There was no time for the formality of a checklist run-through. It was to be a do-or-die approach, textbook wheels-up landing.
The sea of trees disappeared beneath the nose of the cockpit, and Gold cut off the ignition and electrical circuits as Vylander stalled the Stratocruiser a scant ten feet above the ground. The three remaining engines died and the great dark shadow below quickly rose and converged upon the falling fuselage.
The impact was far less brutal than any of them had a right to expect. The belly kissed the snow and bumped lightly, once, twice, and then settled down like a giant ski. How long the harrowing, uncontrolled ride continued Vylander could not tell. The short 4
seconds passed like minutes. And then the fallen aircraft slid clumsily to a stop and there was a deep silence, deathly still and ominous.
Burns was the first to react.
"By God ... we did it!" he murmured through trembling lips.
Gold stared ashen-faced into the windshield. His eyes saw only white. An impenetrable blanket of snow had been piled high against the glass. Slowly he turned to Vylander and opened his mouth to say something, but the words never came. They died in his throat.
A rumbling vibration suddenly shook the Stratocruiser, followed by a sharp crackling noise and the tortured screech of metal being bent and twisted.
The white outside the windows dissolved into a dense wall of cold blackness and then there was nothing-nothing at all.
At his Naval Headquarters office in Washington, Admiral Bass vacantly studied a map indicating Vixen 03's scheduled flight path. It was all there in his tired eyes, the deeply etched lines on his pale sunken cheeks, the weary slump of his shoulders. In the past four months Bass had aged far beyond his years. The desk phone rang and he picked it up.
"Admiral Bass?" came a familiar voice.
"Yes, Mr. President."
"Secretary Wilson tells me you wish to call off the search for Vixen 03."
"That's true," Bass said quietly. "I see no sense in prolonging the agony. Navy surface craft, Air Force search planes, and Army ground Units have combed every inch of land and sea for fifty miles along either side of Vixen O3's plotted course."
"What's your opinion?"
"My guess is her remains are resting on the seabed of the Pacific Ocean," answered Bass.
"You feel she made it past the West Coast?"
"I do."
"Let us pray you're right, Admiral. God help us if she crashed on land."
"If she had, we'd have known by now," Bass said.
"Yes"-the President hesitated-"I guess we would at that." Another pause. "Close the file on Vixen 03. Bury it, and bury it deep."
"I'll see to it, Mr. President."
Bass set the receiver in its cradle and sank back in his chair, a defeated man at the end of a long and otherwise distinguished Navy career.
He stared at the map again. "Where? ' he said aloud to himself. "Where are you? Where in hell did you go?"
The answer never came. No clue to the disappearance of the illfated Stratocruiser ever turned up. It was as though Major Vylander and his crew had flown into oblivion.
Vixen 03 ">1
Vixen 03
Colorado
September 1988
Dirk Pitt released his hold on sleep, yawned a deep, satisfying yawn, and absorbed his surroundings. It had been dark when he arrived at the mountain cabin and the flames in the great moss-rock fireplace along with the light from the pungent-smelling kerosene lamps had not illuminated the knotty-pine interior to its best advantage.