Vixen 03 Part 63

"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 h.e.l.l. 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 ma.s.s 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 G.o.d, 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.

"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 ma.s.saged his temples. "What do we know about this fellow Fawkes?"

Kemper nodded to an aide, who pa.s.sed 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 gla.s.ses and opened the folder. After a few minutes he peered over the horn-rims at Kemper. "A d.a.m.n 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 ma.s.sacre 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 a.s.sumption that the Iowa is carrying a deadly biological agent. First, we can call up a 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 sh.o.r.e."

"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 a.s.sault 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 b.u.t.toned up."

The President looked at Higgins. "I must a.s.sume 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." "Three 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.