"Tell your boys we're free. We're back in deep water!"
The engine crew tackled their respective duties again, their faces wearing relieved smiles. One oiler began a popular chant and soon they all took it up in chorus with the hum from the great turbines.
Emma did not join in. Only he knew the truth behind the Iowa's strange voyage. In a few hours the men around him would be dead. They might have been reprieved if the Iowa's flat bottom had remained firmly stuck in the shoal's mud. But it was not to be.
Fawkes was the lucky one, he thought. Damned lucky. So far.
56
The President sat at the end of a long conference table in the emergency executive offices three hundred feet beneath the White House and stared Dale Jarvis squarely in the eye. "I don't have to tell you, Dale, the last thing I need is a crisis during the last few days of my administration, especially a crisis that can't wait until morning."
Jarvis felt the tingling fingers of nervousness. The President was noted for his volcanic temper. Jarvis had been present on more than one occasion when the famous mustache, a delight of political cartoonists, fairly bristled with wrath. With little to lose, except his job, Jarvis counterattacked.
"I am not in the custom of interrupting your sleep, sir, nor the martial dreams of the Joint Chiefs, unless I have a damned good 78
reason."
Defense Secretary Timothy March sucked in his breath. "I think what Dale means-"
"What I mean," Jarvis said, "is that somewhere out in Chesapeake Bay there are a bunch of nuts loose with a biological weapon that could conceivably exterminate every living creature in a major city and keep on exterminating for God knows how many generations."
General Curtis Higgins, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, gave Jarvis a doubting look. "I know of no weapon with that killing power. Besides, the gas weapons in our arsenal were neutralized and destroyed years ago."
"That's the bullshit we give the public," Jarvis snapped back. "But everyone in this room knows better. The truth is the Army has never stopped developing and stockpiling chemical-biological weapons."
"Settle down, Dale." The President's lips were stretched in a grin beneath the mustache. He took a perverse sort of pleasure whenever his subordinates took to fighting among themselves. Casually, in a move to relieve the tense atmosphere, he leaned back in his chair and draped one leg over the armrest. "For the moment, I suggest we take Dale's warning as gospel." He turned to Admiral Joseph Kemper, the chief of Naval Operations. "Joe, since this appears to be a naval raid, it falls in your bailiwick."
Kemper hardly fit the image of a military leader. Portly and white haired, he could have easily been hired as a department-store floor-walker. He looked thoughtfully at the notes he had scribbled during Jarvis's briefing.
"There are two facts that bear out Mr. Jarvis's warning. First, the battles hip Iowa was sold to Walvis Bay Investment. And as of yesterday, our satellite pictures showed it docked at the Forbes shipyard."
"And its current status?" asked the President.
Kemper did not answer but pressed a button on the table in front of him and rose from his chair. The wood paneling against the far wall slid apart, revealing an eight-by-ten-foot projection screen. Kemper picked up a telephone and said tersely, "Begin."
A high-resolution TV picture taken high above the earth flashed on the screen. The clarity and color were far superior to anything transmitted to an ordinary home set. The satellite camera penetrated the early-morning darkness and cloud cover as though they did not exist, projecting a view of the eastern Chesapeake Bay shoreline so clear it looked as if it came off a picture postcard. Kemper moved to the screen and made a circular motion with the pencil he used for a pointer.
"Here we see the entrance to the Patuxent River and the basin just inside Drum Point to the north and Hog Point to the south."
The pencil held steady for a moment. "These small lines are the docks at the Forbes yard. ... A point for Mr. Jarvis. As you can see, Mr. President, there is no sign of the Iowa."
On Kemper's command the cameras began sweeping toward the upper end of the bay. Freighters, fishing boats, and a missile frigate passed by in parade, but nothing resembling the massive outlines of a battleship. Cambridge on the right of the screen; soon, the Naval Academy at Annapolis on the left; the toll bridge below Sandy Point; and then up the Patapsco River to Baltimore.
"What lies south?" the President asked.
