Текст книги "Vixen 03"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

Соавторы: Clive Cussler
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10

Giordino spread the contents of the folder on the kitchen table. There were six sheets in all. The small aluminum plate Pitt had found in the pocket of the pilot was simmering in a solution Giordino had concocted to bring out the traces of etching in the metal.

Pitt and Steiger stood before a crackling fire and sipped coffee. The fireplace was built of native rock; its heat warmed the entire room.

"You realize the enormous consequences of what you're suggesting?" Steiger asked. "You're conjuring up a serious crime out of thin air, without a shred of evidence… "

"Stick it in your ear," Pitt said. "You act as though I'm accusing the entire United States Air Force of murder. I am accusing no one. Granted, the evidence is circumstantial, but I'll stake my life's savings that a forensic pathologist will bear me out. The skeleton in the cargo hold did not die thirtyfour years ago with the original crew."

"How can you be sure?"

"Several items don't jibe. To begin with, our unaccounted-for passenger still has flesh on his bones. The others were stripped clean decades ago. This indicates, to me at least, that he died long after the crash. Also, he was tied hand and foot to the cargo tiedown rings. With a little imagination you could almost envision the earmarks for an old-fashioned gangland slaying."

"You're beginning to wax melodramatic."

"The whole scene-reeks of it. One mystery ties illogically to another."

"Okay, let's take what we know to be true," said Steiger. "The aircraft with serial number 75403 exists not where it is supposed to. But nonetheless it exists.

"And I think we can safely assume the original crew sits down there in the wreck," Steiger continued. "As to the extra body, perhaps the report neglected to mention his status. He might have been a last-minute assignment: a backup engineer or even a mechanic who strapped himself to the cargo rings just before the crash."

"Then how do you justify a difference in uniform? He was wearing khakis, not Air Force blues."

"I can't answer that anymore than you can say for certain that he was murdered long after the crash."

"There lies the catch," Pitt said evenly.

"I've got a solid idea who our uninvited guest is. And if I'm right, his demise by person or persons unknown becomes a fundamental certainty."

Steiger's eyebrows raised. "I'm listening," he murmured. "Who do you have in mind?"

"The man who built this cabin. His name was Charlie Smith, Congresswoman Loren Smith's father."

Steiger sat there silently for a few moments, digesting the enormity of Pitt's statement. Finally he said, "What proof can you offer?"

"Quite literally bits and pieces. I have it on good authority that Charlie Smith's obituary says that he was blown to smithereens in an explosion of his own making. All that was ever found were a boot and one thumb. A nice touch, don't you think? Very neat and precise. I must keep it in mind the next time I want to do somebody in. Set off a blast, then as soon as the dust settles throw a recognizable piece of footwear and a slice of the victim's most identifiable anatomy at the edge of the smoking crater. Friends later identify the boot and the sheriff's department can't miss with a positive ID once they pull a print from the thumb. In the meantime I've buried the rest of the body where hopefully it will never be found. My victim's death goes down as an accident and I go merrily on my way."

"You're telling me the skeleton in the aircraft was missing a boot and a thumb?"

Pitt merely nodded an affirmative.

At half past nine Giordino was ready. He started by lecturing Pitt and Steiger as he would a class of high-school chemistry students. "As you can see, after more, than three decades of submersion.' the vinyl cover, because it's inorganic, is virtually as good as new, but the paper – inside has nearly returned to pulp. Originally the contents were mimeographed – a common process prior to the miracle of Xerox. The ink, I'm sorry to say, has all but disappeared, and no laboratory on earth can bring it back, even under supermagnification. Three of the sheets are hopeless cases. Nothing vaguely legible remains. The fourth looks like it might have contained weather information. A few words here and there refer to winds, altitudes, and atmospheric temperatures. The only sentence I can partially decipher says 'Skies clearing beyond Western slopes.' "

" 'Western slopes' indicating the Colorado Rockies," said Pitt.

Steiger's hands gripped the edge of the table. "Christ, do you have any idea what that means?"

"It means 03's flight didn't originate from California, as stated in the report," said Pitt. "Her departure point must have been east of here if the crew was concerned about weather conditions over the Continental Divide."

