Vixen 03

Carl Swedborg, skipper of the fishing trawler Molly Bender, rapped the barometer with his knuckles, regarded it stoically for a moment, then walked over to the chart table and picked up a cup of coffee. His mind visualizing the river ahead, he sipped at the coffee and gazed at the ice that was building on the deck. He hated miserable wet nights. The dampness seeped into his seventy-year-old bones and tortured his joints. He should have retired a decade past, but with his wife gone and his children scattered around the country, Swedborg could not bear to sit around an empty house. As long as he could find a berth as skipper he would stay on water until they buried him in it.

'At least visibility is a quarter of a mile,' he said absently.

'I've seen worse, much worse.' This from Brian Donegal, a tall, shaggy-haired Irish immigrant who stood at the helm. 'Better we have rotten weather going out than coming in.'

'Agreed,' said Swedborg dryly. He shivered and buttoned the top button of his mackinaw. 'Mind your helm and keep wide aport of the Ragged Point channel buoy.'

'Don't you fret, Skipper. Me faithful Belfast nose can sniff channel markers like a bloodhound, it can.'

Donegal's blarney seldom failed to raise a smile from Swedborg. The skipper's lips involuntarily curled upward and he spoke in a stern tone that was patently fake. 'I prefer you use your eyes.'

The Molly Bender swung around Ragged Point and continued her course downriver, passing an occasional lighted channel buoy that came and went like a streetlight beside a rain-soaked boulevard intersection. The shore lights glowed dully through the thickening sleet.

'Somebody coming up the channel,' announced Donegal.

Swedborg picked up a pair of binoculars and looked beyond the bows. 'The lead ship carries three white lights. That means a tug with her tow astern. Too murky to distinguish her outline. Must be a long tow, though. I make out the two white thirtytwo-point lights on the last vessel in line about three hundred yards astern the tug.'

'We're on a collision course, Skipper. Her mast lights are in line with our bow.'

'What is the bastard doing on our side of the river?' Swedborg wondered out loud. 'Doesn't the damn fool know that two boats approaching each other should keep to their starboard side of the channel? He's hogging our lane.'

'We can maneuver easier than he can,' said Donegal. 'Better we alert him and pass starboard to starboard.'

'All right, Donegal. Swing to port and give two blasts of the whistle to signal our intentions.'

There was no answering blast. The strange tug's lights, it seemed to Swedborg, were approaching far more rapidly than he had any right to expect, far more rapidly than any tug he'd ever seen with a fleet of barges in tow. He was horrified as he watched the other vessel turn toward the Molly Bender's altered course.

'Give the fool four short whistle blasts!' Swedborg shouted.

It was the Inland Waterway danger signal — sounded when the course of an opposing vessel or its intentions were not understood. Two of Swedborg's crew, roused from sleep by the whistle shrieks, groggily entered the wheelhouse, instantly snapped to sudden astonishment by the nearness of the strange vessel's running lights. Clearly, she wasn't acting like a tug in tow.

In the few remaining seconds Swedborg snatched a bullhorn and shouted into the night. 'Ahoy! Turn hard aport!'

He might as well have shouted at a ghost. No voice replied; no return whistle blast came through the icy dark. The lights bore down relentlessly upon the helpless Molly Bender.

Realizing collision was inevitable, Swedborg braced himself by clutching the lower frame of the window. Fighting to the last, Donegal frantically reversed engines and twisted the wheel back to starboard.

The last thing any of them saw was a monstrous gray bow looming through the sleet high above the wheelhouse, a massive steel wedge bearing the numeral 6 1.

Then the little fishing trawler was crushed to pieces and swallowed by the icy water of the river.

Pitt stopped the car in front of the White House gate. Jarvis was halfway out when he turned and looked back at Pitt. 'Thank you for your assistance,' he said sincerely.

'What now?' asked Pitt.

'I have the distasteful duty of booting the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff out of their beds,' Jarvis said with a tired smile.

'What can I do to help?'

'Nothing. You've done more than your share. It's up to the Defense Department to carry the ball from here.'

'The Quick Death warheads,' said Pitt. 'Do I have your assurance they will be destroyed when the ship is located and taken into custody? 55

'I can only try. Beyond that, I promise nothing.'

'That's not good enough,' said Pitt.

Jarvis was too tired to argue. He shrugged listlessly, as though he no longer gave a damn. 'Sorry, but that's the way it is.' Then he slammed the door. showed his pass to the guard at the gate, and was gone.

Pitt turned the car around and swung onto Vermont Avenue. A couple of miles on he spotted an all-night coffee shop and slipped into a parking stall. After ordering a cup of coffee from a yawning waitress, he found the pay phone and made two calls. Then he downed the coffee, paid, and left.

54

Heidi Milligan met Pitt when he entered Bethesda Naval Hospital. Her blond hair was half hidden under a scarf, and despite the weariness around her eyes, she looked vibrant and strangely youthful.

'How is Admiral Bass?' Pitt asked her.

She gave him a strained look. 'Walt is hanging in there. He's tough; he'll pull through.'

Pitt didn't believe a word of it. Heidi was clinging to a slowly parting thread of hope and putting up a valiant front. He put his arm around her waist and led her gently down the corridor.

'Can he talk to me?'

She nodded. 'The doctors aren't keen on the idea, but Walt insisted after I gave him your message.'

'I wouldn't have intruded if it wasn't important.' Pitt said.

She looked up into his eyes. 'I understand.'

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 attitude 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 oncemuscular body looked withered.

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

Bass's head rolled slightly in Pitt's direction and he made a feeble gesture with one hand. 'Come closer, Dirk,' he muttered hoarsely.

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 Bass'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 shell and sets up a centrifugal force.'

'Activates a generator… in turn activates a small radar altimeter.'