"Except for Norfolk, no city of any size for three hundred miles."
"Come now, gentlemen. Not even Merlin and Houdini together could make a battleship disappear."
Before anyone could comment, a White House aide^ntered the conference room and laid a paper at the President's elbow.
"Just in from the State Department," the President said, scanning the print. "A communique from Prime Minister Koertsmann, of South Af-rica. He urgently warns us of an imminent attack on the United States mainland by the AAR and apologizes for any indirect involvement by his cabinet."
"It doesn't figure that Koertsmann would suggest an involvement with his enemy," March said. "I should think he'd categorically deny any connection."
"Probably hedging his bets," ventured Jarvis. "Koertsmann must suspect Operation Wild Rose has fallen into our hands."
The President kept gazing at the wording on the paper as if unwilling to accept the frightening truth.
"It looks," he said solemnly, "as if all hell is about to break loose."
The bridge had been his only miscalculation. The Iowa's superstructure was too high to pass under the one man-made obstacle that stood between Fawkes and his target. The vertical clearance was three feet lower than he'd reckoned.
He heard, rather than saw, the plywood gun-director housing being torn off the forward gun-control platform as it smashed into the overhead span of the bridge.
Howard McDonald slammed on his brakes and skidded to a sideways stop, toppling stacked crates of milk bottles in his delivery van. To McDonald, who was crossing the Harry W. Nice Memorial Toll Bridge to begin his regular milk route, it appeared that an airplane had crashed through the supporting girders almost on top of his truck. He sat there for a few moments in shock, his headlights illuminating a huge pile of debris blocking the two narrow north-and southbound lanes. Fearfully, he stepped from the van and approached, expecting to find mangled pieces of human anatomy embedded in the wreckage.
Instead, all he discovered were splintered sheets of gray-painted wood. His initial reaction was to stare at a low overcast sky, but all he saw was a red aircraft-obstruction light flashing atop the main span. Then McDonald walked over to the railing and peered down.
Except for what seemed to be the running lights of a string of vessels disappearing around Mathias Point, to the north, the channel was empty.
57
Pitt, Steiger, and Admiral Sandecker stood around a drafting table in Pitt's hangar at the Washington National Airport and examined a large-scale map of the area's waterways. "Fawkes did a radical facelift on the Iowa for a damned good reason," Pitt was saying. "Sixteen feet. That's how much he raised her waterline."
"You certain you have an accurate figure?" Sandecker asked. "That leaves a draft of only twenty-two feet." He shook his head.
"It doesn't seem credible."
"I got it from the man who should know," answered Pitt. "While Dale Jarvis was on the phone to NSA headquarters, I questioned Metz, the shipyard boss. He swore to the measurements."
"But for what purpose?" said Steiger. "By removing all the guns and replacing them with wooden dummies, the ship is totally useless."
79
"Number-two turret and all its fire-control equipment is still in place," Pitt said. "According to Metz, the Iowa can lob a salvo of two-thousand-pound shells twenty miles into a rain barrel."
Sandecker concentrated his attention on lighting a large cigar. Satisfied that it was properly stoked, he blew a cloud of blue smoke at the ceiling and rapped the map with his knuckles. "
Your plan is crazy, Dirk. We're meddling in a conflict way over our heads."
"We can't sit here and piss and moan," said Pitt. "The President will be persuaded by the Pentagon strategists either to blow the Iowa out of the water, more likely than not spreading the QD to the winds, or to send out a boarding party to capture the gas shells, with the idea of incorporating them into the Army's arsenal."
"But what good is a plague organism that can't be controlled?" asked Steiger.
" Ypu can bet every biologist in the country will be funded to search for an antidote," Pitt replied. "If one makes a breakthrough, then someday, somewhere, a general or an admiral may panic and give the order for its dispersal. Me, I don't want to grow old knowing I had an opportunity to save countless lives but failed to act."
"Pretty speech," said Sandecker. "I'm in total agreement, but the three of us are hardly in a position to compete with the Defense Department in a race to recover the two remaining QD warheads."
