Vixen 03

by Clive Cussler

  "Someone has opened the forward loading hatch," answered Kemper. He turned to General Higgins. "Better alert your men to the possibility that the crew may attempt an escape."

  "They won't get ten feet past the shoreline," said Higgins. They watched as the hatch was thrown back to its stops and a monster of a man stepped to the threshold and threw out what looked like a body. The form hit the water with a splash and disappeared.

  Soon he returned with another body, but this time he lowered it on a line to the leisurely flowing current-almost tenderly, it seemed to the men in the conference room-until the inert figure bobbed and floated free of the ship. Then the line was cast away and the doors closed.

  Kemper motioned to an aide. "Contact the Coast Guard and have them pick up that man drifting in the river."

  "What was that little performance all about?" The President's question echoed the thoughts of the men at the table.

  "The hell of it is," Kemper said quietly, "we may never know."

  After what seemed like ages, Hiram Lusana found a doorway that exited to the main deck. He stumbled outside, bone chilled in his thin business suit, clutching the sack of bomblets in both hands. His sudden emergence into daylight blinded him and he paused to get his bearings.

  He found himself standing beneath the aft fire-control bridge, forward of the number-three gun turret. Small-arms fire whistled about the ship, but his mind was intent on disposing of the Quick Death bomblets, and he was oblivious of it. The river beckoned and he began sprinting toward the bulwarks edging the outer limits of the deck. He still had twenty feet to go when a man in a black rubber wet suit rose from the shadows of the turret and aimed a gun at him.

  Lieutenant Alan Fergus no longer felt the burning pain from the hole in his leg, no longer felt the agony from seeing his combat teams cut to pieces. His whole body was quivering with hatred for the men responsible. It did not matter that the man in his sights wore a business suit j instead of a uniform, or that he appeared to be unarmed. Fergus saw only I a man who in his mind was murdering his friends.

  Lusana halted abruptly and stared at Fergus. He had never before seen such cold malignity on a man's face. They looked into each other's eyes from no more than twelve feet, trying to exchange thoughts in that brief instant. No word passed between them, only a strange kind of understanding. Time seemed to pause and all sounds diminished into a blurred background.

  Hiram Lusana knew his fight to rise above the filth of his childhood had culminated in this time and place. He had come to realize he could not be the leader of a people who would never fully accept him as one of their own. His path became clear. He 90

  could do far more for the op-pressed of Africa by becoming a martyr to their cause.

  Lusana accepted the invitation of death. He threw Fergus a silent smile of forgiveness and then leaped toward the bulwarks.

  Fergus pulled the trigger and sprayed a pattern of automatic fire. The sudden impact of three bullets in his side pitched Lusana forward in a shuddered dance that pounded the breath from his lungs. Miraculously, he stayed on his feet and staggered drunkenly on.

  Fergus fired again.

  Lusana fell to his knees, still struggling toward the edge of the deck.

  Fergus watched in detached admiration, vaguely wondering what drove the incongruously dressed black man to ignore at least a dozen bullets in his body.

  With brown eyes glazed with shock, and with a determination known only to a man who could never quit, Lusana crawled across the deck, holding the canvas sack against his stomach, leaving an ever-widening trail of crimson behind him.

  The bulwarks were only three feet away. He fought closer despite the blackness beginning to cloud his vision and the blood streaming from the corners of his mouth. Summoning an inner strength born of final desperation, he threw the sack.

  It hung on the bulwark for an instant that seemed frozen in time, teetered, and then fell into the river. Lusana's face sank to the deck and he passed the gate into oblivion.

  The interior of the massive gun housing reeked of sweat and blood and the pungent odors of powder and heated oil. Most of the crew were still in shock, their eyes glazed, unknowing, dulled with confusion and fear; the rest were lying amid the machinery in unnatural poses, blood trickling from their ears and mouths. A charnel house, Fawkes thought, a damn charnel house. God, I'm no better than the butchers who slaughtered my family.

