Vixen 03 Part 61

They came to the door and Heidi opened it. She motioned Pitt toward the admiral's bed.

Pitt hated hospitals. The sickening sweet smell of ether, the depressing atmosphere, the businesslike att.i.tude of the doctors and nurses, always got to him. He had made up his mind long ago: when his time came, he would die in his own bed, at home.

His resolve was further braced by his first look at the admiral since Colorado. The waxen paleness of the old man's face seemed to blend with the pillow, and his rasping breathing came in unison with the respirator's hiss. Tubes ran into his arms and under the sheets, supplying sustenance and draining his body wastes. His once-muscular body looked withered.

A doctor stepped forward and touched Pitt on the arm. "I doubt if he has the strength to speak."

Ba.s.s's head rolled slightly in Pitt's direction and he made a feeble gesture with one hand. "Come closer, Dirk," he muttered hoa.r.s.ely.

The doctor gave a shrug of surrender. "I'll stay close, just in case." Then he stepped into the hall and closed the door.

Pitt pulled a chair up to the bed and bent over Ba.s.s's ear. "The Quick Death projectile," Pitt said. "How does it operate during its trajectory?" "Centrifugal force ... rifling."

"I understand," Pitt replied in a hushed tone. "The spiral rifling inside the bore of the gun rotates the sh.e.l.l and sets up a centrifugal force." "Activates a generator ... in turn activates a small radar altimeter." "You must mean a barometric altimeter."

"No ... barometric won't work," Ba.s.s whispered. "Heavy naval

sh.e.l.l has high velocity with a flat trajectory ... too low for accurate

barometric reading ... must use radar to bounce signal from ground."

"It doesn't seem possible a radar altimeter can survive the high

g-forces when the gun is fired," Pitt said.

Ba.s.s forced a faint smile. "Designed the package myself. Take my word for it... the instrument survives the initial surge when the powder charge is detonated."

The admiral closed his eyes and lay still, exhausted by his efforts. Heidi moved forward and put her hand on Pitt's shoulder. "Perhaps you should come back in the afternoon." Pitt shook his head. "By then it will be too late." "You'll kill him," Heidi said, her eyes welling with tears, her expression angry.

Ba.s.s's hand inched across the sheets and weakly gripped Pitt's wrist. His eyes fluttered open. "Just needed a minute to catch my breath... . Don't go ... that's an order."

Heidi read the tortured look of compa.s.sion in Pitt's eyes and she reluctantly backed away. Pitt leaned toward the admiral again.

"What happens next?"

"After the sh.e.l.l pa.s.ses its zenith and begins the flight to earth, the altimeter's omnidirectional indicator begins signaling the decrease in alt.i.tude... ."

Ba.s.s's voice trailed off and Pitt waited patiently.

"At fifteen hundred feet a parachute is released. Slows the sh.e.l.l's descent and activates a small explosive device."

"Fifteen hundred feet, parachute opens," Pitt repeated.

"At one thousand feet, device detonates and splits head of projectile; releases a cl.u.s.ter ma.s.s of bomblets containing the Quick Death organism."

Pitt sat back and considered the admiral's description of the projectile's operation. He looked into the waning eyes.

"The time element, Admiral. How much time between the parachute's ejection and the QD dispersal?"

"Too long ago ... can't remember."

"Please try," Pitt implored.

Ba.s.s was clearly sinking. He fought to bring his brain into gear, but its cells responded sluggishly. Then the tension lines in his face relaxed and he whispered, "I think ... not sure ... thirty seconds ... rate of descent about eighteen feet per second ..."

"Thirty seconds?" Pitt said, seeking verification.

Ba.s.s's hand released Pitt's wrist and fell back on the bed. His eyes closed and he drifted into coma.

The only damage to the Iowa after she slashed through the Molly Bender was a few sc.r.a.pes to the paint on her bows. Fawkes had not noticed the slightest b.u.mp. He could have averted the tragedy if he had spun the wheel hard to port, but it would have meant swerving the battleship from the deep part of the channel and running her aground.

He needed every inch he could squeeze between the riverbed and the Iowa's hull. The months of gutting thousands of tons of nonessential steel had raised the ship from a wartime operational draft of thirty-eight feet to a few inches less than twenty-two, giving Fawkes a razor-thin margin. Already the great whirling screws were churning up bottom mud that dirtied the Iowa's wake for miles.

Fawkes's countless trips up and down the river in the dark, sounding every foot, marking each channel buoy, each shoal, were paying off. Through the diminishing sleet he made out the lighted mid-channel buoy off St. Clements Island, and a minute or two later his ears picked up its sepulchral tolling bell as if it were an old friend. He wiped his sweating hands one at a time on his sleeves. The trickiest part of the run was coming up.

Ever since slipping the moorings, Fawkes had worried about the danger of Kettle Bottom Shoals, a six-mile section of the river mazed with a network of shallow sandbars that could grip the Iowa's keel and hold her helpless miles from her goal.

He lifted one hand from the helm and picked up a microphone. "I want a continuous depth reading."

"Understood, Captain," a voice scratched back over a speaker.

Three decks below, two of Fawkes's black crewmen took turns calling up the depths as they appeared on the modified Fathometer. They gave their readings in feet instead of the usual fathoms.

"Twenty-six feet ... twenty-five ... twenty-four-five."

Kettle Bottom Shoals was beginning to make its presence known and Fawkes's hamlike hands clenched the spokes of the helm as though they were glued to them.

Down in the engine room Emma made a show of helping the pitifully small crew who were somehow running the huge ship. All were bathed in sweat as they struggled to handle duties that normally took five times their number. The removal of two engines had helped, but there was still far too much to do, particularly when they considered their dual role as engineers and, when the time came, gunners.

Not one to become mired in physical labor, Emma made himself useful by pa.s.sing around gallon jugs of water. In that steaming h.e.l.l no one seemed to take notice of his unfamiliar face; they were only too grateful to gulp down the liquid that replaced the body fluids running from their pores in streams.

They worked blind, never knowing what was happening on the other side of the hull's steel plates, never remotely aware of where the ship was taking them. All Fawkes had told them when they boarded was that they were going on a short practice run to shake down the old engines and fire a few rounds from the main guns. They a.s.sumed they were heading out of the bay and into the Atlantic. That's why they were stunned when the

ship suddenly gave a shudder and the hull began creaking in protest beneath their feet.

The Iowa had rammed a shoal. The suction of the mud had drastically cut her speed, but she was still making way. "Full ahead" came down on the telegraph from the bridge. The two ma.s.sive shafts increased their mighty revolutions as the engines threw their 106,000 horsepower into the task.

The faces of the men in the engine room mirrored confusion and bewilderment. They had thought they were in deep water.

Charles Shaba, the chief engineer, hailed the bridge. "Captain, have we run aground?"

"Aye, laddie, we've nudged an uncharted bar," Fawkes's voice boomed back. "Keep pouring it on till we've sailed past."

Shaba did not share Fawkes's optimism. The ship felt as if she were barely maintaining headway. The deck plates beneath his feet vibrated as the engines strained in their mountings. Then, slowly, he sensed their beat smoothing somewhat, as though the screws were biting into new water. A minute later, Fawkes shouted down from the bridge.