Vixen 03

Pitt unclasped his seat belt and waited until Sandecker did the same, then moved into the helicopter's small cargo compartment. "Do it right the first time," Pitt said into Steiger's ear, "or you'll make an ugly red mess on the side of the Iowa."

"You're looking at a neatness nut," Steiger said with a diluted smile. "All you have to do is hang tight and leave the driving to old Abe. If you have to drop early, I'll make damn sure you've got a nice cushion of deep water under your ass."

"I'm counting on it."

"We'll come around and swing in from the west to cloak our outline against whatever darkness is left." Steiger's eyes never strayed from the windshield. "I'm flicking off the navigation lights now. Good luck!"

Pitt squeezed Steiger's arm, stepped into the cargo section of the Minerva, and closed the cockpit door. The compartment was ice cold. The loading hatch was open and the wintry morning air whistled into what seemed a vibrating aluminum tomb. Sandecker held the harness out to him and he strapped it on.

The admiral started to say something and then hesitated. At last, his cast-iron features taut with suppressed emotion, he said, "I'll expect you for breakfast."

"Make my eggs scrambled.," Pitt said.

Then he stepped into the frigid dawn.

Lieutenant Alan Fergus, leader of the SEAL combat units, zipped up his wet suit and cursed the vagaries of the high command. Not more than an hour ago he'd been rudely awakened from a dead sleep and hurriedly briefed on what he regarded as the dumbest exercise ever to come his way during seven years in the Navy. He pulled on his rubber hood and tucked his ears under the lining. Then he approached a tall, burly man who sat slouched in a nonregulation director's chair. His feet were propped on the bridge railing and he peered intently down the Potomac.

"What's it all about?" asked Fergus.

Lieutenant Commander Oscar Kiebel, the dour skipper of the Coast Guard patrol boat that was ferrying Fergus and his men, twisted the corners of his mouth in an expression of distaste and shrugged. "I'm as confused as you."

"Do you believe that bullshit about a battleship?"

"No," Kiebel said in a rumbling voice. "I've seen four-thousand-ton destroyers cruise upriver to the Washington Navy Yard, but a fifty-thousand-ton battleship? No way."

"Board and secure the stern for Marine helicopter-assault teams," Fergus said irritably. "Those orders are sheer crap, if you want my opinion."

"I'm not any happier about this outing than you," said Kiebel. "I take my picnics as they come." He gri

"At seven o'clock in the morning, neither holds much interest. Not out in the open, at any rate."

"We'll know soon. Two more miles till we round Sheridan Point. Then our objectives should be within — " Suddenly Kiebel broke off and cocked his head, listening. "You hear that?"

Fergus cupped his ears and turned, facing the patrol boat's wake. "Sounds like a helicopter."

"Coming like a bat out of hell without lights," Kiebel added.

"My God!" Fergus exclaimed. "The Marines have jumped the gun. They're going in ahead of schedule."

An instant later every head on the patrol boat turned upward as a helicopter roared past at two hundred feet, a dim shadow against a gray sky. All were so engrossed in the mysterious, darkened craft they didn't notice the vague shape trailing below and slightly to the rear of the copter until it swept over the decks and carried away the radio ante

"What in hell was that?" blurted Kiebel in genuine astonishment.

Pitt would have been only too glad to supply the answer if he'd had the time. Strapped in the harness, dangling under the NUMA helicopter only thirty feet above the river. he barely managed to extend his legs forward as he crashed into the patrol boat's ante

The rising sun cooperated by hiding behind a low range of dark clouds, its filtered light obscuring any detail of the surrounding countryside. The air was keen, barbed with the energy of its chill, a polar frigidity that stabbed through Pitt's heavy clothing. His eyes were watering like faucets and his cheeks and forehead smarted with the intensity of overloaded pincushions.

Pitt was on a ride no amusement park in the country could equal. The Potomac was a blur as he soared over its lazy current at nearly two hundred miles an hour. Trees edging the banks hurtled by like cars on a Los Angeles freeway. He looked skyward and made out a small pale oval against the black doorway of the helicopter and recognized it as the anxious face of Admiral Sandecker.

He felt a sideways motion as Steiger banked the craft around a wide bend in the river. The long umbilical cable that held him to a winch in the cargo compartment arched in the opposite direction, swinging him outward, like the end child in a playground game of crack the whip. The momentum twisted him sideways and he found himself looking at the grounds of Mount Vernon. Then the cable straightened and the huge mass of the Iowa swung into view, her forward guns trained ominously upstream.

Overhead, Steiger eased back on the throttle and slowed the flight of the helicopter. Pitt felt the harness straps pressing into his chest at the deceleration and braced himself for the drop. The superstructure of the ship filled up the windshield in front of the control cabin when Steiger gently eased the helicopter into a hovering position above the starboard side of the ship, behind the main bridge.

"Too fast! Too fast!" Steiger muttered over and over, fearful that Pitt would be swinging ahead of the hovering helicopter like a weight on the bottom of a pendulum.

Steiger's fears were justified. Pitt was indeed pitching forward on an uncontrollable course. high above the main deck, where he'd pla

From the doorway of the helicopter Sandecker's eyes strained in the earlymorning gloom, his insides knotted, his breath halted, as Pitt's huddled figure fell behind the forward superstructure and vanished. Then the Iowa was gone too, as Steiger snapped the helicopter into a steep angle, the rotor blades biting the air, dipping over the forested shore and out of sight. As soon as the craft leveled, Sandecker released his safety strap and made his way back into the cockpit.

"Is he away?" Steiger asked anxiously.

"Yes, he's down," answered Sandecker.

"In one piece?"

"We can but hope," Sandecker said, so quietly that Steiger hardly heard him above the roar of the engine. "That's all any of us has left."

59

Fawkes was not overly concerned with the helicopter so long as it continued on its way. He did not see a human form drop out of the twilight, as his attention was directed to the boat that was approaching downriver at high speed. There was no doubt in his mind that it was a welcoming committee, courtesy of the United States government. He spoke into a microphone.

"Mr. Shaba."

"Sir?" Shaba's voice crackled back.