California and the wife and kids."

  "How many?"

  "Kids? Eight, all told. Five boys and three girls."

  "You must be Catholic."

  Steiger smiled. "With a name like Abraham Levi Steiger? You've got to be kidding."

  "By the way, you neglected to mention how the brass explained away Vixen 03's flight plan."

  "General O'Keefe found the original. It didn't jibe with our analysis of the one from the wreck."

  Pitt pondered a moment and then asked, "Do you have a Xerox copy I might borrow?"

  "Of the flight plan?"

  "Just the sixth page."

  "Outside, locked in the trunk of my car. Why?"

  "A shot in the dark," Pitt said. "I have this friend over at FBI who can't resist a good crossword puzzle."

  "Must you really leave tonight?" Loren asked Pitt.

  "I'm expected at a morning meeting to discuss salvage operations," he said from the bathroom, where he was loading his shaving kit.

  "Damn," she said, pouting. "I might as well have an affair with a traveling salesman."

  He entered the bedroom. "Come now, to you I'm nothing but a current toy."

  "That'snot so." She flung her arms around him. "Next to Phil Sawyer, you're my very favorite person."

  Pitt looked at her. "Since when have you been seeing the President's press secretary?"

  "When the stud is away, Loren will play."

  "But good God! Phil Sawyer. He wears white shirts and talks like a thesaurus."

  "He asked me to marry him."

  "I may vomit."

  She held him tightly. "Pease, no sarcasm tonight."

  "I regret I can't be more of an adoring lover to you, but I'm too damned selfish to commit myself. I'm not capable of giving the one hundred percent a woman like you needs."

  "I'll settle for any percentage I can get."

  He leaned down and kissed her on the throat. "You'd make Phil Sawyer a rotten wife."

  27

  Thomas Machita paid his admission and entered the grounds of the traveling amusement fair, one
of many that sprang up on holidays around the South African countryside. It was Sunday and large groups of Bantu and their families lined up at the Ferris wheel, merry-go-round, and booth games. Machita made his way over to the ghost ride, according to Emma's telephone instructions.

  He was undecided as to which tool he would employ to kill Emma. The razor blade taped to his left forearm left much to be desired. The tiny bit of steel was a close-in weapon, lethal only if he sliced his victim's jugular vein in an unguarded, discreet moment, an opportunity Machita considered quite remote in view of the sizable crowd around him.

  Machita finally decided on the ice pick. He let out a satisfied sigh, as though he had solved a great scientific riddle. The pick was unobtru-sively threaded among the strands of a basket clutched in his hands. The wooden handle had been removed, and in its place electrical tape had been wound several times around the needlelike shaft. A quick thrust between the ribs to the heart, or into an eye or an ear; if he could somehow ram the shaft into one of Emma's eustachian tubes, there would be little if any body fluid to tell the tale.

  Machita tightened his grip on the basket that held both the ice pick and the two million dollars for the payoff. His turn came and he paid for a ticket and mounted the platform of the ghost ride. The couple ahead of him, a giggling man and his obese wife, snuggled their way into a small car that seated two. The attendant, an old, haggard-looking derelict who constantly sniffed at a runny nose, lowered a safety bar over their legs and shoved a large lever protruding from the floor. The car bounced forward on a track and rolled through two swinging doors. Soon, wom-en's screams could be heard escaping from the darkened interior.

  Machita entered the next car. He relaxed and became amused at the thought of the ride. Images of his childhood returned and he remembered cringing in a similar car during another ghost ride long ago as phosphorescent banshees lurched out of the blackness at him.