  He peered down the center elevator tube to the magazines and saw Charles Shaba hammering away with a sledge on a shell cradle that had become wedged ten feet below the turret deck. The interlock doors, designed to prevent accidental breech failure from communicating explosive flash to the magazines, were jammed open, and to Fawkes it was like looking into a bottomless pit.

  Then the black void seemed to fuzz and he suddenly realized the problem. The air was too foul to breathe. Those who survived the concussion caused by the Satan missile were dropping from lack of oxygen.

  "Open the outside hatch!" he roared. "Get some fresh air in here!"

  "She's buckled, Captain," a voice rasped on the other side of the turret. "Jammed tight."

  "The ventilators! Why aren't they operating?"

  "Blown circuits," another man said, coughing. "The only air we've got is what's coming up through the magazine tubes."

  In the choking haze and gloom Fawkes could barely make out the form of the man who spoke. "Find me something to pry the hatch open. We've got to make a path for crossventilation."

  He made his way around the bodies and over the huge gun mechanism to the hatch that opened to the main deck. Looking at its seven-inch-thick wall of hard steel, Fawkes could well appreciate what he was up against. The only points in his favor were the shattered locking prongs and the inch of daylight showing at the top where the hatch had been blown inward.

  Someone tapped his shoulder and he turned. It was Shaba.

  "I heard you down in the magazine tube, Captain. I thought you might need this." He handed Fawkes a heavy steel bar four feet long and two inches thick.

  Fawkes wasted no words of appreciation. He wedged the bar into the opening to the outside and pulled. His face flushed with the effort and his great arms trembled, but the hatch would not budge.

  The obstinacy of the hatch came as no surprise to Fawkes. It was an age-old Scottish adage that nothing fell to a man's lot on the first try. He closed his eyes and sucked in great breaths, hyperventilating. Every cell in his body focused on kindling the strength locked within his immense body. Shaba watched, fascinated. He had never seen such a demonstra-tion of sheer concentration.

  Fawkes reinserted the bar, paused a few seconds more, and finally began to heave. It looked to Shaba as though the captain had turned to stone; there was no obvious hint of effort, no tenseness of the muscles. The sweat began to pop from Fawkes's forehead and the tendons of his neck bulged and tautened, every muscle turned rock hard with strain; then, slowly, incredibly, the hatch shrieked as steel scraped against steel.

  Shaba could not believe that such brute force existed; he could not know of the secret that drove Fawkes far above and beyond his normal energies. Another inch of light appeared between the hatch and the turret armor. Then, three inches ... six ... and abruptly the mangled steel twisted from its broken hinges and dropped to the deck with a great metallic echo.

  Almost immediately, the stench and smoke were driven outside and replaced with cool, damp air from below. Fawkes stood aside and tossed the bar through the hatch, his clothes soaked through with sweat, his torso shuddering as he caught his breath and his pounding heart slowed to normal.

  "Clear the breeches and secure the guns," he ordered.

  Shaba looked blank. "We've lost hydraulic pressure to the power I rammer. It can't be reversed to remove the shells."

  "Damn the rammer," Fawkes snorted. "Do it by hand."

  Shaba said nothing in reply. He had no time. A gun barrel poked through the open hatch and a hail of bullets ricocheted throughout the armored ch
amber. The burst whistled past Fawkes's side.

  Shaba was not as lucky. Four bullets entered his neck almost simultaneously. He sank to his knees, his eyes staring uncomprehendingly at Fawkes, his mouth moving but expelling no words, only a gush of red that rivered down his chest.

  Fawkes stood by helplessly and watched Shaba die. Then a rage swelled inside him and he whirled and grabbed the gun muzzle.

  The heat from the barrel seared the flesh from his hands but he was far beyond any sensation of pain. Fawkes gave a great pull, and the SEAL outside, stubbornly refusing to let go of his weapon, catapulted past the narrow aperture and landed inside, his index finger still locked on the trigger.

  There is no fear in a man who knows with certainty he is about to die. Fawkes did not possess that certainty. His face was white with fear, fear that he would be killed before the Quick Death shell inside one of the three guns could be deactivated.

