Vixen 03 (37 page)

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“I take it you lost the ship’s popularity contest,” came a voice that sounded more friendly than hostile.

The dark form behind the light moved closer and Lusana felt his bonds being loosened. “Where are you taking me?”

“Nowhere. But if you value social security in your old age, I suggest you get the hell off this boat before it’s blown to pieces.”

“Who are you?”

“Not that it matters, the name’s Pitt.”

“Are you part of Captain Fawkes’s crew?”

“No, I’m free-lance.”

“I don’t understand.”

Pitt untied Lusana’s left hand and started on the other without answering.

“You are an American,” said Lusana, more confused than ever. “Have you taken the ship from the South Africans?”

“We’re working on it,” said Pitt, sorely wishing he’d brought along a knife.

“Then you don’t know who I am.”

“Should I?”

“My name is Hiram Lusana. I am the leader of the African Army of Revolution.”

Pitt finished with the last knot and stood back, aiming the light at Lusana’s face. “Yes, I see that now. What’s your involvement? I thought this was a South African show.”

“I was kidnapped boarding an airplane back to Africa.” Lusana gently pushed the light aside. Then a thought flooded his mind. “You know about Operation Wild Rose?” he asked.

“Only since last night. My government, however, was aware of it months ago.”

“Impossible,” said Lusana.

“Suit yourself.” Pitt turned and started for the doorway. “Like I said, you better jump ship before the party gets out of hand.”

Lusana hesitated, but only for a second. “Wait!”

Pitt turned. “Sorry, I can’t spare the time.”

“Please hear me out.” Lusana moved closer. “If your government and the news media discover my presence here, they will have no choice but to overlook the truth and hold me responsible.”

“So?”

“Let me prove my innocence in this ugly affair. Tell me what I can do to help.”

The Iowa
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Pitt read the sincerity in Lusana’s eyes. He pulled an old Colt .45 automatic from his belt and passed it to the black man. “Take this and cover my ass. I need both hands to hold the flashlight and read a diagram.”

Somewhat taken aback, Lusana accepted the gun. “You’d trust me with this?”

“Sure,” Pitt said offhandedly. “What would you gain by shooting a total stranger in the back?”

And then he motioned for Lusana to follow and quickly darted down the passageway toward the forward part of the ship.

Turret number two had survived the onslaught from the Satan missiles. Her steel plating was gouged and sprung in eight places but never penetrated. The port-outside gun barrel was severely fractured at the recoil base of the turret.

Dazed, Fawkes saw all this through the shattered remains of the glass in the bridge windows. Magically, he was untouched. He had been standing behind one of the few remaining steel bulkheads when the Satans had unerringly zeroed in on number-two turret. He snatched the microphone.

“Shaba, this is the captain. Do you hear me?”

The only reply was a faint ripple of static.

“Shaba!” Fawkes shouted. “Speak up, man. Report your damage.”

The speaker crackled to life. “Cap’n Fawkes?”

The voice was unfamiliar. “Aye, this is the captain. Where is Shaba?”

“Below in the magazine, sir. The hoist, she’s broken. He went to fix it.”

“Who is this?”

“Obasi, Cap’n. Daniel Obasi.” The voice had an adolescent pitch.

“Did Shaba leave you in charge?”

“Yes sir,” Obasi said proudly.

“How old are you, son?”

There was a harsh, coughing sound. “Sorry, Cap’n. The smoke, she’s real bad.” More coughing. “Seventeen.”

Good Lord, Fawkes thought. De Vaal was to have sent him experienced men, not boys whose names and faces he had yet to see in daylight. He was in command of a crew who were completely unknown to him. Seventeen. A mere seventeen years old. The thought sickened him. Was it worth it? God, was his personal revenge worth the terrible price?

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Steeling his determination, Fawkes said, “Are you able to operate the guns?”

“I think so. All three are loaded and breeched tight. The men don’t look too good, though. Concussion, I think. Most of them are bleedin’ through the ears.”

“Where are you now, Obasi?”

“In the turret officer’s booth, sir. It’s awful hot down here. I don’t know if the men can take much more. Some are still out. One or two may be dead. No way of tellin’; I guess the ones that’s dead are the ones bleedin’ through the mouth.”

