Vixen 03

He came to the dock and glanced about for signs of human activity. The night crew had long since gone home. Only a seagull, perched on a wooden piling, returned Fawkes's gaze out of one beady eye.

After another hundred yards Fawkes stopped at a huge spectral shape that loomed in the darkness beside the pier. Then he took the gangplank, stepped onto the seemingly endless deck, and unerringly made his way through the steel labyrinth to the bridge.

Later, as the sun crept over the eastern side of the bay, the mutilated shabbiness of the ship became manifest. But the peeling paint, the acres of rust, and the jagged torch marks of the salvage crew stood unseen in Fawkes's eyes. Like a father with a hideously disfigured daughter, he saw only her beauty.

"Aye, you're a bo

26

Steiger's superiors at the Pentagon sat on his report of the discovery of Vixen 03 for nearly two months before summoning him to Washington. To Steiger it was like sitting in the audience of a staged nightmare. He felt more like a hostile witness than a key investigator.

Even with the evidence before their eyes, in the form of videotape, General Ernest Burgdorf, chief of Air Force Safety, and General John O'Keefe, aid to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expressed doubts over the sunken aircraft's importance, and argued that nothing was to be gained by bringing it to light except sensationalistic play from the news media. Steiger sat stu

"But their families," he protested. "It would be criminal not to notify the crew's families that the bodies have been found."

"Come to your senses, Colonel. What good would dredging up old memories do them? The crew's parents are probably long since dead. Wives have remarried. Children raised by new fathers. Let all concerned go about their present lives in peace."

"There's still the cargo," Steiger said. "The possibility exists that Vixen 03's cargo included nuclear warheads."

"We've been all through that," snapped O'Keefe. "A thorough computer search through military- s torehou se records confirmed that there are no missing warheads. Every piece of atomic hardware begi

"Are you also aware, sir, that nuclear material was, and is still, shipped in stainlesssteel canisters?"

"And did it also occur to you, Colonel," said Burgdorf, "that the canisters you say you found might be empty?"

Steiger sagged in his chair, beaten. He might as well have been debating with the wind. They were treating him like an overimaginative child who claimed he'd seen an elephant in a Mi

"And if that actually is the same aircraft that was supposed to have vanished over the Pacific," added Burgdorf, 'I think it best to let sleeping dogs lie."

"Sir?"

"The grim reasons behind the aircraft's tremendous course differential may not be something the Air Force wishes to publicize. Consider the probabilities. To fly a thousand miles in the opposite direction takes either the total malfunction of at least five different instrument systems aided by the blind stupidity of the crew, a navigator who lost his marbles, or a plot by the entire crew to steal the airplane, for what purpose God only knows."

"But somebody must have authorized the flight orders," said Steiger, puzzled.

"Somebody did, " said O'Keefe. "The original orders were issued at Travis Air Force Base, in California, by a Colonel Michael Irwin."

Steiger looke at the general skeptically, "Flight orders are seldom kept on file more than a few months. How is it possible the ones in question were retained for over thirty years?"

O'Keefe shrugged. "Don't ask me how, Colonel. Take my word for it: Vixen 03's last flight plan turned up in old files at the Travis administration office."

"And the orders I found in the wreckage?"

"Accept the inevitable," said Burgdorf.

"The papers you pulled out of that Colorado lake were too far gone to decipher with any degree of accuracy. You simply read something into them that wasn't there."

"As far as I'm concerned," O'Keefe said resolutely, "the explanation for Vixen 03's course deviation is a dead issue." He turned to Burgdorf. "You agree, General?"

"I do."

O'Keefe stared at Steiger. "Do you have anything else you'd like to put before us, Colonel?"

Steiger's superiors sat and waited for him to reply. He knew no words worth uttering. He had reached a dead end.

The implication dangled over his head like a suspended sword. Either Abe Steiger forgot all about Vixen 03 or his Air Force career would come to a premature halt.

The President stood on the putting green behind the White House and stiffly swatted a dozen balls toward the cup only five feet away. None dropped in, further proving to him that golf was not his game. He could understand the competitive challenge of te

"Now I can die content, for I have seen everything."

The President straightened and looked into the gri

"It all goes to prove how much time I have on my hands now that I'm a lame-duck president."

March, a short, dumpy man who detested any sort of physical exertion, walked onto the green. "You should be happy with the election. Your party and your man won."

"Nobody ever really wins an election," the President grunted. "What's on your mind, Tim?"

"Thought you might like to know I've clamped the lid on that old aircraft found in the Rockies."

"Probably a wise move."

"A baffling affair," said March. "Except for those doctored flight plans in Air Force files, there is no trace of the crew's true mission."

"So be it," said the President, finally knocking a ball into the cup. "Let's leave it lie. If Eisenhower buried the answers during his administration, far be it from me to open a can of worms during mine."

"I suggest we remove the remains of the crew for a military burial. We owe them that."

"Okay, but absolutely no publicity."

"I'll make that clear to the Air Force of peer in charge."

The President tossed the putter to a Secret Service man who lurked nearby and motioned for March to accompany him to the Executive Offices.

"What's your best educated guess, Tim? What do you really think Ike was trying to cover up back in 1954?"

"That question has kept me staring at the ceiling the past few nights," said March. "I don't have the foggiest idea."

Steiger shouldered his way past the lunchtime crowd waiting for tables at the Cottonwood I

"A martini on the rocks," said Steiger, eyeing the mounds. "On second thought, make that a double. It's been one of those mornings."

Pitt held up a nearly empty glass. "Another salty dog."

"Christ," moaned Steiger. "How can you stand those things?"