  "You bloody fool!" he grunted as the SEAL kicked him in the stomach. "The guns . . . inside the guns ... a plague . . ."

  The SEAL twisted violently and slashed out with his free hand to Fawkes's jaw. Fighting to keep the muzzle away from his body, Fawkes could do nothing but absorb the blow. His strength was draining away when he lurched backward and fell partially 91

  through the hatch opening, trying with one last mighty effort to yank the gun from the SEAL's grasp. Instead, the flesh came away from his palms and fingers and he lost his grip. The SEAL jumped sideways and lowered the gun, aiming it with agonizing deliberation at Fawkes's stomach.

  Daniel Obasi, the young boy sitting in the turret officer's firing booth, watched in numbed horror as the SEAL'S finger tightened on the trigger. He tried to yell, to distract the killer in the black wet suit, but his throat was dry as sand and a mere whisper rasped through his lips. Out of sheer desperation, in what he prayed was his one hope of saving his captain's life, Obasi pushed the red

  "fire" button.

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  There was no way to reverse the process, no way to halt the firing sequence. The powder charges detonated and two projectiles spit out of the center and starboard muzzles, but inside the port barrel the warhead jammed tight at the fracture caused by the Satan missiles, trapped the exploding gases at its base, and blocked them from escaping.

  A new gun might have withstood the tremendous blowback and the staggering pressures but the tired, rusty old breech had seen its day, and it shattered and burst. In a microsecond a volcanic eruption of flame compressed within the turret, flashed down the magazine elevator tubes, and set off the powder sacks stored far below.

  The Iowa blew her guts out.

  Patrick Fawkes, in the fleeting instant he was blasted through the outside hatch, saw the utter waste, the terrible stupidity, of his actions. He reached out to his beloved Myrna to beg her forgiveness as he , smashed against the unyielding deck and was crushed to pulp.

  The armor-piercing shell from the starboard barrel reached its zenith and hurtled downward through the limestone dome of the National Archives building. By freakish chance it fell past the twenty-one tiers of books and records, crashed through the granite floor of the exhibition hall less than ten feet from the glass case containing the Declaration of Independence, and came to rest with half its length embedded in the concrete floor of the subbasement.

  Shell number two was a dud.

  Not so number three.

  Activated by its tiny generator, the radar altimeter inside the Quick Death package began beaming signals to the ground and recording its downward trajectory. Lower and lower the warhead dropped until at fifteen hundred feet an electrical impulse popped the parachute release and an umbrella of fluorescent-orange silk blossomed against the blue sky. Amazingly, the thirty-plus-year-old material took the sudden strain without splitting at the seams.

  Far below the streets of Washington, the President and his advisers sat motionlessly in their chairs, their eyes blinking as they followed the relentless descent of the projectile. At first, like passengers on the Titanic who refused to believe the huge ocean liner was sinking, they sat entranced, their minds unable to grasp the true scope of the events before them, feebly optimistic that somehow the mechanism inside the warhead would fail, causing it to fall harmlessly onto the grass of the mall.

  Then, with a frightening momentum, they all began to feel the tighten-ing pincers of despair.

  A light breeze sprang up from the north and nudged the parachute toward the Smithsonian Institution buildings. Soldiers who had blocked off the streets around the Lincoln Memorial and the National Archives building and crowds of government employees caught in the morning traffic gazed sheeplike as a forest of hands pointed skyward.

  Around the conference table the air was still with tension, a growing anxiety that reached insufferable proportions. Jarvis could watch no more. He placed his head in his hands. "Finished," he said, his voice hoarse. "We're finished."

  "Isn't there something that can be done?" asked the President, his eyes locked on the floating object on the viewing screen.

  Higgins shrugged in defeat. "Shooting that monster out of the sky would only disperse the bacteria. Beyond that, I'm afraid we can do nothing."

  Jarvis saw a flash of realization flood the President's eyes, a sickening realization that they had come to the end of the road. The impossible could not happen, could not be accepted, but there it was. Death for millions was only seconds and a few hundred feet away.