"So much for data sheet number four," said Giordino. "Now then, compared to the rest, sheet five is a veritable treasure trove of information. Here we can faintly make out several word combinations, including the names of two crew members. Many of the letters are missing, but with a bit of elementary deduction we can figure the meanings. Look here, for instance."

Giordino pointed to the sheet of paper, and the other two leaned in closer.

Arc ft ommndr: Ma ayonV 1nde

"Now, we fill in the blanks," Giordino continued, "and we come up with 'Aircraft commander: Major Raymond Vylander.`

"And here's the combination." said Pitt, pointing. "This spells out the name and rank of the flight engineer."

"Joseph Burns," Giordino acknowledged. "In the lines that follow, the missing characters are too numerous to guess their intent. Then, this." Giordino pointed farther down on the paper.

ode n me: ix n 03

"Classified call sign," injected Pitt. "Every aircraft on a security flight is given one. Usually a noun followed by the last two digits of the aircraft's number." Steiger fixed Pitt with a look of genuine respect. "How would you know that?"

"Picked it up somewhere," Pitt said, shrugging it off.

Giordino traced over the blank areas. "So now we have 'Code name: something 03.' "

"What nouns have 'ix' in the middle of them?" Steiger mused.

"Chances are, the missing letter after x is e or o."

"How about 'Nixon'?" Giordino suggested.

"I seriously doubt that a mere transport plane would be named after a vicepresident," Pitt said. " 'Vixen 03' seems closer to the mark."

"Vixen 03," Steiger repeated softly. "That's as good a shot as any."

"Moving right along," said Giordino. "Our final decipherable scrap on the fifth sheet is E-blank-A, Rongelo 060 blank.' "

" 'Estimated time of arrival, six in the morning at Rongelo,' " Steiger translated, his expression still incredulous. "Where in hell is that? Vixen 03 was scheduled to land in Hawaii."

"I only calls 'em the way I sees 'em," said Giordino.

"What about the sixth sheet?" Pitt asked.

"Pretty slim pickings. All gibberish except for a date and a security classification near the bottom. See for yourself."

rders d te anu ry 2, 954 Aut or z d y: r ltrB s TO SERTCOD 1A

Steiger hovered over the indefinite wording. "First line reads 'Orders dated January., sometime between the twentieth and twenty-ninth, 1954."

Pitt said, "The second line looks like 'Authorized by,' but the officer's name is lost. The rank of general fits, though."

"Then comes 'Top-secret code one-A,' said Giordino. "You can't get a classified rating any higher than that."

"I think it's safe to assume," said Pitt, "that someone in the upper echelons of either the Pentagon or the White House, or both, released a misleading accident report on Vixen 03 as a cover-up."

"In my years with the Air Force I've never heard of such an act. Why instigate a flagrant lie over an ordinary aircraft on a routine flight?"

"Face facts, Colonel. Vixen 03 was no ordinary aircraft. The report states the flight originated at Travis Air Force Base, near San Francisco, and was scheduled to land at Hickam Field, in Hawaii. We now know the crew was heading for a destination named Rongelo."

Giordino scratched his head. "I can't recall ever hearing of a place called Rongelo."

"Nor U' said Pitt. "But we can settle that mystery as soon as we lay our hands on a world atlas."

"So what have we got?" asked Steiger.

"Not much," admitted Pitt. "Only that during the latter part of January, 1954, a C-ninety-seven took off from a point either in the eastern or midwestern section of the United States on a top-secret flight. But something went wrong over Colorado. A mechanical malfunction that forced the crew to ditch the plane in the worst terrain imaginable. They got lucky, or so they thought. Miraculously avoiding smashing into a mountainside, Vylander found an open clearing and lined up the Stratocruiser for an emergency landing. But what they couldn't see – remember, it was January, and the ground was undoubtedly covered with snow – was in grim reality a lake frozen over with ice. 55

"So when the aircraft's momentum slowed and its weight settled," said Steiger vacantly, "the ice parted and she fell through."