"If we could sneak a man on board the Iowa first, a man who could disarm the firing mechanism of the projectiles and dump the organism pellets over the side into the water . . ." Pitt let his thought linger.
"And you are that man?" ventured Sandecker.
"Of us three, I'm the best qualified."
"Aren't you forgetting me, mister?" Steiger said acidly.
"If all else fails, we'll need a good man at the controls of the helicopter. Sorry, Abe, but I can't fly one, so you're elected."
"Since you put it that way," replied Steiger with a wry smile, "how can I refuse?"
"The trick is to ferret out the Iowa before the boys at Defense," said Sandecker. "Not a likely event, since they have the advantage of satellite reconnaissance."
"What if we know exactly where the Iowa is headed?" Pitt said, grinning.
"How?" grunted a skeptical Steiger.
"The draft was the giveaway," answered Pitt. "There's only one waterway within Fawkes's steaming distance that would require a draft of no more than twenty-two feet."
Sandecker and Steiger stood silent and expressionless, waiting for Pitt to unravel the knot.
"The Capital," Pitt said with a certain finality. "Fawkes is going to run the Iowa up the Potomac River and hit Washington."
Fawkes's arms ached and the sweat of intense concentration rolled down his weathered face and trickled into his beard. But for his arm movements, he might have been cast in bronze. He was desperately tired. He had stood at the helm of thelowa for nearly ten hours, wresting the mighty ship through channels she was never designed to enter. The palms of his hands were seeded with broken blisters, but he did not care.
He was in the homestretch of his impossible journey. The long, lethal guns of number-two turret were already within range of Pennsylvania Avenue.
He called for flank speed on the telegraph, and the vibration from deep belowdecks increased. Like an old war-horse at the sound of the bugle, the Iowa dug her screws into the muddy river and charged up the narrows beside Cornwallis Neck on the Maryland bank.
Thelowa looked like something not of this world; rather, it looked like a mammoth smoke-breathing monster erupting from the depths of hell. She forged ahead faster, sweeping past the channel buoys that fell back toward the first tendrils of dawn. It was as if she had a heart and soul and somehow knew this was her final voyage, knew she was about to die, the last of the fighting battleships.
Fawkes stared in fascination at the glow from the lights of Washington looming twenty miles ahead. The Marine base at Quantico fell behind the stern as thelowa's irresistible mass hurtled around Hallowing Point and sped past Gunston Cove. Only one bend remained before her bows entered the straight channel ending on the edge of the golf course at East Potomac Park.
"Twenty-three feet," the depth reader's voice droned over the speaker. "Twenty-three . . . twenty-two-five . . ."
The ship dashed by the next channel buoy, her eighteen-foot five-bladed outboard propellers flailing at the bottom silt, her bow throwing sheets of white foam as she plowed against the five-knot current.
"Twenty-two feet, Captain." The voice had a tone of urgency. "Twenty-two, holding . . . holding. ... Oh God, twenty-one-five!"
Then she struck the rising riverbed like a hammer into a pillow. The impact seemed a sensation more known than felt as the bows bored into the mud. The engines continued to hum and the screws went on thrashing, but thelowa lay still.
She had come to rest below the sloping grounds of Mount Vernon.
58
"I didn't believe it possible," said Admiral Joseph Kemper as he gazed in admiration at the Iowa's image on the viewing screen.
"Sailing a steel fortress ninety miles up a narrow, meandering river in the dead of night is a remarkable feat of seamanship."
The President looked pensive. He massaged his temples. "What do we know about this fellow Fawkes?"
Kemper nodded to an aide, who passed a blue folder to the President.
"The British Admiralty obliged my request for Captain Fawkes's service record. Mr. Jarvis has added an addendum from NSA files."
The President slipped on a pair of reading glasses and opened the folder. After a few minutes he peered over the horn-rims at Kemper. "A damn fine record. Whoever picked him for the job knew his onions. But why would a man of his reputable background suddenly involve himself with such a bizarre venture?"