  So intently were they watching the scene that they did not notice the speck in the distance growing larger. Admiral Kemper was the first to distinguish it; he seldom missed a thing. He rose out of his chair and peered as though his eyes were laser beams. The others finally saw it too as the speck enlarged into a helicopter coming straight on the warhead.

  "What in God's name . . ." Higgins muttered.

  "It looks like the same crazy bastard who buzzed the Iowa," announced Kemper.

  "This time we'll blast his ass," Higgins said, reaching for his communications phone.

  The low sun bounced off the helicopter's canopy, making a bright momentary glint on the viewing screen. The craft grew, and soon, large black letters could be seen on its side.

  "NUMA," said Kemper. "That's one of the National Underwater and Marine Agency copters."

  Jarvis's hands fell from his face and he looked up as if suddenly awakening from a deep sleep. "You did say 'NUMA.' "

  "See for yourself," Kemper said, pointing.

  Jarvis looked. Then, like a man demented, he knocked over his chair and stretched across the table, slapping the phone out of Higgins's hand. "No!" he shouted.

  Higgins look stunned.

  "Leave well enough alone!" Jarvis snapped. "The pilot knows what he's doing."

  All that Jarvis was certain of was that Dirk Pitt was behind the drama being played out over the capital city. A NUMA helicopter and Pitt. The two had to be connected. A tiny glimmer of hope flickered within Jarvis as he watched the gap narrow between aircraft and warhead.

  The Minerva bored in on the bright-orange parachute like a bull charging a matador's cape. It was going to be a tight race.

  Steiger and Sandecker had overestimated the trajectory of the Quick Death warhead and were hovering near the National Archives building when they saw the chute open early, a quarter of a mile short of their position. Precious time was lost while Steiger feverishly swung the aircraft on a closing course in a desperate gamble conceived by Pitt a few hours previously.

  92

  "Twelve seconds gone," Sandecker announced impassively from the cabin door.

  Eighteen seconds to detonation, Steiger thought to himself.

  "Ready on the hook and winch," said Sandecker.

  Steiger shook his head. "Too risky. One pass is all we'll get. Must take it through the shrouds bow-on."

  "You'll foul the rotor blades."

  "The only shot we've got," Steiger replied.

  Sandecker did not argue the point. He hurriedly dropped into the copilot's
seat and strapped himself in.

  The warhead was looming through the windshield. Steiger noted that it was painted regulation-Navy blue. He pushed in the throttles to the twin turboshaft engines and at the same time pulled the pitch-control column back. The Minerva's forward speed was cut so abruptly that both men winced as they were thrown against their safety harnesses.

  "Six seconds," said Sandecker.

  The shadow of the huge parachute was falling over the helicopter when Steiger flipped the craft on its starboard side. The violent maneuver sent the pointed bow of the Minerva knifing between the shroud lines. Orange silk collapsed and covered the windshield, blotting out the sun. Three of the lines caught and wrapped around the rotor shaft before the tired old material gave way and shredded. The rest entwined around the fuselage and jerked the Minerva to a near stop as they tautened and took up the strain of the heavy projectile.

  "Two seconds," Sandecker rasped through clenched teeth.

  The Minerva was being pulled downward by the weight of the shell. Steiger returned the craft to an upright position with the pitch-control column, yanked the throttles back against their stops, and pulled up on the collective-pitch lever in a blur of hand movements.

  The twin engines struggled under the load. Sandecker had stopped counting. Time had run out. The altimeter needle was quivering at one thousand feet. Sandecker leaned out an open window and stared past the flapping silk at the warhead dangling beneath the fuselage, expecting to see an explosion.

  The Minerva's rotor blades slapped the air, causing a thumping sound that could be heard for miles above the sea of enthralled faces turned to the sky. Parachute, projectile, and helicopter hung together, suspended. Sandecker darted his attention back to the altimeter. It hadn't budged. A sheen of sweat glistened on his brow.

  Ten seconds passed, which to Sandecker seemed ten years. Steiger, absorbed in his task, battled the controls. The admiral could do little but sit there. It was the first time he could remember feeling totally useless.