"Exactly. The tidal surge of water into the broken ship and the staggering shock of the cold overwhelmed the crew before they had a chance to react, and they drowned in their seats. No one witnessed the crash, the water refroze over the grave, and all traces of the tragedy were neatly erased. The ensuing search discovered nothing and Vixen 03 was later concealed behind a phony accident report and conveniently forgotten."

"You've written an interesting plot," said Giordino, "and it plays well. But where does Charlie Smith come into the story?"

"He must have hooked the oxygen tank while fishing. Possessing an inquisitive mind, he probably dragged the area and wrenched the already broken nose gear loose from the wreckage."

"The expression on his face must have been priceless when the gear popped to the surface," Giordino said, smiling.

"Even if I accept Smith's murder," said Steiger, "I fail to see a motive."

Pitt raised his eyes and looked at Steiger. "There is always a motive for taking a man's life."

"The cargo," Giordino blurted, incredulous at his own realization. "It was a highly classified flight. It stands to reason that whatever Vixen 03 was transporting was worth a great deal to somebody. Worth enough to kill for."

Steiger shook his head. "If the cargo is so valuable, why wasn't it salvaged by Smith or his supposed killer? According to Pitt here, it's still down there."

"And sealed tight.," Pitt added. "As near as I could tell, the canisters have never been opened."

Giordino cleared his throat. "Next question."

"Shoot."

"What's inside the canisters?"

"You had to ask," said Pitt. "Well, one conjecture bears consideration. Take an aircraft carrying cylindrical canisters on a secret mission somewhere in the Pacific Ocean in January of 1954 – "

"Of course," interrupted Giordino. "Nuclear-bomb tests were being held at Bikini at that time."

Steiger rose to his feet and stood motionlessly. "Are you implying that Vixen 03 was transporting nuclear warheads?"

"I am not implying anything," Pitt said casually. "I am merely offering a possibility, and an intriguing one at that. Why else would the Air Force put the lid on a missing plane and throw up a smoke screen of misleading information to cloud the disappearance? Why else would a flight crew risk almost certain death to ride down a crippled aircraft in the mountains instead of taking to their parachutes and allowing it to crash, perhaps in or near a populated area?"

"There's one vital point that sinks your theory: the government would have never given up searching for a lost cargo of nuclear warheads."

"I admit you have me there. It does seem odd that enough destruction to obliterate half the country would be left to litter the environment."

Suddenly Steiger wrinkled his nose. "What is that godawful stench?"

Giordino hurriedly rose and moved over to the stove. "I think the metal tag is done."

"What are you boiling it in?"

"A combination of vinegar and baking soda. They're all I could find that would do the trick."

"Are you sure it will bring out the etching?"

"Couldn't say. I'm not a chemist. Won't hurt it, though."

Steiger threw up his hands in exasperation and turned to Pitt. "I knew I should have saved this stuff for professional lab technicians."

Giordino calmly ignored Steiger's remark and delicately lifted the plate out of the boiling water with two forks and patted it dry with a dish towel. Then he held it up to the light, turning it at different angles.

"What do you see?" Pitt asked.

Giordino set the small aluminum plate down an the table in front of them. He inhaled deeply, his features taking on a grave expression.

"A symbol," he said tensely. "The symbol for radioactivity."

11

Natal, South Africa – October 1988

To the casual eye the great trunk of the dead baobab tree looked like one of a thousand others spread about the northeast coastal plain of Natal Province, South Africa. There was no way of telling why it had died or how long ago. It stood in a kind of grotesque beauty, its leafless branches clutching at an azure sky with gnarled, woody fingers while its rotting bark crumbled into a medicinal smelling humus on the ground. There was, however, one startling difference that set this dead baobab tree apart from the others: its trunk was hollowed out and a man crouched inside, intently peering through a small aperture with a pair of binoculars.

It was an ideal hiding place, blueprinted from some long-forgotten manual on guerrilla warfare. Marcus Somala, section leader of the African Army of Revolution, was Proud of his handiwork. Two hours was all it had taken him the previous night to scoop out the spongy core of the tree and stealthily scatter the debris deep within the encircling brush. Once comfortably settled inside, he did not have to wait long for his concealment to pass its first test.