Fawkes squeezed the microphone handle, his face filled with indecision. When the ship went, as he knew it surely must, he wanted to be standing on the bridge, the last battleship captain to die at his station. The silence over the radiophone became heavy with torment. Ever so slightly the curtain lifted and Fawkes glimpsed the terrible dimension of his actions.

“I’m coming down.”

“The outside deck hatch is jammed tight, sir. You’ll have to come up from the magazines.”

“Thank you, Obasi. Stand by.” Fawkes paused to remove his old Royal Navy cap and wipe the sweat and grime oozing from the pores of his forehead. He gazed through the splintered windows and studied the river. The cold mists rose along the shallows and reminded him of the Scottish lochs on just such a morning. Scotland: it seemed a thousand years since he’d seen Aberdeen.

He replaced the cap and spoke into the microphone again. “Angus Two, come in, please.”

“Gotcha, big Angus One.”

“Range?”

“Eighty yards short but right on the money. Just compensate for elevation and you got her, man.”

“Your job is finished, Angus Two. Take care.”

“Too late. I think the dudes in the khaki suits are about to take me away. So long, man. It’s been a heavy date.”

Fawkes stared at the receiving end of the microphone, wanting to speak words of appreciation to the man he’d never met, to thank him for jeopardizing his life even if it was for a price. Whoever Angus Two was, it would be a long time before he could spend the money placed in a foreign bank account by the South African Defence Ministry.

The Iowa
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“A street sweeper,” snorted Higgins. ” Fawkes’s spotter drove a goddamned city street sweeper.The city police are booking him now.”

“That explains how he moved through the roadblocks without arousing suspicion,” said March.

The President seemed not to hear. His attention was trained on the Iowa. He could clearly make out small forms in black wet suits darting from cover to cover, pausing only to fire their weapons before moving ever closer to the machine guns that dwindled their numbers. The President counted ten inert SEALs sprawled on the decks.

“Can’t we do something to help those men?”

Higgins gave a helpless shrug. “If we open up from shore, we’d probably kill more SEALs than we’d save. I’m afraid there is little we can do for the moment.”

“Why not send in the Marine assault teams?”

“Those copters are sitting ducks once they land on thelowa ‘s aft deck. They each carry fifty troops. It would be mass slaughter. We’d accomplish nothing.”

“I agree with the general,” said Kemper. “The Satans bought us a breather. Number-two turret appears to be knocked out. We can afford to give the SEALs more time to clear the decks of terrorist opposition.”

The President sat back and stared at the men surrounding him. “Then we wait-is that what you’re saying? We wait and watch while men die in living color before our eyes on that damned TV screen?”

“Yes, sir.” Higgins answered. “We wait.”

Consulting his diagram of the ship while on the run, Pitt unerringly led Lusana down a series of darkened passages and alleyways, past dank empty rooms, until he finally paused at a bulkhead door. Then he wadded the diagram in a ball and tossed it to the deck. Lusana stopped obediently and waited for an explanation.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“Outside the projectile-storage area,” Pitt answered. He leaned his weight against the door, which grudgingly creaked three quarters open. Pitt peered into a dimly lit room and listened. They both heard men shouting against the metallic clash of heavy machinery, the rattle of

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chains, and the hum of electric motors. The sounds seemed to come from above. Cautiously, Pitt stepped over the sill.

The tall armor-piercing shells were neatly stacked on their bases around the hoist tube, their conical heads gleaming menacingly under two yellow light bulbs. Pitt eased past the shells and looked upward.

On the deck overhead two black men were leaning in the hoist-tube access doors and hammering and cursing at the elevator cradle. The explosions that rocked the ship had jammed the mechanism. Pitt pulled back from the opening and began examining the shells. There was a total of thirty-one, and only one shell had a rounded head.

The second QD warhead was not present.

Pitt took a tool kit from his belt and handed the flashlight to Lusana. “Hold this steady while I operate.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Deactivate a shell.”

“If I am to be blown to smithereens,” said Lusana, “may I know why?”

