“You better get out of there now, mister!” Kennedy yelled.
The water was pouring in faster as Pitt gathered the four end pieces. Holding them above the bomb, he locked them onto the cable. “Okay, lift her!” Pitt shouted.
He barely got the words out when a cascade of water poured in from all sides of the hold. Pitt grabbed the cable and pulled himself on top of the bomb as the compartment flooded. The cable drew taut and the bomb rose off the pallet, banging against the sides of the hold as the barge began to slip away. Pitt held his breath as a torrent of water flooded over him. He felt several more vibrations from the swaying bomb smacking the metal bulkheads. Then the noise stopped and the water around him calmed.
On board the Lorraine, Kennedy watched in shock as the barge sank, taking the tall man with it. The winch motor strained and the
taut cable drew the skipjack onto its side, the boom nearly touching the water. The oysterman thought the dredge had snagged on the barge and he was about to release the cable when Pitt’s head popped above the surface.
He shook the water from his eyes and looked up at Kennedy. “We got her. Bring her home.”
Kennedy held steady on the winch as the mechanism strained to lift the heavy weight. As the boat slowly righted itself, he stared agog as Pitt emerged from the water riding atop the massive black bomb.
“You’re . . . you’re sitting on a bomb,” he stammered. “Is it a dud?”
“No,” Pitt said with a crooked smile. “It’s atomic.”
87
The Army helicopter swooped low over Maryland’s Eastern Shore, hovered over an empty vacation cottage, and landed on its driveway. A team of military bomb disposal and nuclear weapons specialists climbed out and rushed to the backyard. The cottage overlooked a scenic cove off the Chesapeake called Huntingfield Creek, where a small dock stretched over the water. Sitting abandoned at the end of the dock was the Russian atomic bomb.
A high-power radio frequency jammer was activated next to the bomb to prevent detonation by a remotely transmitted signal. The ordnance crew then carefully examined the bomb, confirming it was activated by a depth gauge. They overrode the pressure sensor, disassembled some outer components to remove the triggering mechanism, then finally disarmed the thirty-kiloton weapon.
Halfway across the Chesapeake, Pitt stood in the bow of the Lorraine and watched in amusement as a Coast Guard boat shooed them toward Baltimore. A flurry of law enforcement boats raced around in a panic, attempting to establish a five-mile safety zone around the remote dock where Pitt had deposited the bomb.
The skipjack sailed back to the Patapsco River, where they came upon the grounded Constellation just shy of Baltimore Harbor. The old sloop of war was surrounded by a half dozen police and fireboats. Her dead and wounded had been removed, the fires extinguished, and pumps activated to relieve her flooded decks. Pitt noticed the tug, the Lauren Belle, was still alongside the ship’s port beam, a handful of police officers inspecting her every inch.
“Going my way, sailor?” came a shout from the Constellation’s spar deck.
Pitt looked up to see Giordino, waving from the ship, and had Kennedy pull the skipjack alongside. Giordino said good-bye to his gun crew friends, climbed down a police boat’s mooring line, then hopped aboard the Lorraine.
He was a mass of powder burns and bruises yet offered a wide grin. “I should have known you’d be out taking a leisurely cruise while the rest of us were getting our hands dirty.”
“You know I abhor manual labor,” Pitt said. “Is the Connie going to make it?”
“She’s got a one-way ticket to dry dock for a while, but she’ll be fine.”
“Her crew helped save a lot of lives today.”
“Where did you deposit the bomb?” Giordino asked. “I tried to go after you, but the tug’s helm was disabled by our final blast.”
“Along with our bald friend, I presume?”
Giordino smiled.
“We found a quiet cove across the bay,” Pitt said, “as remote as possible.”
Giordino looked to Kennedy at the helm and shook his head. “That was quite an oyster you boys hauled aboard.”
The oysterman nodded as if it was all in a day’s work.
The skipjack sailed into Baltimore Harbor, whose waterfront was a blaze of flashing police lights. The Lorraine maneuvered into the empty Coast Guard dock, which was surrounded by law enforcement officials. As Pitt and Giordino climbed out of the boat and helped tie it up, a pair of black limousines rolled onto the dock. A Secret Service detail sprang from the first while Vice President Sandecker and Rudi Gunn emerged from the second. The two men made their way to Pitt and Giordino.
“Fine work, boys,” Sandecker said through teeth clenched on a cigar. “We just got word that the Army bomb squad safely defused the weapon.”
“At thirty kilotons,” Gunn said, “that would have been quite a bang.”
Sandecker looked at Pitt. “How did you figure out Baltimore was the target and not D.C.?”