Vixen 03 (36 page)

Standing rigidly still after the explosion, Fisk was amazed to find he was untouched. The projectile had passed over him and struck the street at an angle, spraying its destructive force ahead of its trajectory.

A hundred yards away, a man driving a delivery truck had his windshield blown inward. He managed to stop the truck and stagger from the cab, his face sliced to hamburger.

Dazed, he held his hands in front of him and screamed, “I can’t see! Help me! Someone please help me!”

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Fisk shook off the cold shivers of shock and ran toward the stricken driver. The early-morning traffic rush was still an hour away and the street was empty. He wondered how he could call the police and an ambulance. The only other vehicle he saw was a street sweeper calmly whisking its way up Independence Avenue as though nothing had happened.

“Angus Two,” Fawkes called. “Report effect of fire.”

“Man, you sure tore up the street.”

“Keep your remarks to a minimum,” said Fawkes irritably. “Your transmission is no doubt being pinpointed.”

“I read, big man. Your cock shot is seventy-five yards short and one hundred eighty yards to the left.”

“You heard, Mr. Shaba.”

“Adjusting, Captain.”

“Fire as you bear, Mr. Shaba.”

“Aye, sir.”

Buried in the seventeen-hundred-ton steel turret, black South African gunners sweated and loaded the gaping breeches, shouting and cursing in tune with the clanging hoist machinery, while five decks below, the magazine crew sent up the shells and the silk bags containing the powder. First the conical-nosed twenty-seven-hundred-pound armor-piercing projectile was shoved into the breech’s throat by a power rammer, followed by the powder charge, weighing six hundred pounds. Next the huge downswing carrier breech was twisted shut, providing a gas-tight seal. Then, on command, the great gun spat its devastating vehemence and recoiled four feet into its steel lair.

Fourteen miles away, Donald Fisk was attending the injured truck driver as the incoming freight thundered down from the sky and smashed into the Lincoln Memorial. In one thousandth of a second the hollow ballistic cone on the projectile disintegrated as it crashed into the white marble. Then the heavy slug of hardened steel behind punched its way deep into the memorial and exploded.

To Fisk it seemed the thirty-six Doric columns peeled outward like the petals of a flower before crumbling to the manicured landscape. Then the roof and inner walls collapsed as great chunks of marble bounced down the steps like children’s wooden blocks and a violent burst of white dust spiraled heavenward.

The Iowa
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As the rumble of the explosion trailed off across Washington, Fisk slowly rose to his feet in numbed bewilderment.

“What happened?” shouted the blinded truck driver. “For God’s sake, tell me what’s happening!”

“Don’t panic,” said Fisk. “There’s been another explosion.”

The driver grimaced and clenched his teeth in agony. Nearly thirty splinters of glass had buried themselves in his face. One eye was filled with congealing blood; the other was gone, sliced through to the retina.

Fisk took off his sweatshirt and pressed it in the driver’s hands. “Twist, tear, or bite it if you must to stand the pain, but keep your hands away from your face. I’m going to leave you for a few moments.” He paused as his ears caught the distant sound of approaching sirens. “The police are coming. An ambulance will be right behind them.”

The truck driver nodded and sat on the curb, wadding the shirt in a ball and squeezing the cloth until his knuckles turned ivory. Fisk ran across the traffic circle, strangely ill at ease without something to cover his naked chest. Dodging the jagged chunks of marble that littered the memorial’s stairway, he trotted up to what had once been the doorway facing the mall’s reflecting pool.

Suddenly he stiffened, and stopped in astonishment.

There, amid the vast pile of rubble and the settling dust, the figure of Abraham Lincoln sat virtually unscathed. The walls and roof of the structure had somehow parted as they crumbled, crashing around, but not upon, the nineteen-foot statue.

Unmarred and unchipped, the hauntingly melancholy face of Lincoln still gazed downward solemnly, into infinity.

General Higgins slammed the phone receiver into its cradle. It was his first show of temper. “We missed the spotter,” he said bitterly. “Our monitor units zeroed his location, but he’d flown the coop by the time our nearest patrol arrived.”