Jarvis shook his head. "The best guess is that the massacre of his wife and children by terrorists pushed him off the deep end."
The President mulled over Jarvis's words and turned to the Joint Chiefs. "Gentlemen, I'm open for proposals."
General Higgins took the cue and pushed back his chair and stepped to the screen. "Our staff planners have programmed a number of alternatives, all based on the assumption that the Iowa is carrying a deadly biological agent. First, we can call up a 80
squadron of Air Force F-one-twenty Specter jets to blast thelowa with Copperhead missiles. The attack would coincide with supporting firepower by Army units on shore."
"Too uncertain," said the President. "If the destruction is not immediate and total, you may well disperse the Quick Death agent."
"Second," Higgins continued, "we send in a team of Navy SEALs to board the Iowa from the water and secure the stern section, which contains a helicopter landing pad. Then Marine assault troops can land and seize the ship." Higgins paused, waiting for comments.
"And if the ship was battened down"-this from Kemper-"how would the Marines gain entry?"
Jarvis fielded the question. "According to the shipyard people, most of the Iowa's armor and superstructure were replaced with wood. The Marines could blast through to the ship's interior, providing, of course, Fawkes's men hadn't cut them down while they were landing."
"If all else fails," said Higgins, "our final alternative is to finish the job with a low-yield nuclear missile."
For nearly a minute no one in the room spoke, each man unwilling to air the unthinkable consequences to the general's last proposal. Finally, as he knew he must, the President took the initiative. "It seems to me a small neutron bomb would be a more practical out." "Radioactivity alone won't kill the QD agent," said Jarvis. "Also," Kemper injected, "I doubt if the lethal rays could penetrate the turret. They're nearly airtight when buttoned up."
The President looked at Higgins. "I must assume your people have weighed the terrible possibilities."
Higgins solemnly nodded. "It comes down to the age-old choice of sacrificing a few to save many." "What do you call a few?"
"Fifty to seventy-five thousand dead. Perhaps twice that number injured. The small communities closest to the Iowa and the congested sector of Alexandria would be the hardest hit. Washington proper would receive minor damage."
"How soon before the Marines can go in?" asked the President. "They are boarding helicopters at the staging area this very minute," answered General Guilford, the Marine commandant. "And the SEALs are already on their way downriver in a Coast Guard patrol boat." "Th
ree combat units often men each," added Kemper. A muted buzzer sounded on the phone beside General Higgins's chair. Kemper leaned over and answered it, listened, and replaced the receiver. He looked up at Higgins, who had remained standing by the viewing screen.
"Communications teams have set up cameras on the southern bluffs above the Iowa" he said. "They'll be transmitting pictures in a few seconds."
Almost before Kemper had finished speaking, the aerial image from the satellite cameras faded into blackness and was replaced by a shot of the Iowa that filled the screen with the ship's superstructure.
The President slowly poured himself a cup of coffee but did not drink it. He stared at the Iowa, his mind churning in search of a decision that only he could make. At last he sighed and addressed himself to General Higgins.
"We go with the SEALs and Marines. If they fail, whistle up the Specter jets and order your forces on shore to open fire with everything they've got."
"And the nuclear strike?" asked Higgins.
The President shook his head. "I cannot carry the burden of ordering mass murders of my own countrymen, regardless of the circumstances."
"We have another half hour before sunrise," said Kemper softly. "Captain Fawkes must have daylight to sight his guns. All radar-operated and automatic-fire control systems were removed from the Iowa before she was decommissioned. He cannot possess any degree of accuracy unless he has a spotter in or near the target area who can report the range and accuracy of the Iowa's fire by radio."
"Could be the spotter is sitting on a rooftop across the street," the President said, sipping at the coffee.
"I wouldn't be surprised," replied Kemper. "However, he won't be on the air for long. We have computerized triangulation monitors set up that can pinpoint his location within seconds."
The President sighed. "Then that about covers it for the moment, gentlemen."
Vixen 03 Page 26