Shortly after dawn a black field-worker from the farm that Somala was observing wandered by, hesitated, and then relieved himself against the baobab. Somala watched, smiling inwardly. He felt an impulse to slip the blade of his long curved Moroccan knife out the night hole and slice off the worker's penis. The impulse was to Somala an amusing one, nothing more. He did not indulge himself with stupid actions. He was a professional soldier and a dedicated revolutionist, a seasoned veteran of nearly a hundred raids. He was proud to serve in the front line of the crusade to eradicate the last vestige of the Anglo cancer from the African continent.

Ten days had passed since he led his tenman section team from their base camp in Mozambique over the border into Natal. They had moved only at night, skirting the known paths of the police security patrols and hiding in the bushveld from the helicopters of the South African Defence Force. It had been a grueling trek. The October spring in the Southern Hemisphere was unusually cool, and the underbrush seemed eternally clammy from constant rains.

When at last they had reached the small farming township of Umkono, Somala stationed his men according to the plan given him by his Vietnamese adviser. Each man was to scout a farm or military facility for five days, gathering information for future raids. Somala had assigned the Fawkes farm to himself.

After the field-worker had ambled off to begin his day's labor, Somala refocused his binoculars and scanned the Fawkes spread. The majority of the cleared acreage, waging a constant battle against the encroaching sea of surrounding bush and grassland, was planted in sugarcane. The remainder was mostly pasture for small herds of beef and dairy cattle with a bit of tea and tobacco thrown in. There was also a garden plot behind the main house, containing vegetables for the personal consumption of the Fawkes family.

A stone barn was used to store the cattle feed and crop fertilizers. It stood apart from a huge shed that covered the trucks and farm equipment. A quarter of a mile beyond, situated beside a meandering stream, was a compound that housed a community of what Somala guessed to be nearly fifty workers and their families, along with their cattle and goats.

The Fawkes house – more of an estate, actually – dominated the crest of a hill and was neatly landscaped by rows of gladiola and fire lilies edging a closely cropped lawn. The picturesque scene was spoiled by a tenfoot chain-link fence topped by several strands of barbed wire that guarded the house on all four sides.

Somala studied the barrier closely. It was a stout fence. The support poles were thick and were no doubt buried deep in encased concrete. Nothing short of a tank could penetrate that mesh, he calculated. He shifted his glasses until a solidly muscled man with a repeating rifle strapped to a shoulder came into view. The guard leaned casually against a small wooden shelter that stood next to a gate. Guards could be surprised and easily disposed of, Somala mused, but it was the thin lines leading from the fence to the basement of the house that diluted his confidence. He didn't require the presence of an electrical engineer to tell him the fence was connected to a generator. He could only speculate as to the strength of the voltage that surged invisibly through the chain link. He noted also that one of the wires led into the guard's shelter. That meant a switch had to be thrown by a guard whenever the gate was opened, and this was the Achilles' heel of the Fawkes defense.

Pleased at his discovery, Somala settled down inside his blind and watched and waited.

12

Captain Patrick McKenzie Fawkes, Royal Navy retired, paced the floor of his veranda with the same intensity he had once exhibited on the deck of a ship when approaching home port. He was a giant of a man, standing a shade over six feet six in his bare feet and supporting a frame that exceeded two hundred eighty pounds. His eyes were somber gray, tinted dark as the water of the North Sea under a November storm. Every sand-colored strand of hair was brushed neatly in place, as were the whitening filaments of his King George V beard. Fawkes might have passed for an Aberdeen sea captain, which is exactly what he was before becoming a Natal farmer.

"Two days!" he exclaimed in a booming Scots accent. "I canna afford to take two days away from the farm. It's inhuman; aye, that's what it is, inhuman." Miraculously. the tea in the cup he waved refused to slop over the brim.

"If the Minister of Defence personally asked to meet with you, the least you can do is oblige."

"But damn, woman, he does not know what he's asking." Fawkes shook his head. "We're in the midst of clearing new acreage. That prize bull I purchased in Durban last month is due to arrive tomorrow. The tractors need maintenance. No, I canna go."

"You'd best be getting the four-wheel-drive warmed up." Myrna Fawkes laid down her needlework and gazed up at her husband. "I've already packed your things and made a lunch to keep you in a good humor until you meet the Minister's train at Pembroke."