“Obviously a mobile unit,” said Timothy March. “With three out of four cars on the road carrying a CB radio, identifying the bastard will be next to impossible.”

“Our special-forces team and the city police are setting up roadblocks

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at key intersections around the Capitol area,” said Higgins. “If we can keep the spotter out of visual contact of his targets, he won’t be able to report range corrections to the ship. Then Fawkes will be firing blind.”

The President’s eyes were locked on the viewing screen, staring sadly at the enlarged satellite picture of the demolished Lincoln Memorial. “Shrewd planning on their part,” he muttered. “A few dead would mean little more than a newspaper headline to most Americans. But destroy a revered national monument and you touch everyone. Rest assured, gentlemen, by this evening a lot of mad Americans are going to seek a way to vent their anger.”

“If the next shell contains the QD …” Jarvis’s voice trailed off.

“It’s like playing Russian roulette,” March said. “Two shells fired. That means the odds are down to two out of thirty-six.”

Higgins looked across the table at Admiral Kemper. “What do you figure as the Iowa’s rate of fire?”

“The time span between shells one and two was four minutes, ten seconds,” Kemper answered. “Slow by half compared to former wartime efficiency, but respectable in view of forty-year-old obsolete equipment and a skeleton crew.”

“What puzzles me,” said March, “is why Fawkes is only using the turret’s center gun. He seems to be making no attempt to operate the other two.”

“He’s going by the book,” said Kemper. “Conserving his strength by firing one shell at a time for effect. He got lucky on the second shot and found his target. Next time he gets the range you can bet he’ll uncork all three barrels.”

The phone in front of Higgins buzzed. He picked it up, listened for a moment, his expression grim. “The third round is on its way.”

The satellite camera pulled back to show a two-mile radius around the White House. Everyone’s eyes roamed over the bird’s-eye view of the city, fearful that this projectile held the Quick Death organism while at the same time trying to guess which landmark was the target. Then came a geysering explosion that pulverized a fifty-foot section of sidewalk and two trees on the north side of Constitution Avenue.

“He’s going for the National Archives building,” the President said, a bitter edge to his voice. “Fawkes is trying to destroy the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.”

“I urge you, Mr. President, to order a nuclear strike on the Iowa at once.” Higgins’s normally reddish coloring had turned to gray.

The Iowa
245p>

The President looked like one hunted. His shoulders were hunched as though he were cold. “No,” he said with finality.

Higgins dropped his hands to his side and sat heavily in his chair. Kemper tapped the table with a pencil, quietly mulling something over.

“There is another solution,” he said slowly, deliberately. “We knock out the Iowa’s number-two turret.”

“Knock out the turret?” Higgins said, a skeptical look in his eyes.

“Some of the F-one-twenty Specters are carrying Satan penetration missiles,” explained Kemper. “Am I right, General Sayre?”

Air Force chief General Miles Sayre nodded in agreement. “Each aircraft is armed with four Satans, primed to gouge their way through three yards of concrete.”

“I see your point,” said Higgins. “But the accuracy? Miss, and you might unleash the QD.”

“It can be done,” said Sayre, a usually taciturn man. “As soon as the pilots fire the missiles, they switch guidance control to the ground troops. Your people, General Higgins, are close enough to the Iowa to lay a Satan within a two-foot diameter.”

Higgins snatched the phone and stared at the President. “If Fawkes maintains his firing schedule, we have less than two minutes.”

“Go for it,” the President said without hesitation.

While Higgins gave instructions to the forces deployed around the Iowa, Kemper consulted a file on the ship’s construction.

“That turret is protected with steel armor plating seven to seventeen inches thick,” said Kemper. “We may not destroy it, but we’ll sure as hell stun the crew.”

“The SEALs,” said the President. “Can they be warned of our intentions?”

Kemper looked grim. “We would if we could, but there has been no radio contact with them since they took to the water.”

Fergus could not make contact, because the radio had been shot out of his hands by a machine gun deployed on the Iowa’s citadel. A bullet had neatly amputated the middle finger of his left hand before biting through the transmitter and his right palm. The backup radio was also gone, strapped to the belt of a team leader who took a hit in the chest and now floated lifelessly somewhere downriver.

