Vixen 03 Part 66

Fawkes felt a growing urge to order his unsuspecting crew off the Iowa, but he could not bring himself to admit he was murdering sixty-eight innocent men, men who had been deceived into believing they were serving a country that treated them little better than cattle. Fawkes had a method of casting off any cold tentacles of guilt. He forced an image of a burned-out farm and the charred bodies of his wife and children into his mind and his resolve for the task at hand quickly hardened.

He picked up the mike again. "Main battery."

"Main battery ready, Captain."

"Single fire on command." He glanced once more at his computations on the chart beside him. "Range, twenty-three thousand nine hundred yards. Target bearing, oh-one-four degrees."

Fawkes stared hypnotically at the three sixty-eight-foot guns stretching out of the number-two main-battery turret, each barrel and its mechanism weighing 134 tons, obediently lifting its herculean muzzle to an elevation of fifteen degrees. Then they stopped, waiting for the command to unleash their awesome power. Fawkes paused, took a deep breath, and pushed the "transmit" b.u.t.ton.

"Are you in position, Angus Two?"

"Say the word, man," replied the spotter.

"Mr. Shaba?"

"Standing by to fire, sir."

This was it. The journey that had begun on a farm in Natal had relentlessly run its course to this moment. Fawkes stepped outside to the bridge wing and raised the AAR battle flag on a makeshift staff. Then he returned to the control room and spoke the fateful words.

"You may fire, Mr. Shaba."

To the men on the Coast Guard patrol boat it was as if they had sailed into a holocaust. Though only one gun of the triple battery had fired directly over the Iowa's bow, the blast created a path of turbulence and a great arm of incandescent gas that reached out and engulfed the small craft. Most of the men standing were knocked to the deck. The ones facing the Iowa at the moment of discharge actually had their hair singed and were blinded for the next several moments by the flash.

Almost before the effects of the muzzle blast had dissipated, Lieutenant Commander Kiebel had taken the helm and thrown the boat in a sharply cut S turn. Then the windshield across the bridge shattered and fell away. For a fraction of a second he thought he was being attacked by wasps. He could feel the hum as they flew past his cheeks and hair. Only after his right arm was jerked from the wheel and he looked down to see an evenly s.p.a.ced set of reddening holes through his jacket sleeve did it dawn on him what was happening.

"Get your men over the side!" he yelled at Fergus. "The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are shooting at us!"

He didn't have to repeat the message. Instantly, Fergus scrambled

across the deck, ordering and in some cases physically shoving his men into the dubious safety of the river. Miraculously, Kiebel was the only one who had been hit. Alone in broad view on the bridge, he stood as though on a stage in the eyes of the Iowa's gunners.

Kiebel brought the boat so close alongside the Iowa's hull that the sideboard b.u.mpers were crushed against the vast wall of steel and torn off. It was a wise move; the gunners above could not depress their sights low enough to do more than shoot away part of the patrol boat's radar mast. Then Kiebel broke into open water, the bullet splashes falling fifty feet to starboard, attesting to the bad aim of his startled adversaries. The gap between them widened. He stole a quick glance aft and was relieved to see that Fergus and his men were gone.

He had run interference for the SEALs. It was their ball game now. Gratefully, Kiebel turned over the helm to his first officer and watched dourly as a chief petty officer broke open a first-aid kit and started cutting away the blood-soaked sleeve of his jacket.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h," Kiebel muttered.

"Sorry, sir, you'll just have to grit your teeth and bear it."

"That's easy for you to say," snorted Kiebel. "You didn't lay out two hundred bucks for the coat."

Jogging his way across the pedestrian walk of the Arlington Memorial Bridge, Donald Fisk, an inspector with the Bureau of Customs, gasped out the crisp city air in wispy clouds of vapor.

He was on the return leg, pa.s.sing around the Lincoln Memorial, his thoughts trailing from nowhere to nowhere from the boredom of the exercise, when a strange sound brought him to a halt. As it became louder, it reminded him of the roar of a speeding freight train. Then it turned into a screaming whoosh, and suddenly a ma.s.sive crater appeared in the middle of Twenty-third Street, followed by a thunderous clap and a shower of dirt and asphalt.

Standing rigidly still after the explosion, Fisk was amazed to find he was untouched. The projectile had pa.s.sed 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!"

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 c.o.c.k 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 sh.e.l.ls 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.

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 G.o.d'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 gla.s.s 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.