“No!” Pitt snapped. He hunched down and motioned for the light. His hands circled the cone of the shell as lightly as those of a safecracker fingering a tumbler dial. Locating the locking screws, he carefully undid them with a screwdriver. The threads were frozen with age and they fought his every twist. Time, Pitt thought desperately; he needed time before Fawkes’s crew repaired the hoist and returned to the projectile-storage compartment.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, the last of the screws sheared off and the nose cone came loose in his hands. Tenderly, as though it were a sleeping baby, he set it aside and looked inside the warhead.

Then Pitt began to disconnect the explosive charge that was set to split the warhead and release the cluster of bomblets containing the QD organism. There was nothing tricky or particularly hazardous about the procedure. Working on the theory that too much concentration makes the hands tremble, Pitt idly whistled under his breath, thankful that Lusana wasn’t plying him with questions.

Pitt cut the wires leading to the radar altimeter and removed the explosive detonator. He paused for a moment and took a small money sack from his coat pocket. Lusana was mildly amused to see that the lettering on the soiled canvas read WHEATON SECURITY BANK.

“I’ve never admitted this to a soul,” Lusana said, “but I once robbed an armored truck.”

The Iowa
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“Then you should feel right at home,” replied Pitt. He lifted the QD bomblets from the warhead and gently deposited them in the money bag.

“Damned clever smuggling method,” Lusana said, smiling tightly. “Heroin, or diamonds?”

“I’d be interested in knowing that myself,” Patrick Fawkes said as he ducked under the door frame into the compartment.

Lusana’s first reflex was to shoot Fawkes. He spun around in a firing crouch and threw up the Colt, confident he couldn’t miss such a massive target, dead certain the captain had the split-second advantage of a first shot.

Lusana barely caught himself in time. Fawkes’s hands were empty. He was unarmed.

Slowly lowering the Colt, Lusana looked down at Pitt to see how the jther man was taking the situation. As far as he could see, Pitt gave not jthe slightest reaction. He continued loading the sack as if the intrusion lad never occurred.

“Have I the honor of addressing Patrick McKenzie Fawkes?” Pitt Snally said without looking up.

“Aye, I’m Fawkes.” He moved closer, his expression one of curiosity. |”What goes on here?”

‘Excuse me for not rising,” Pitt said casually, “but I’m deactivating a joison-gas warhead.”

Perhaps five seconds passed as Lusana and Fawkes digested Pitt’s Drief explanation, staring at each other blankly and then back down at Jitt.

“You’re daft!” Fawkes blurted.

Pitt held up one of the bomblets. “Does this look like your everyday explosive charge?” “No, it does not,” Fawkes admitted. “Is it some sort of nerve gas?” Lusana asked. “Worse,” Pitt answered. “A plague organism with an ungodly potency. Two shells containing the deadly organism were mixed in with the shipment sent by the arms supplier.” There was the stunned silence of incredulity. Fawkes hunkered down

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and examined the shell and the bomblet in Pitt’s hand. Lusana bent over and stared, too, not sure what he was supposed to be looking at.

The skepticism slowly faded from Fawkes’s eyes. “I believe you,” he said. “I’ve seen enough gas shells to recognize one.” Then he gazed questioningly into Pitt’s face. “Mind telling me who you are and how you came to be here?”

“After we find and deactivate the other shell,” Pitt said, brushing him off. “Do you have another projectile-storage area?”

Fawkes shook his head. “Except for the three shells we’ve fired, all of which were of the armor-piercing variety, this is the lot-” He broke off as the realization struck him. “The turret! All guns are loaded and the breeches locked. The other plague projectile must be inside one of the three barrels.”

“You fool!” Lusana shouted. “You murdering fool!”

The agony in Fawkes’s eyes was apparent. “It’s not too late. The guns will not fire except by my order.”

“Captain, you and I will find and neutralize the other warhead,” Pitt ordered. “Mr. Lusana, if you will be so kind as to drop this over the side.” He handed Lusana the sack bulging with the QD bomblets.

“Me?” Lusana gasped. “I don’t have the vaguest idea how to get out of this floating coffin. I’ll need a guide.”

“Keep making your way topside,” Pitt said confidently. “Eventually you’ll hit daylight. Then throw the sack in the deepest part of the river.”

Lusana was about to leave when Fawkes placed a great paw on his shoulder. “We’ll settle our business later.”

Lusana stared back steadily. “I look forward to it.”