Fergus had lost six men out of his original party of thirty while boarding the Iowa. They had climbed the sides after shooting and then

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looping small lines from crossbows across the ship’s stern. These were attached to nylon ladders, which in turn were pulled up to the bulwarks. The SEALs were met with a scathing fire when they reached the main deck. Individually and in small teams they began pouring a return fire at the ship’s defenders.

Fergus became cut off from his command and was pinned down behind the fantail mounting where the aircraft crane had once stood. Frustration overrode the pain in his wounded hands. Time was running out. His orders were to secure the landing pad before the South Africans could open fire. He shouted a curse as the burst from the third blast rumbled down the river channel.

Above the bluffs he could see the Marine helicopters hovering, waiting impatiently for his signal to land. Warily he poked his head around the crane mount and peered forward. The guns perched behind steel-armor plating atop the main bridge temporarily ignored Fergus and concentrated on his men, who had moved forward without him.

Cradling his automatic weapon in one arm, Fergus sprang to his feet and sprinted across the open deck, laying down a curtain fire. He’d nearly made it to cover beneath the aft turret when Fawkes’s men repaid his attention, and a bullet tore through the calf of his left leg.

He stumbled a few steps, fell, and rolled under the bulk of the dummy turret. The new wound felt as though it were burning every nerve ending in his leg. He lay on the deck, listening to the gunfire forward, soaking up the pain as two Specter jets screamed out of the morning sun and expelled their lethal cargo.

If it weren’t for the dull ache that clutched every inch of his body, Pitt would have sworn he was dead. Almost regretfully, he pushed the gray from his mind and forced his eyes open.

Then he ran his hands over his legs and body. The worst he discovered, besides a horde of bruises, were two, possibly three cracked ribs. He probed his head and sighed gratefully when his fingers came back free of blood. The wooden splinters he found embedded in his right shoulder puzzled him.

He pushed himself to a sitting position and then rolled to his hands and knees. All muscles were responding to command. So far, so good. He took a deep breath and wove to his feet, no less elated at the accomplishment than if he’d climbed Mount Everest. A patch of daylight spilled through a jagged hole several feet away and he stumbled toward it.

The Iowa
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His mind slowly began to hit on six of eight cylinders and analyzed why he hadn’t been crushed to oatmeal when he smashed into the side of the ship’s superstructure. The quarter-inch plywood panels installed to replace the steel bulkheads had broken his impact. He’d barreled through one outer partition like a cannonball and made a healthy dent in a second before coming to rest in a passageway outside the officers’ wardroom. So much for the mysterious slivers.

Through the haze he recalled a great booming sound and vibration. The sixteen-inch guns, he figured. But how often had they fired? How long had he been out? Sounds of small-arms fire rattled from outside. Who was fighting whom? He dismissed the thoughts almost as they occurred: they really didn’t matter. He had his own problems to solve.

He moved twenty feet down the passageway, stopped, and pulled a flashlight from one pocket and a folded paper containing the Iowa’s deck plans from another. It took him nearly two full minutes to pinpoint his exact location. Looking at the maze that made up the internal arrangement of a battleship was like looking at a cutaway view of a skyscraper lying on its side.

Tracking out a path to the forward shell magazines, he moved soundlessly along the passageway. He had covered but a short distance when the ship rocked under a barrage of solid blows. Dust accumulated during the Iowa’s long years in mothballs erupted in smothering clouds. Pitt flung out his arms to maintain his balance, lurched, and grabbed the frame of a door that had opportunely swung open. He stood there choking back the dust while the tremors subsided.

He almost missed it, would have missed it if an indefinable curiosity hadn’t tugged at his mind. Not a curiosity, really; rather an incongruity caught within his peripheral vision. He beamed the flashlight on a brown shoe-an expensive, handcrafted brown shoe-and saw it was attached to the leg of a black man stylishly attired in a business suit with vest. His hands were tied wide apart by ropes wrapped to overhead pipes.

Hiram Lusana could not distinguish the features of the man standing in the doorway of his prison. He looked large, but not as large as Fawkes. That was all Lusana could tell; the flashlight in the stranger’s hands blinded him.