Fawkes towered over his wife and scowled. It was a wasted gesture. In twentyfive years she had yet to buckle before him. Out of stubbornness he tried a new tack.

"It would be negligent of me to leave you and the kids alone, what with all them damned heathen terrorists sneaking through the brush and murdering God-fearing Christians right and left."

"Aren't you confusing an insurgency with a holy war?"

"Why, just the other day," Fawkes pushed on, "a farmer and his missus was ambushed over at Umoro."

"Umoro is eighty miles away," his wife said matter-of-factly.

"It could happen here just as well."

"You will go to Pembroke and you will visit with the Defence Minister." The words that came from the woman seemed chiseled in stone. "I have better things to do than sit around on the veranda all morning and palaver with you, Patrick Fawkes. Now get on your way, and stay out of them Pembroke saloons."

Myrna Fawkes was not a woman to ignore. Though she was lean and tiny, she possessed the toughness of two good men. Fawkes seldom knew her when she wasn't dressed in one of his outsized khaki shirts and blue jeans tucked into midcalf boots. She could do almost anything he could do: deliver a calf, ramrod their army of native workers, repair a hundred and one different pieces of mechanical hardware, nurse the sick and injured women and children in the compound, cook like a French chef. Strangely, she had never learned to drive a car or ride a horse and made no bones about not caring to bother. She kept her sinewy body in shape by miles of everyday walking.

"Don't fret for us," she continued. "We have five armed guards. jenny and Patrick junior can both shoot the head off a mamba at fifty meters. I can call up the constable by radio in case of trouble. And don't forget the electrified fence. Even if guerrillas get through that, there's still old Lucifer to contend with." She motioned toward a Holland & Holland twelve-gauge shotgun that rested against the door frame.

Before Fawkes could grunt a last-ditch reply, his son and daughter drove up in a British Bushmaster and parked by the steps of the veranda.

"She's filled with petrol and ready to go, Captain," Patrick junior shouted. He was two months past twenty and wore the face and slimness of his mother, but in height he loomed three inches over his father. His sister, a year younger, big boned and large breasted, smiled gaily from a face sprinkled with freckles.

"I'm all out of bath oil, Papa," jenny said. "Will you please remember to pick me up some when you're in Pembroke?"

"Bath oil," Fawkes groaned. "It's a damned conspiracy. My whole life is one great conspiracy engineered by my own flesh and blood. You think you can get along without me? Then so be it. But in my log you're all a bloody lot of mutineers."

Kissed by a laughing Myrna and herded by his son and daughter, Fawkes reluctantly boarded the four-wheel-drive. As he waited for the guard to open the gate, he turned and looked back at the house. They were still standing on the steps of the veranda, framed by a lattice bursting with bougainvillea blossoms. The three of them waved and he waved back. And then he was shifting the Bushmaster through the gears as he swung onto the dirt road, pulling a small dust cloud behind.

Somala watched the captain's departure, closely noting the procedure of the guard as he turned the electricity off and on when opening and closing the gate. The motions were accomplished mechanically. That was good, Somala thought. The man was bored. So much the better if the time came for an assault.

He angled the binoculars toward the dense elephant grass smudged with thick clumps of shrub that made up the snaking boundaries of the farm. He almost missed it. He would have missed it if his eye hadn't caught a lightning-quick glint from the sun 's reflection. His instinctive reaction was to blink and rub his eyes. Then he looked again.

Another black man was lying on a platform above the ground, partially obscured by the fernlike leaves of an acacia tree. Except for slightly younger features and a shade lighter skin, he could have passed for Somala The intruder was dressed in identical camouflage combat fatigues and carried a Chinese CK-88 automatic rifle with cartridge bandolier – the standard issue of a soldier in the African Army of Revolution. To Somala it was like gazing into a distant mirror.

His thoughts were confused The men of his section were all accounted for. He did not recognize this man. Had his Vietnamese advisory committee sent a spy to observe his scouting efficiency? Surely his loyalty to the AAR was not in question. Then Somala experienced a creeping chill up the nape of his neck.

The other soldier was not watching Somala. He was staring through binoculars at the Fawkes house.